Holistic UX Recap & Video

Thanks so much to everyone who came to our Holistic UX event last week. We had a lot of fun, and loved meeting folks who attended. Also, thanks again to Yelp for their fantastic hospitality, and of course our panelists Vicki, Jacob, and Bryn for providing useful insights.

If you missed the event, don’t worry! We have the video footage, which you can watch right here:

Everyone agrees that user testing can be an integral part of creating a great user experience, but it’s important to factor details about your product into how you test. At Lyft, one of Vicki’s focus areas was doing real-world testing. The way Lyft is used day-to-day can be hectic and confusing (while at at a bar, or trying to figure out which silver Prius is there for you), so it was important to test in those types of environments.

Picking the users you test with also matters. Lyft made a point to not run user tests with people in the tech industry, because their target audience is made up of mostly non-technical users. Figma, on the other hand, is a design tool. Since most of their users already have experience giving product feedback, Figma is often able to get direct, structured feedback from their users without having to replicate specific test scenarios.

We also talked about the balance between making something that’s pretty and something that’s highly usable. User experience can sometimes be at odds with a pure design. For example, “placeholder labels” vs. labels above their inputs. Bryn pointed out that “It’s really easy to buy good-looking…usable is really hard, but it’s the most valuable.” It often helps to take a step back and rethink whether something that looks very clean is actually a usable solution, or more like hiding clutter in a closet.

Hopefully we’ll see you at our next event! Sign up to be notified when that’s happening.

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