Top Articles of the Week #12 : User Experience (UX)
Top Articles of the week on user experience (UX). These articles talk about ethics of user experience, UX without user research is just X, user experience has taken a backseat to monetization needs, API Design.
The Ethics of User Experience Design
Earlier this month in an Axios interview, Sean Parker, Facebook’s first President, admitted:“The thought process that went into building these applications—Facebook being the first of them to really understand it—that thought process was all about: How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible. And that means that we need to sort of give you a little dopamine hit every once in a while—because someone liked or commented on a photo or a post or whatever”. Applying ethical thinking to UX design cannot be just about the end goal. This requires constant vigilance—regarding not only the explicit consequences of the designer’s work, but also the hidden, unintended consequences.
UX Without Users isn’t UX
Many organizations claim to be user-centric. Yet they fail to include users in the development process. Without customer input, organizations risk creating bad interfaces. A lot of people have UX in their title or companies even have a department which does UX, but UX without user research is just X.
‘People are bombarded with ads’: Confessions of a publishing vet on user experience
User experience has often taken a backseat to monetization needs at publishers, leading to the rise of ad blocking, and tech giants like Google and Apple cracking down on ads that slow down page speed. People are still bombarded with ads, their computers stuffed with tags and cookies. They have autoplay video, with the sound off by default if they’re lucky, and all these things affect the page-load speed. In a real-life situation, it’s the equivalent of throwing soapy water under a customer, or hitting them with a bat while they walk through a store.
User Experience Design For APIs
User experience (UX) should be central in application programming interface (API) design. A well-designed API, making complicated tasks feel easy, will probably prevent a lot more pain in this world than a brilliant new design for a bedside lamp ever would. So why does API UX design so often feel like an afterthought, compared to even furniture design? Why is there a profound lack of design culture among developers?
