UX: Tales From the Trenches

By Luke Hay, Dan Goodwin, Jodie Moule and Joe Natoli

This book is a collection of hard-won lessons from UX experts, gained from many years of working in the field. It contains:

• How Analytics Helped Solve a UX Issue by Luke Hay
• Using Prototyping Tools to Define Better Weather Icons for Everyone by Dan Goodwin
• How User Research Turned a Good App into a Great One by Jodie Moule
• Accessibility and Inclusive Design: Why The're Not the Same by Derek Featherstone
• Exposing the Real Cause of Most UX Issues by Joe Natoli

• Language: English
• Publisher: SitePoint
• Release date: Jul 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9781098122713

Luke Hay

Luke Hay is a UK-based UX Consultant who's been working with websites since the 1990s. He prides himself on taking a user-centric, analytical approach to design, development and optimization of websites and apps. Luke currently splits his time between working as the Senior Conversion Strategist at integrated digital agency Fresh Egg, and as a freelance UX and analytics consultant and trainer. Always involved in his local digital community, Luke has helped organize and curate events for UX Brighton, and is one of the organizers of UX Camp Brighton.

Book preview

Preface

This book is a collection of hard-won lessons from UX experts, gained from many years of working in the field. It contains:

How Analytics Helped Solve a UX Issue by Luke Hay

Using Prototyping Tools to Define Better Weather Icons for Everyone by Dan Goodwin

How User Research Turned a Good App into a Great One by Jodie Moule

Accessibility and Inclusive Design: Why They’re Not the Same by Derek Featherstone

Exposing the Real Cause of Most UX Issues by Joe Natoli

Who Should Read This Book?

This book is for anyone interested in UX. You won't need any technical experience in order to read it.

Conventions Used

Code Samples

Code in this book is displayed using a fixed-width font, like so:

A Perfect Summer's Day

It was a lovely day for a walk in the park.

The birds were singing and the kids were all back at school.

Where existing code is required for context, rather than repeat all of it, ⋮ will be displayed:

function animate() {

    ⋮

new_variable = Hello;

 

}

Some lines of code should be entered on one line, but we’ve had to wrap them because of page constraints. An ➥ indicates a line break that exists for formatting purposes only, and should be ignored:

URL.open("http://www.sitepoint.com/responsive-web-

➥design-real-user-testing/?responsive1");

You’ll notice that we’ve used certain layout styles throughout this book to signify different types of information. Look out for the following items.

Tips, Notes, and Warnings

Hey, You!

Tips provide helpful little pointers.

Ahem, Excuse Me ...

Notes are useful asides that are related—but not critical—to the topic at hand. Think of them as extra tidbits of information.

Make Sure You Always ...

... pay attention to these important points.

Watch Out!

Warnings highlight any gotchas that are likely to trip you up along the way.

Chapter 1: How Analytics Helped Solve a UX Issue

by Luke Hay

UX and analytics make a great team. Your website analytics can give you insights enabling you to learn about your users, track their journeys, and find potential problem areas. You can use the quantitative data to inform your qualitative UX approach. Remember, your analytics tell you what’s happening on your website, while UX techniques such as usability testing will help uncover why things are happening.

There are various ways that Google Analytics can be used to uncover how your users are navigating your website. Within the Pages report you can drill down to see how users are navigating to, and from, a selected page in your website. But the User Flow and Behavior Flow reports give more information on multi-step journeys from your most popular landing pages onwards.

These reports can be hard to analyze, particularly for large websites, due to the fact that there are unlikely to be a series of clear pathways through your