#405: UX and Interface Design

UX metrics, golden rules of design research, B2B interface, guide to animation, enterprise UX and designing for attention. Issue #405 • May 16, 2023 • [View in the browser]( [Smashing Newsletter]( Iyi akşamlar Smashing Friends, Designing complex interfaces has its own rules and conventions. You won’t find much whitespace in enterprise applications, and when it comes to B2B environments, it’s difficult to get access to users to run usability testing. Plus, you need to continuously track the impact of your UX work on business KPIs. In this newsletter, we’ll explore UX guidelines and strategies to better navigate in such environments. [SmashingConf SF 2023]( Coming up next week, May 23–26: [SmashingConf SF]( all around cutting-edge frontend. When it comes to complex interfaces, we are getting ready to dive deep into front-end and tooling, with a few lovely events and sessions: - [SmashingConf Front-End @ SF]( 🇺🇸 (May 23–26) all around front-end, CSS, web performance, JavaScript, Next.js and accessibility, - [SmashingConf Antwerp]( 🇧🇪 (Oct 9–11), on design systems, usability, product design and complex UI challenges. - [Smart Interface Design Patterns]( with design patterns on enterprise UX + live UX training with yours truly. In the meantime, let’s dive into some of the useful UX gems and pointers to better cope with the enterprise UX world! — Vitaly ([@vitalyf]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Designing Complex Data Tables Enterprise UX means that a lot of complex data needs to be displayed — be it in dashboards, internal tools, or web apps. Tables in different forms and variations are usually the number one choice to help users make sense of data. So what do we need to consider when designing complex tables? [Enterprise UX: essential resources to design complex data tables]( Stéphanie Walter put together a useful [list of essential resources and blog posts]( that help you design complex tables with a lot of data and interactions. It covers table design basics and specific table patterns, just like designing data tables for enterprise apps and how to fit tables with a lot of content in any screen size. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- 2. Ultimate Guide To UI Animation Getting UI animation right can be an art. It needs to feel natural and be unobtrusive enough not to distract users from the task they want to perform. But how to achieve that? Taras Skytskyi wrote a [practical guide to using animation in UX]( covering all the rules and principles you need to be aware of to create delightful animation effects that, well, feel just right. [The ultimate guide to proper use of animation in UX]( The guide explores animation duration and speed, easing, and choreography. You’ll learn to adapt your animation to different screen sizes and platforms, how to read animation curves, and how to guide your user’s attention when transitioning from one state to another. The guide doesn’t cover specific use cases but rather universal principles that you can apply to all kinds of interface animations. Handy! (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- From our sponsor Reduce Your Design Workload By 50% With Supernova [Supernova]( Unlock your design system’s full potential with Supernova’s end-to-end platform. Streamline your design workflow, document better, and deliver exceptional user experiences.We’re also introducing our new integration with Tokens Studio. [Discover]( how it enables a seamless sync between Supernova and Figma. [Try Supernova]( today and elevate your design system! --------------------------------------------------------------- 3. Designing B2B Interfaces Imagine you want to book a train ticket. As a consumer, you’ll want the simplest experience possible. But if you’re an employee of the railway company who uses the booking interface all day, you need a lot more information than a consumer. ‘Simple’ won’t cut it for you. You need a product tailored to your specific professional usage. [Designing For Experts 101]( So how can designers find the sweet spot between not too simple and not too complicated? Morgane Peng introduces a strategy that helps you design relevant products while taking people’s business and interface expertise into account: the [UX Efficient Frontier](. It allows you to consider your users’ expertise levels and tackle projects differently depending on their audience. A great reminder that ‘efficient’ is not always simple and ‘simple’ is not always efficient. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- 4. Upcoming Workshops and Conferences That’s right! We run [online workshops on frontend and design]( be it accessibility, performance, or design patterns. In fact, we have a couple of workshops coming up soon, and we thought that, you know, you might want to join in as well. [Smashing Online Workshops]( With [online workshops]( we aim to give you the same experience and access to experts as in an in-person workshop from wherever you are. As always, here’s a quick overview: - [Architecting Design Systems]( Workflow with Nathan Curtis. May 11–19 - [SmashingConf SF]( 🇺🇸 — May 23–26 - [The Power of Storytelling]( UX with Chiara Aliotta. May 30 – June 14 - [Deep Dive On Accessibility Testing]( Dev with Manuel Matuzović. June 12–26 - [Figma Workflow Masterclass]( UX with Christine Vallaure. June 15–23 - [The React Performance Masterclass]( Dev with Ivan Akulov. June 29 – July 13 - [Data Visualization Masterclass]( Dev with Amelia Wattenberger. July 4–18 - [Smart Interface Design Patterns Video Course]( UX 9h-video + live UX training with Vitaly Friedman - [Jump to all workshops →]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 5. Golden Rules Of Design Research The importance of user research has gained more and more attention lately, and design teams have embraced the idea that they truly need to understand their customers to create products that matter. However, there are still some myths and misconceptions about user research. To correct them, Erika Hall summarized [nine golden rules of successful research](. [The 9 Rules of Design Research]( The nine rules help you adopt the mindset you need when conducting user research. It’s about being comfortable with being uncomfortable, knowing your goals and finding good questions, embracing imperfection, collaboration, and learning how your leaders make decisions before you try to use data to influence those decisions. Valuable tips that help you get the most out of user research. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- From our sponsor Creative Commerce Without Limits [Swell]( Swell is powerful and flexible commerce infrastructure for innovative developers, agencies, and brands who want to build world-class buying experiences. Smashing Magazine chose Swell so they could smoothly adhere to global tax regulations, easily manage memberships, and fulfill separate bundles. [Read Swell’s case study](. --------------------------------------------------------------- 6. How To Measure UX Perhaps you’ve already been in a situation where a decision-maker rejected a great design because they had a bad day. Or maybe you pushed a solution forward without being aware of critical flaws that ultimately cost your project a fortune. To help you minimize the risks that human bias and non-objective evaluation can pose on UX design, Roma Videnov wrote a [comprehensive guide to measuring UX](. [Measuring UX: Your First Step Towards Objective Evaluation]( The guide dives deep into UX benchmarking, scoring, and analysis and elaborates on four UX metrics: UMUX-L, Levels of Success, Time on Task, and Single Ease Question. Some of them require basic knowledge of how data is processed, but no worries, you don’t need to know about statistics; Roma explains everything that’s important in common words to get you up and running quickly. A must-read for every UX designer. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- 7. Designing For Realistic Attention Most people only scan the content of a page rather than reading it word by word. In fact, Christopher Butler estimates that 80% of your page’s visitors are scanners and that 20% at most will read. So how to structure a page to make sure that your design efforts serve 100% of your audience? [Designing For Realistic Attention]( In his post “[Designing for (Realistic) Attention]( Christopher shares practical tips for structuring a page to better signal to scanners what it contains, whether it is relevant to them, and what they should do next. He dives deeper into arranging visual elements to communicate context and explores how subtle indentations and outdentations effectively guide a user’s understanding of a page — even if they only scan it. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- From our sponsor Northwestern’s Online MS In Information Design And Strategy [Northwestern’s Online MS In Information Design And Strategy]( Prepare for a range of dynamic communication roles and build the skills needed to lead communication strategy, translate complex data, and drive user interactions. Choose from specializations in content strategy, UX/UI, communication with data, and learning design. [Learn more →]( --------------------------------------------------------------- 8. Spotify Ways Of Working Design is a collaborative effort. However, with designers spread out amongst cross-functional teams, multiple product areas, and perhaps even countries and time zones, a lot of work happens in isolation, particularly during the UI design phase. [Spotify Ways of Working]( To make UI design more interconnected and participatory, Spotify Design introduced an organization system for Figma: “[Spotify Ways of Working]( It helps speed up the design workflow and organically exposes designers to their colleague’s work to ease collaboration and prevent inconsistencies in the design. If you plan to create a Figma organization system for your team, too, Cliona O’Sullivan and Barton Smith share [valuable insights into how Spotify Design tackled the task](. They take a closer look at the goals they set for themselves, the challenges they faced, and how they managed to create a system that truly suits the needs and culture at Spotify. (cm) --------------------------------------------------------------- 9. New On Smashing Job Board - [Visual Designer]( at UCLA (Los Angeles / New York / Remote) - [Wordpress/PHP Developer]( at Razorbraille (Toronto) - [Design System Specialist]( at InVision AG (Düsseldorf, Germany) --------------------------------------------------------------- 10. Recent Smashing Articles - [Design Patterns Are A Better Way To Collaborate On Your Design System]( - [Solving Media Object Float Issues With CSS Block Formatting Contexts]( - [Designing Sticky Menus: UX Guidelines]( - [How To Boost Your Design Workflow With Setapp]( - [A Guide To Redux Toolkit With TypeScript]( - [How To Use AI Tools To Skyrocket Your Programming Productivity]( - [Read more on Smashing Magazine →]( --------------------------------------------------------------- That’s All, Folks! Thank you so much for reading and for your support in helping us keep the web dev and design community strong with our newsletter. See you next time! --------------------------------------------------------------- This newsletter issue was written and edited by Cosima Mielke (cm), Vitaly Friedman (vf) and Iris LjeÅ¡njanin (il). Sent to truly [smashing]( readers via [Mailchimp](. We sincerely appreciate your kind support. You rock. [Follow us on Twitter]( • [Join us on Facebook]( Weekly issues with useful tips for web devs. Email: newsletter@smashingmagazine.com. [unsubscribe]( • [update preferences]( • [view in your browser](