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- Using Colors For Data Visualization With Large Categories
C olor is just one of many visual cues one can use to direct someone's attention to adnd tell stories with data. Choosing a color palette for a particular data visualization is one thing. Coming up with a scalable system for applying that same color palette across a data dashboard is a larger design problem altogether. What if we can't avoid multiple categories? Recommendations for limiting color use in graphs range from 6-9, with sometimes 12 colors still possible, depending on the type of data being represented. But what if, as in one of our cases, there are up to 17 categories in the data shown at one time, and those categories are difficult to group? In this case we are required to take a closer look at the type of data, as well as infer how we expect the user to interpret and use the data. “A leader's role is not to always have the answer, but to create the conditions for things to happen” Chris Waugh, Chief Design & Innovation Officer Sutter Health The intent of our dashboard is to bring to the user's attention a range of opportunities for renewal business that they might not have otherwise pursued. But within that sphere of opportunities, it is our assumption that the user should pursue "bigger fish" opportunities first, rather than "small fish". We inferred the big fish to be those opportunities with larger dollar amount within a group. We went ahead to use color sequentially to express the value of an opportunity category, making big fish opportunities darker and making them progressively lighter as the value dips. Design Solution 1 derived following the Big Fish vs Small Fish concept. Use solid colors for larger values and lighter tones for smaller values. We went ahead to test whether our solution met the user's needs in the best possible way. The feedback we got was it is also important for the user to see the small fish and it is easy for users to get confused as to the reason for the color being so light and insignificant. This information can be easily missed. It was time to transition to the next solution to ensure that only the best ideas are taken forward. We realized that If data isn't understandable, it isn't actionable. The team got down to find out the maximum number of categories that were required to be shown to users at one time. We created 17 colors theme of 3,6,13, and 17 which was the max number. Design Solution 2 derived using Color Theme Created a color palette of 3, 6, 13, and 17 colors cascading from darkest, medium to light. Colors chosen in palette are visually distinct. Continued testing with real time users made us realize that we even needed a 9 color chart which we later incorporated. In pie chart and also in stacked bar, the colors were not visually distinct and we realized there was scope for improvement from usability point of view. Usability Improvements Inserted a thin separator between each graph segment to make it easily distinct (see above image) What's Coming Up? Taking some more of our ideas forward, we will be soon running a test where we will go monochrome by showing only one color for all segments in bar charts in descending order which is the best practice. The goal is to test whether users prefer unique colors for category or an abundance of colors. We believe there is always scope for improvements and are still experimenting with the design solutions using colors. Do keep a watch to see how the results impact what comes next, as we pursue that particular design? Following them will make our dashboards more useful and impactful. See how we used this solution to create fresh revenue streams for a business analytics initiative . “To quote Stephen Few: "If the information is worth displaying, it's worth displaying well".
- 6 Benefits To Design Documentation
You enter a design studio A troupe of Post-Its—in at least four different bright, neon colors—dances up a white wall, with each square's tail gently flapping to the breeze of a ceiling fan. On another wall is a giant whiteboard filled with intricate black and cyan doodles of circles and comic-strip characters, with large words seemingly lifted from a 1960s Batman fight scene. KA-POW. KER-SPLOOSH. BUH-BAM. "What is this?" You think. "How will this become my product?" Something on the whiteboard catches your eye. You move closer, letting a hint of solvent lingering from dry erase markers make its way to your olfactory receptors. It's you. A comic-strip form of you. Next to your likeness are the words you have so-passionately used to describe your new idea... Innovative. Helpful. Friendly. Panning your head further to the right, you begin to navigate a maze of doodles until you see it. There, on the next wall, are print-outs of phone and laptop screens of all sizes. Inside these screens are circles, rectangles, squares. Then you hear it in your ear. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. You feel it in your chest. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Lub-dub. Your heart. Your idea. It's beating. Meet design documentation. The heartbeat of a product—from the first spark of inspiration on a soda napkin all the way through launch... and into the future, with the product's evolution and all its iterations and features. Product design is a collaborative process between designers, clients and users. Design documentation fuels that collaboration, driving a project forward and leaving a story of product evolution in its wake. A story that includes: ideas and the user research behind them, as well as design decisions and the rationale behind them. Much like the benefits of having a healthy heart, great design documentation—when organized and clearly labeled—has wonderful benefits with its own ROI. At the start of a project, Design documentation is an exercise for discovering a project's focus During a project's discovery phase, it is hard to understand and hash out the design problems without any documentation. Take user personas, a thinking tool for pushing the design process along that sometimes is misperceived as fanciful. And yet, collaborating on persona documents is crucial to set the design process on the right course. Personas start with real data and research, which designers often have to solicit from the client. Through the creation of personas, a product's team gets to know and understand potential users on a deep, emotional level. In turn, personas allow designers to question assumptions about a product's requirements, not from their own perspective, but from the perspective of the ones who matter, the potential users. Thus, well-created personas complement the creation of user stories, as well as their mapping and prioritization. After user stories are created, we have a clear focus on the requirements for a project, defined in terms of needs and desires. Additionally, we have a good idea of whose needs and wants need to be prioritized, thus driving the project forward. Design documentation provides a vision for buy-in Once the initial direction is established, win project support by winning their hearts. Design documentation, focused clearly on people, is more persuasive than dry, technical documents simply listing out product specifications. During early stages of product development, you have an opportunity to use the power of design documentation to garner stakeholder support for a project's vision. One way to communicate the breadth and scope of that vision is with customer journey maps. A customer journey map will give stakeholders a clear sense of how users will use a product from beginning to end. While persona and user story documents can yield a wealth of details to last the length of a project, customer journey maps can crystallize the way that "personas" move through the "stories." To avoid the risk of making these maps seem like just a collection of steps, designers will often add other information to the journey. One possibility is to integrate information from empathy mapping into the journey. This means identifying which parts of the user's journey represent either pain points or successes. Given that most products require users to take on different roles and interact with others, many journey maps show how users' actions intersect in their journeys. These multi-user maps are sometimes organized into swimlane diagrams to clearly illustrate the system of connections required to keep a product alive in the real world. Design documentation keeps you engaged and happy When it comes to large projects, we've all been there. The product team is in the trenches coding towards a distant launch date. This is often the time when you and your colleagues are pressing for updates. Many design teams know this is the time to bring in the documentation. And the best design teams will take the responsibility to present organized documentation with visuals that dazzle and with explanations that are easy to understand. But it's hard for clients to resist asking for a fully-visualized, glossy, close-to-final version of their product, even at early stages when the customer journey has not been fully mapped. Wireframes can go a long way to explain what the product is supposed to be. However, these wireframes need to be clearly documented, or even better, made interactive. Interactive design, while frequently documented in user stories, is often taken for granted by stakeholders in favor of full-color mock-ups. But still images cannot document the abundance of states that one single screen can transform into as users interact with the product. Wireframes can easily supplant thousand-word e-mails, while also being much more manageable to update than mock-ups. While each color mock-up can tell a thousand words, an interactive wireframe uses more action words... in fact, it tells a story, providing proof of a product vision coming to life. Great design documentation clearly answers the "where did the money go" question on a UX project. Additionally, many marketing departments are looking to translate project successes into case studies , white papers and ebooks to demonstrate that the company is still paving the future for the industry. Contained within the documentation, user testing results and annotated wireframes is all the research for the technical writer to deliver a white paper draft. Conclusion: Make designers show you the benefits of documentation Beyond being the heartbeat that keeps your project moving and improving, design documentation is what you pay for in a project... And it's the responsibility of design teams to deliver. If you feel like design documentation is a lifeless add-on or supplement to a project, then your design team simply isn't using best practices. The movement towards Lean and Agile development philosophies means designers do their best to distill their documentation down to only the exercises and assets that fuel collaboration and drive a project forward. Designers should be using documentation to get your ideas integrated into the design process. During the process, they should use documentation to engage you, update you and track the story of your product's evolution. And next time you walk into a room full of neon Post-Its, you will recognize it as the kind of documentation that will bring your product into the world .
- 10 Customer-Centric Habits That Drive CX Improvements
Organizations that are future ready start with the end goal in mind and then consider bold moves to close the gap between business strategy and results (assumptions vs reality). Digital business requires organizations to adapt to customer demands and circumstances in real time and respond quickly to unexpected business events. To move towards this direction, organizations must be ready to translate habits of customer centricity into a new set of improved actions to get on the fast track. Best-In class organizations that exercise customer-centricity vouch for these common behaviors. 1. Listen continuously Customers provide businesses with information, both actively and passively. This information can be used to drive a successful CX. Several organizations use enterprise feedback management techniques to collect information. Surveys are sent out to customers and not much is done with the data. That's not really listening. Instead multiple forms of listening grouped under Voice of Customer (VOC) strategies must be utilized to provide a holistic view of what customers are telling and also what they are telling through their actions. We’ve seen this expand into social media listening, expand into searching to see what our customers are saying about our products and services. Are they talking about things that a product should do and is not doing? These are rather recommendations for improvements that we can pick from our customers. Listening needs to go beyond traditional surveys, beyond net promoter score survey and needs to go to a mode called observation, watching what people do with our product. 2. Follow up consistently Organizations with VOC programs collect feedback (direct or indirect) from multiple sources, customer perceptions and experiences and across all available touchpoints. Customer relationship is about reciprocal feedback and customers will stop reaching out if they feel their feedback is not being heard. It is critical for organizations to develop a way to enable continuous, active submission of customer opinions and to ensure the feedback loop works. Provide timely and relevant insights to help drive systematic CX improvements. 3. Proactively anticipate customer needs Being able to proactively anticipate customer needs requires organizations to dynamically explore business moments a.k.a. moments of truth as well as the inherent opportunities within the customer journey. It puts people at the center of all activity and helps customers to get what they need, when, where and how even if the customers are not sure of what they want. Create positive CX by identifying proactive actions based on situational needs. 4. Build customer empathy into processes & policies Empathy for the customer must be built into processes and policies right from the beginning. This demands focus on deep knowledge of the customer’s problems, proactivity in customer engagement, timely response to feedback, channel convenience for the customer all while being helpful, friendly and honest. Similarly, business rules must be defined with empathy in mind and the process owner must know how to translate that into a functional specification. So how do we develop a culture of customer-centricity? This is where we need leaders to lead, have metrics that drive behavior helping customers to guide them through the outcome they want. As far as policies and processes are concerned, we should start with metrics of the employees, then we need metrics around quality as well as metrics around satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy. Leaders, managers and metrics should guide employees to this behavior and make them feel empowered to guide the customers to what they want in order to make them happy. Culture is a success factor for customer experience. It can be built through consistency and metrics over time. 5. Respect customer privacy Customer-centric organizations have a habit of respecting customer data as much as they have a habit of using it to anticipate customer needs. This means not only adhering to regulations but also treating the data in a considerate manner by providing relevant assurances and security. How to get on the path of building or maintaining a proper sense of trust? Trust, privacy and behavior go hand in hand. Trust develops through consistent behavior in terms of delivery of service or the product itself. It is important to get a true understanding of the business value and business potential of the data for generating insights and growth. Privacy involves letting the customer know what we are doing with their data, how we are managing their data, being transparent about it and giving them control of it to make them decide how much they can trust. 6. Share knowledge internally and with customers Customer-centric organizations realize that knowledge flows both ways. Knowledge generated by organizations and customers should be shared as it improves efficiency, customer satisfaction and revenue growth. Customers want information that is relevant to them. The latest technology advancement on AI makes use of a blend of virtual customer assistants (VCAs) and human help in a seamless way to deliver knowledge in context of what a customer seeks. Improved transmission of contextual knowledge to an employee or customer reduces response time, raises competency and satisfaction. 7. Motivate employees to stay engaged High levels of employee engagement contribute to higher levels of customer satisfaction and brand advocacy while organizations enjoy higher productivity and improved retention. Focus motivational techniques around key areas like hiring, onboarding, recognition, training methods, tools and work environment leading to empowerment. In many ways, a culture of engaged employees is the essence of a customer-centric organization. 8. Systematically improve customer experience Establishing a compelling vision and developing a systematic approach to improvements leads to incremental increase in the maturity level of CX. To unleash its value creation power, CX organization must reach for and achieve increasing and evolving levels of CX maturity. Organizations can move from fragmented initial CX initiatives to cross cutting programs that touch every part of the business. 9. Create accountability for customer experience improvements It has been seen that responsibility for improving CX is spread across multiple departments/business units, sales, operations, marketing and planning. Coming up even with the best CX plan won't help if no one in the business is responsible for the execution. Some companies may not have the resources to designate a CX leader but that should not hinder from choosing a leader from among current managers. CX Metrics can be a part of the organization’s KPIs covering as many aspects of quality, satisfaction, loyalty and advocacy as possible to drive behavioral change. 10. Adapt to customer demands and circumstances in real time Being adaptive in real time means being situationally aware of what's going on with the customers and being able to tune the services and products in real time to help them get the outcome. Organizations must quickly react to unexpected business events, allow decision makers to immediately understand the state of business, use real time analytics to make real time decisions all while absorbing large volumes of data “on the move”. Organizations that are situationally aware using real time analytics of what the customer objective is; shaping the experience in real time are going to be the industry leaders of tomorrow. The path to becoming future ready is not necessarily linear. Applying a strategic approach to transforming the digital business through technology, processes and people is critical. This is where the customer-centric habits come into play where aspirations and capabilities need to be aligned with people/employee and customer needs.
- CX Trends Report: Keeping up with changing customer expectations
“The value of design lies in its ability to breathe life into the inanimate. It allows it to have a life beyond itself. A life that touches whoever comes in contact with it. It leaves a lasting impression. An impression that changes our expression for life.” Cheena Kaul, Co-Founder, Intelligaia This report has collated the advice and predictions of CX leaders to throw light on what they believe the future holds for organizations in this time of evolving customer behaviors and unprecedented shifts. Look out for-increasing investment in technologies designed to improve our experiences and earn our trust. Download CX Trends Report 1. The coming year will see brands competing primarily on Customer Experience. Deliver exceptional experiences that anticipate and predict customer sentiment and customer value. 2. Augment the workforce with Artificial Intelligence Include automation to enhance decision making and scale service excellence. 3. Immersive, hybrid experiences Integration with virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) will be a core feature of the metaverse.
- Copy of A Curated List of 3 Must-Listen Podcasts for Innovators and Thinkers.
1. Unthinkable with Jay Acunzo Jay Acunzo hosts a cool podcast called "Unthinkable." He chats about listening to your inner voice to make awesome, sometimes different, choices. Jay's worked at big places like Google and HubSpot and loves to share tales of people doing their own thing, which inspires us to think differently and be creative. What's super cool about it? There's this special set of episodes called Signature Stories. These are the stories that the people who made them are really proud of and that the listeners love the most. “You don’t find great stories, you build them!” - Jay Acunzo Some episodes you shouldn't miss Jay Baer, who wrote The Time To Win and six other business books. He talks about the importance of gathering stories from everyday life and how to shape these stories to share a cool lesson or idea. Listen Now ↗ And you don’t want to miss this one! Simone Stolzoff is the author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work . He started with poetry in school and has lots of thoughts on how to live a life that's not all about work. He gives tips on finding amazing stories, something that's super useful no matter what you like to do. Listen Now ↗ They also talk about how to find inspiration in the world around you to create new stories or projects. It's all about noticing the little things and turning them into something great. How Stories Happen - Launching Brand New Show (finding the inspiration to the world you actually experience) “Great stories happen to those who can tell them” - Ira Glass 2. Design Matters with Debbie Millman Debbie is super good at asking questions that make you think, and she knows a lot about art and design. It's been around for 19 years, making it one of the oldest shows talking about creative stuff. Debbie chats with artists and designers to find out what makes them tick and shares it with us. Why It Stands Out : Listening to Debbie has been an incredible journey of learning and inspiration for me. Her unique interviewing style, and conversations with guests have provided me with invaluable insights into the creative process and the realities of working in design and other creative fields. Key Episodes & Topics : Debbie’s conversation with Milton Glaser, the legendary graphic designer behind the "I ♥ NY" logo, from 2009 was a masterclass in understanding the power of design in shaping cultural conversations. I found this gem on the show website , and it's a must-listen that's not available on Apple Podcasts . Massimo’s philosophy of 'timeless design' reshaped my understanding of simplicity and functionality in creativity. Insights on the significance of discipline and the power of design systems have profoundly influenced my approach to design practice. Listen Now ↗ “And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both.” - Debbie Millman 3. Invisible Machines I've been listening to the Invisible Machines podcast lately, because Robb and Josh break down complex concepts like conversational AI and hyper automation into easily digestible insights. It has definitely made me more curious about the potential of these technologies! Why It Stands Out : Rob and Josh offer a panoramic view of tech integrated into our lives. I appreciate how they tie technologies back to real business problems and UX. e.g. Hyper Automation tools can automate onboarding new employees workflows. Collecting, managing data seamlessly, also triggering welcome emails, system access setup, and the most important scheduling orientations. Key Episodes & Topics: UX and AI, Context is Everything with Sarah Gibbons and Kate Moran of Nielsen Norman Group Interesting point discussed was the potential over-reliance on conversational UI. Sarah and Kate emphasized the importance of exploring the ways to interact with the text, for example, in the responses. They also touched on the concept of “Articulation Barrier.” This barrier points to the opportunity for UX designers to create systems that can understand and interpret a wide range of human inputs. Imagine you have a magic box that can do lots of different things - like a phone, camera, and game console all in one. Instead of switching between different boxes for different needs, you're using just one for everything. This makes you have to think about what you're doing with it more carefully because it's like playing different games using just one toy. This is context switching in simple words. Researchers are really interested in how you figure out which game you want to play with your magic box and how they can make it easier for you to switch between games without getting confused. Listen Now ↗ Don Norman, Author and Researcher Shifting towards humanity centered design from Human Centered Design. Key aspects of Humanity Centered Design Societal Impact, Sustainability, Ethical Considerations And Long-Term Thinking. After listening to the podcast, I believe the key arguments that Don emphasizes: intelligence is diverse, not necessarily a single quantifiable number. AI is good with pattern recognition, not so much with understanding. Education system should shift towards cooperation and teamwork through projects - that’s how things get done in real life. Most importantly, evolving tech is bringing systemic change, that creates an opportunity for panoramic design possibilities. Listen Now ↗ “The notion of productivity, trying to maximize productivity is actually minimizing it because what you try to do is get the most work out of each person permitted.” - Don Norman
- A Curated List of 3 Must-Listen Podcasts for Innovators and Thinkers
1. Unthinkable with Jay Acunzo Jay Acunzo hosts a cool podcast called "Unthinkable." He chats about listening to your inner voice to make awesome, sometimes different, choices. Jay's worked at big places like Google and HubSpot and loves to share tales of people doing their own thing, which inspires us to think differently and be creative. What's super cool about it? There's this special set of episodes called Signature Stories. These are the stories that the people who made them are really proud of and that the listeners love the most. “You don’t find great stories, you build them!” - Jay Acunzo Some episodes you shouldn't miss Jay Baer, who wrote The Time To Win and six other business books. He talks about the importance of gathering stories from everyday life and how to shape these stories to share a cool lesson or idea. Listen Now ↗ And you don’t want to miss this one! Simone Stolzoff is the author of The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work . He started with poetry in school and has lots of thoughts on how to live a life that's not all about work. He gives tips on finding amazing stories, something that's super useful no matter what you like to do. Listen Now ↗ They also talk about how to find inspiration in the world around you to create new stories or projects. It's all about noticing the little things and turning them into something great. How Stories Happen - Launching Brand New Show (finding the inspiration to the world you actually experience) “Great stories happen to those who can tell them” - Ira Glass 2. Design Matters with Debbie Millman Debbie is super good at asking questions that make you think, and she knows a lot about art and design. It's been around for 19 years, making it one of the oldest shows talking about creative stuff. Debbie chats with artists and designers to find out what makes them tick and shares it with us. Why It Stands Out : Listening to Debbie has been an incredible journey of learning and inspiration for me. Her unique interviewing style, and conversations with guests have provided me with invaluable insights into the creative process and the realities of working in design and other creative fields. Key Episodes & Topics : Debbie’s conversation with Milton Glaser, the legendary graphic designer behind the "I ♥ NY" logo, from 2009 was a masterclass in understanding the power of design in shaping cultural conversations. I found this gem on the show website , and it's a must-listen that's not available on Apple Podcasts . Massimo’s philosophy of 'timeless design' reshaped my understanding of simplicity and functionality in creativity. Insights on the significance of discipline and the power of design systems have profoundly influenced my approach to design practice. Listen Now ↗ “And remember, we can talk about making a difference, we can make a difference, or we can do both.” - Debbie Millman 3. Invisible Machines I've been listening to the Invisible Machines podcast lately, because Robb and Josh break down complex concepts like conversational AI and hyper automation into easily digestible insights. It has definitely made me more curious about the potential of these technologies! Why It Stands Out : Rob and Josh offer a panoramic view of tech integrated into our lives. I appreciate how they tie technologies back to real business problems and UX. e.g. Hyper Automation tools can automate onboarding new employees workflows. Collecting, managing data seamlessly, also triggering welcome emails, system access setup, and the most important scheduling orientations. Key Episodes & Topics: UX and AI, Context is Everything with Sarah Gibbons and Kate Moran of Nielsen Norman Group Interesting point discussed was the potential over-reliance on conversational UI. Sarah and Kate emphasized the importance of exploring the ways to interact with the text, for example, in the responses. They also touched on the concept of “Articulation Barrier.” This barrier points to the opportunity for UX designers to create systems that can understand and interpret a wide range of human inputs. Imagine you have a magic box that can do lots of different things - like a phone, camera, and game console all in one. Instead of switching between different boxes for different needs, you're using just one for everything. This makes you have to think about what you're doing with it more carefully because it's like playing different games using just one toy. This is context switching in simple words. Researchers are really interested in how you figure out which game you want to play with your magic box and how they can make it easier for you to switch between games without getting confused. Listen Now ↗ Don Norman, Author and Researcher Shifting towards humanity centered design from Human Centered Design. Key aspects of Humanity Centered Design Societal Impact, Sustainability, Ethical Considerations And Long-Term Thinking. After listening to the podcast, I believe the key arguments that Don emphasizes: intelligence is diverse, not necessarily a single quantifiable number. AI is good with pattern recognition, not so much with understanding. Education system should shift towards cooperation and teamwork through projects - that’s how things get done in real life. Most importantly, evolving tech is bringing systemic change, that creates an opportunity for panoramic design possibilities. Listen Now ↗ “The notion of productivity, trying to maximize productivity is actually minimizing it because what you try to do is get the most work out of each person permitted.” - Don Norman
- To err is human, to forgive design.
It just ghosted me. I was only trying to find a part of the information it was asking me to fill in while its clock was ticking and the information was obviously not stored neither on the mobile screen nor in my memory. So I had to go look for it and before I could come back to it, it ghosted me. It disappeared. Now my brain has logged this memory, forever, and whenever I come across even a mention of this particular service, it will surface the feelings. I need closure. Otherwise my memory will go on endlessly in a loop and keep reminding me of this task which was left not only undone, incomplete, but triggers self-doubt. In episodic memory information is indexed according to time and place. So it’s not only the memory of the event but also all the details around it. At each touchpoint, my mind is creating an association with the organization, the brand, the enterprise. It is surfacing feelings and emotions. I am either very happy with the interactions or frustrated. Those are the two pivotal emotions my mind anchors on as I go about my day. With every interaction, my mind forms a connection with the organization, its brand, and its overall identity. These experiences evoke emotions, ranging from immense satisfaction to frustration. These two contrasting emotions become the anchors for my daily experiences. An ideal software not only streamlines my work but also minimizes errors and enhances my overall user experience. I scrutinize every element of the interface, questioning its purpose and functionality. I prefer to relax in the comfort of my home, especially on chilly rainy days, and conveniently pay my bills or even purchase an electric car while savoring my evening masala chai. I find distractions unnecessary and unacceptable. I particularly dislike it when the software times out, causing me to lose my painstakingly entered data without any feedback or response. Such behavior leaves me feeling abandoned and frustrated. Do I need to have a distraction, of course not. Do I want it to time out? For whatever reason, I don’t want to lose the window that I have painstakingly offered to fill in all my data to get nothing in response. Nothing. No feedback? No message? How many times have you filled up a form only to find out that it had timed out or it will require you to call support to log back in? How does that feel? What would happen if you are unable to complete the process? Who else will be impacted, apart from you? Your personality is made up of how you think, act, and feel. It is your state of being. Joe Dispenza When something invokes cognitive ease, emotional engagement, and behavioral satisfaction , it is likely to be perceived as having a superior quality of goodness. This state of being tends to bring the goodness to the surface. Prioritize an intuitive and user-friendly interface to minimize confusion and effort, reflecting thoughtful design. Incorporate emotional design principles to create an engaging and enjoyable user experience, evoking positive emotions. Emphasize functionality by enabling users to accomplish tasks efficiently and effectively, ensuring a streamlined and productive workflow. Thinking (Cognitive Trust): Clarity: Users can easily understand the system's functionalities. Predictability: The software behaves in a consistent manner. Transparency: The operations and processes of the software are clear to the user. Feeling (Emotional Trust): Empathy: The software meets the emotional needs and expectations of the user. Personalization: The software responds to the user's preferences and past behavior. Comfort: The design and interactions make users feel secure and valued. Doing (Behavioral Reliability): Performance: The software consistently functions as expected without errors. Responsiveness: The software reacts promptly to user input. Accessibility: The software is usable by all individuals, regardless of ability. Investing in UX is also an essential guard against error. Poor design can lead to human errors. Human errors can lead to disastrous outcomes. Errors are not accidental; they are silent alarms that signal a design’s failure to communicate, urging us to reevaluate and reshape our approach to user experience. Somebody didn’t spend enough time thinking through the flow or how will it impact the people on the other side of the screen. For Minor Errors that have little impact on the user's goals, such as a minor formatting mistake: Provide subtle feedback and auto-correct if possible (e.g., auto-formatting a date). For Major Errors that significantly impact the user's goals but can be corrected, like entering incorrect data in a form field: Offer clear, specific feedback and suggestions for correction. Enable easy undo options or guided correction. (e.g., highlighting the incorrect field with instructions on how to fix it). For Critical Errors that prevent the completion of the user's goal and cannot be easily corrected, such as a failed transaction due to a system outage: Display a clear and empathetic error message. Provide alternative solutions or next steps, such as contacting support or trying again later. Ensure the user doesn't lose their work or progress if possible. Understanding the context and potential outcomes of errors is crucial in prioritizing efforts to enhance usability, ensuring that systems are robust enough to prevent the most critical errors while being forgiving of lesser ones. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/error-messages-scoring-rubric/ Rather than ghosting me, the UI could have frozen and asked if I wanted to continue or try again later. We've saved your information and will send you an email as a reminder to complete the task - this message could’ve saved the relationship. Cost of rectifying an error in a product’s development phase is 100 times less than fixing it after its launch. This statistic underlines the importance of integrating UX design early in the development process to identify and solve usability issues, thereby reducing errors and enhancing user satisfaction. The assertion that the cost of rectifying an error in a product's development phase is 100 times less than fixing it after its launch is based on a widely accepted principle in software development and product management known as the "Cost of Change" curve. This principle suggests that the cost of making changes or fixing errors increases exponentially as a product moves through its lifecycle, from conception through development, and into post-launch phases. This concept is rooted in several key factors: Early Detection: Errors detected early in the development process can often be addressed before they are deeply integrated into the product, requiring fewer changes in the code, design, or functionality. Less Rework: Fixing an issue before the product has been built out fully means less rework is required, as fewer components depend on the part of the product that needs to be changed. Impact on Users: Post-launch fixes often require patching, updating, or even recalling products, which can significantly impact user satisfaction and trust. These activities also typically incur additional costs in terms of support, communication, and potentially compensation for affected users. Brand and Reputation: Errors that are significant enough to be noticed post-launch can negatively affect a company's reputation and users' trust in the brand, potentially leading to lost sales and a decrease in user base, which can have long-term financial implications. While the "100 times less" figure can vary depending on the industry, the type of product, and the nature of the error, the underlying concept holds true across many contexts: identifying and fixing errors early in the development process is significantly less costly than doing so after a product has been launched. This principle underscores the importance of thorough planning, design, prototyping, testing, and quality assurance in product development to minimize post-launch issues and associated costs. A study by the Design Management Institute found that companies that prioritize design outperform their industry counterparts by 219% on the S&P Index over a ten-year period. Good UX design in enterprise applications contributes significantly to employee satisfaction, which is directly linked to higher retention rates and productivity. Forrester Research states that a well-conceived, frictionless UX design could potentially raise customer conversion rates up to 400%. Create experiences that understand and adapt to human nature, making every interaction smoother and more intuitive always aimed at ‘letting the goodness surface’. Six Effective error prevention strategies include: Conducting usability testing with real users to identify potential issues at each crucial stage of product design and development. Implementing intuitive design principles to minimize user confusion. Providing clear instructions and feedback to guide user actions. Simplify user flows to minimize the number of steps and decisions users need to make, reducing the likelihood of errors. Regularly collect and analyze user feedback to identify common errors and misunderstandings, using this information to refine the UX. Regularly updating systems to fix known issues and improve overall usability. When things are built well, they do not break apart. That’s how trust is built. That’s how goodness is felt.