Today’s UX News roundup brings us some great pieces from great UXers. Let’s dive right in!
Jason Lengstorf is batting leadoff with a great piece on bridging the gap between User Experience and Developer experience.
In early 2013, less than 14% of all web traffic came from mobile devices; today, that number has grown to 53%. In other parts of the world the difference is even more staggering: in African countries, more than 64% of web traffic is from mobile devices; in India, nearly 78% of traffic is mobile. This is a big deal, because all 248 million new internet users in 2017 lived outside the United States.
And while internet connections are getting faster, there are still dozens of countries that access the web at speeds of less than 2 Mbps. Even in developed nations, people on mobile devices see spotty coverage, flaky wifi connections, and coverage interruptions (like train tunnels or country roads).
This means we can no longer talk about user experience (UX) without including performance as a first-class requirement. A Google study found that 53% of mobile users abandon a page if it takes longer than three seconds to load—and none of us are willing to lose half our traffic, right?
You can read the full piece on alistapart.com.
Figuring out how to approach user testing is always vexxing, but UserTesting Blog has our back, which is great UX news!
One question that we often hear from customers is which is better: moderated or unmoderated usability testing? The answer, as you might’ve guessed, is that it depends. Like any research strategy, there are differing benefits for each approach making them more or less suitable depending on what you’re studying and your ultimate research goals.
Check out the full article on usertestingblog.com.
In other UX news, UXMastery is hosting a 100-day sketching challenge, and we couldn’t be happier about it!
It’s a great way to get into working on the visual side of your mind. Here’s the concept behind the challenge:
Rather than reinventing the wheel we’re going to follow Krisztina Szerovay’s awesome 100 days of Visual Library Building structure. The idea is that we develop (or hone) our sketching skills, build a fantastic UX visual library that we can utilise in our future work, and have some fun. Krisztina lists a whole lot more benefits in her Medium article.
You can read more about the challenge or jump right in over at uxmastery.com.
