The post User Experience in the Automotive Design World appeared first on UX Blog.

Consider Their Age

The term ‘kid’ typically applies to someone who’s in grade school (but also younger than 12 or 13). So, the general range you’ll be working with will likely be ages 6-12.

Since children develop and learn so rapidly, these ages will need to be further segmented to ensure that your UX has the best design possible. For example, someone in kindergarten is going to have different interests and levels of comprehension than someone in the fourth grade.

Let’s take a look at what you can expect from two age ranges.

6 to 9 years Old

Children of these ages display a rapidly-growing vocabulary and are beginning to understand concepts and writing on a more complex level. Since they’re still so young, though, they’re often more interested in sounds, colors, symbols, etc. when browsing online.

10 to 12 Years Old

As these children progress toward the end of elementary school (and perhaps even enter middle school), their reading comprehension and level of basic understanding will progress even further. At this age, copy becomes more relevant as opposed to colors or symbols.

They’ll also be able to navigate through a website efficiently and are often familiarized with touchscreen, interface patterns, etc.

Designing The User Experience

Regardless of how old your audience is, there’s a handful of concepts that you’ll want to focus on when designing your website. It’s important to note, though, that the level of efficacy will often vary depending on your audience’s personality traits.

For example, those who are heavily interested in sports will likely respond in a different way than a child who is more introverted and has an interest in science fiction.

Let’s dive into what you should focus on.

Color Choice

Brushing up on basic color theory can go a long way in helping you choose the perfect color palette for your website. While it’s important to choose a set of colors that are aesthetically pleasing together, they should also embody the energy your brand seeks to deliver.

For example, let’s take the aforementioned child interested in sports (Child A) and one interest in science fiction (Child B).

A website that Child A might visit could be one of a coach who offers private training sessions for soccer. Given soccer’s quick pace and the lush colors one typically sees at a soccer field (green grass and blue sky), bright and energetic colors are more appropriate here.

This means hues like lime green, sky blue, and even reds/yellows/oranges.

Child B, on the other hand, may find themselves on a website for an online game or one that has content about books, movies, etc. of the genre.

These experiences come at a far slower pace than soccer (storytelling, reading in general, etc.), so your color palette should include things like navy blue, black, purple, and other colors that are naturally associated with calmness or darkness.

Functionality and Aesthetic Design

How easily your audience is able to use and navigate through your site is often correlated with how old they are.

As a general rule of thumb, you’ll want to incorporate less-complicated design choices when targeting children of a younger age. This means that children aged 6 to 9 will likely be overwhelmed by an abundance of links, large chunks of copy, etc.

Rather than links, clickable buttons are a great way to help a younger child find their way around your site’s layout.

By contrast, older kids are more likely to read copy, click links, and have an overall easier time going through your site’s pages. They’re still unlikely, though, to read anything related to how your company functions.

This means pages that discuss your mission statement or your company’s background should be kept separate from the content you want your audience to focus on.

In terms of aesthetics, a minimalist approach should be taken in order to eliminate any distractions. Removing unnecessary fluff and having a streamlined layout will go a long way when it comes to user experience.

The Text

Younger children will respond much better to short sentences with larger text as opposed to the formatting you’d find on a typical web page. Those on the upper end of your audience’s age range likely won’t have issues with reading regular copy.

Incorporating pictures, though, (especially as a method to supplement a difficult concept) is a reliable strategy no matter how old your audience is. As you may expect, younger children will often respond better to more images vs. text.

Your vocabulary and sentence complexity should also coincide with your audience’s age, as it can be very easier for a younger child to feel lost or an older child to feel as though your site is ‘too easy’ for them.

Creating ‘How-To’ sections on your site’s pages is also a reliable way to ensure your audience doesn’t run into any issues. Things like downloading, printing, or uploading are often difficult for those who haven’t done them before.

Optimizing User Experience For Kids on Your Site Can Seem Difficult

But it doesn’t have to be.

With the above information about user experience for kids in mind, you’ll be well on your way toward ensuring your younger users are able to find everything they need.

The post Designing a User Experience for Kids appeared first on UX Blog.

With us moving quickly away from cheesy wallpapers and comic sans, coming up with new designs consistently can be difficult. We all need inspiration from time to time, so we’d like to give you the UX design sites that will inspire you to make the next great website!

1. Pinterest

It may be cliche, but Pinterest is where a lot of creative people have flocked to for inspiration. There are seemingly endless ideas being posted constantly on Pinterest for UX design.

There are several areas on Pinterest dedicated to the art, in fact, which makes it extremely easy to navigate and find what you want. The more people pin and follow, the more ideas will come up daily for you to springboard into your next project.

Visit Pinterest

2. Dribbble

Dribbble is a place where professionals post their design ideas and it’s free to look through them! They have a great sorting system, so you can look for the type of user experience you want to provide it.

Dribbble promises high quality and they ensure everything on their site is by making it so that only people who are approved by Dribbble can upload their ideas. You can always apply to be a content creator for them, or you can just scroll through and take in the sights.

Visit Dribbble

3. Mobbin

Mobbin is a more specialized market for UX design. They only focus on the mobile market and more specifically the IOS market. Being so niche though gives them the leg up when it comes to other sites. They draw in great designers for IOS specifically!

Granted, this doesn’t mean you can’t have amazing ideas for any mobile platform here. Mobbin lets you look through existing and custom-designed mobile user experiences. Sometimes the best ideas come from looking at the old to find the new.

Visit Mobbin

4. Behence

This UX design inspiration site doesn’t just focus on websites. It displays photography, illustrations, and much more! It is said that designers can find inspiration from anywhere, and Behence has a lot of inspiration to give.

If you need your breath taken away, browse around Behance a bit, and you can guarantee to find something that’s one of a kind.

Visit Behance

5. Uplabs

From Cryptocurrency to cats, Uplabs has a large library of ideas for IOS, Android, and your standard websites. They have a handy subscription option also which lets you download as much premium content as you want from their site.

The premium subscription will set you back $8.50 per month, but it could save you money in the long run if you’re loving this site as much as other UX designers do!

Visit Uplabs

6. Awwwards

Awwwards has a different way of finding the best of the best. They have a competition that anyone can submit a website for to win an award from their site. They also display a website of the day, month and year.

This means that new sites are being posted daily, and they are the best of the best. The sites that are on Awwwards are simply amazing. They have a scoring system for each site that’s been submitted, and it means that only the best sites in the world are featured here.

Visit Awwwards

7. Pttrns

Pttrns feels a bit more like a site that you would buy 1990’s computer parts from, but don’t worry, they have a lot of great ideas in their database!

They have a lot of designs to sort through, and you could spend all-day on this site finding great ideas. They are limited to phone UX design, but they aren’t a bad place to go for that extra bit of motivation.

Visit Pttrns

8. Lapa.Ninja

Lapa.Ninja is probably the most comprehensive site when it comes to UX design that we’ve brought up. They have classes on how to design, they have websites to go to make you a better designer, and they have beautiful designs to choose from.

They have a free and a paid section for design but feel free to take in the sites on lapa.ninja. You can click through and get a full array of every piece of the designs they offer.

Visit Lapa.Ninja

9. Sitesee

Sitesee is another site with great designs, but they are unique in that they have their own browser extension. What the extension will do is provide you UX design ideas on your home page every time you log in!

This means that every time to open up your browser to do work, inspiration is just waiting for you. It will change your home page background frequently to keep the creative juices flowing, and they have a vast library if you want to do something more manual.

Visit Sitesee

10. OnePageLove

OnePageLove has a one of a kind demoing system where you can look through a test site with their designs implemented. They want to ensure that you love it before you buy it, and they have succeeded.

With their professional team of reviewers, the quality of each UX design on this site is top-notch. Whether it’s apps or websites, check out OnePageLove for some astonishing content.

Visit One Page Love

UX Design for the Future

Since we are on the cutting edge of technology and moving forward at lightning speed, we need constant ideas. These ten sites are the best we’ve found for great ideas that are moving the industry of UX design forward.

The post Top 10 UX Design Inspiration Sites to Follow in 2020 appeared first on UX Blog.

In order to optimize the user experience on your site, you’re going to need to know where your visitors spend their time. Otherwise, you may find yourself doubling down on a segment of your site nobody interacts with and miss other opportunities for growth.

Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s take a look at everything you need to know about using heat maps to optimize UX.

So… What Is a Heatmap?

The term ‘heat’ may seem like an odd one to use in digital marketing, but it’s more relevant than many people may first expect. More specifically, heat refers to an area of concentration within a data visualization, or graphic representation of your site’s metrics.

For example, let’s assume that you’d like to learn more about where your audience spends their time on one of your site’s highest-ranking pages. A heat map will display areas of your page that your audience often interacts with as ‘hotter.’

Conversely, segments of your page that have little activity will be shown as ‘cooler.’

In general, there are three different metrics that heat maps measure:

1. Mouse movement
2. Scrolling
3. Clicking

Through each of these user behaviors, you’ll be able to obtain a solid idea of how your audience spends their time on your site’s pages and where they tend to gravitate toward.

What Utility Do Heatmaps Provide?

With the above data, you’ll be able to answer specific questions that you may have about your website and audience. For example, you may wonder how many people actually read to the end of your blog posts, or what type of content/links they click on the most often.

Let’s dive into what else you can learn.

CTA Performance

Since the majority of calls to action are either a link or a clickable button, it’s relatively easy to find out which ones are the most effective through a heat map.

If your page has multiple CTAs, you’ll also see which types are the most popular. If the design is consistent among your CTAs, you’ll learn which tagline leads to the most clicks.

For example, you may be researching your CTA to pre-order a pair of running shoes that your company manufactures and discover ‘Get Your Pair’ outperforms ‘Pre-Order Now.’

This will help you make changes to other areas of your site and increase your performance in the future.

Design + Layout

Sometimes, an aesthetically-pleasing design may actually be a detriment. A heat map could show you that people spend much of their time looking at (or even saving) the images on your site as opposed to reading your content.

Similarly, you could also learn that certain elements are skipped over entirely (such as drop-down menus). While it’s always a good idea to optimize user experience, you don’t want to sacrifice your conversion rate in the process.

If you decide to get help from a professional regarding your site’s design, a heat map will also allow you to easily communicate problem areas and help optimize its appearance and layout in the future.

Scroll Depth

How far people scroll often has a direct correlation with the action they’re willing to take. In many cases, they may not even reach your CTA if they don’t scroll down far enough.

A heat map will clearly display how frequently users scroll on a particular page. Keep in mind, though, that anything above the fold (the segment of the page that’s visible without having to scroll at all) will show a high level of activity.

But, just because they reach this part of the page doesn’t mean that they’re reading or interacting with the content that’s readily available. So, you’ll need to research your audience’s mouse movement and clicks along with this information.

If you find that the majority of your audience stops scrolling after a certain point, be sure to place your CTA in a location people are likely to see before they navigate away from your page.

Misclicks

Sometimes, people may click aspects of your page thinking they’re links (or simply clickable in general). Upon discovering these elements aren’t able to be interacted with, they may avoid clicking on others that are.

From here, you’ll have the opportunity to add links to areas where people generally click. Similarly, you can manipulate certain elements to make them seem less clickable.

Underlined text, for example, often gives the impression that it’s a link to somewhere else. Simple fixes like this can help keep users focused.

Reasons Behind Your Bounce Rate

A bounce rate is a metric that describes users who visit your site and leave shortly after. If you combine your heat map data with the average time people spent on your site before leaving, you’ll be able to discern what elements led to them making this decision.

This is especially useful for pages that have a significant amount of traffic but don’t lead to as many conversions as they should.

The post Using Heatmaps to Learn Your Users’ Behavior and Improve Their Experience appeared first on UX Blog.

However, advancing technology often leaves the elderly behind. Fewer seniors can get on board with the latest innovations. It’s time to adapt our technology for elderly users — they can make up a large percentage of your audience, after all!

Not sure where to start? Take a moment to study your website. Web design is one of the first corners to improve and we’ve got 6 crucial tips for you to follow:

Adjusting for Text Size

Keep in mind that a lot of the factors discussed below relate to failing vision. This is because eyesight is one of the first abilities humans lose with age. People can expect problems as early as the age of 40, such as difficulty reading small print.

The problem with technology for elderly people is that font size often gets neglected. It’s easy to forget about their difficulties and simply use a 12 point font size because it’s the industry standard.

You can use that same font size but make sure you add the option to increase the text size. Allow elderly visitors on your website to reach a 32 or even 36 point font size if it helps them read your content. Instead of scaring them away with tiny text, give them the freedom to make it bigger and bolder to fit their failing vision.

Color Variation Matters

Your choice of colors matters too, not only for seniors but for people who are color blind too. Everything might look neat and pretty to you but to a senior, they might experience difficulty distinguishing some text from the background.

Take a moment to use tools on sites like WebAIM or Color.a11y to test how your site currently performs.

Don’t stick with a “one colorblind solution for all” because there are multiple types of color blindness. Instead, feature a color slider or at least different color viewing modes to give elderly and color blind people more options.

Videos and Text-To-Speech

Did you know most elderly people prefer to watch the news instead of reading it? This goes back to the issue of vision complications that come with aging. As people get older, their vision weakens and reading becomes more of a chore than a delight.

Workaround this by including videos on your website. If you can, feature both a video and its written version on the same page, similar to how IGN.com does with their movie reviews. This gives the elderly the option to enlarge the text and read, if they so choose, or to simply watch the video.

Don’t stop with videos.

You might have seniors with almost no vision capabilities visiting your website. How can they enjoy your videos if they can’t see the content? The perfect solution is to include text-to-speech.

Clicking and Tapping

While the number of seniors using smartphones increased in the past few years, a large percentage still relies on tablets instead. It makes a lot of sense when you stop to think about it.

Don’t forget that as people age, their motor skills decrease, making it difficult to use something as basic as a mouse or a tiny smartphone screen. Tablets have a larger screen, which makes it easier to read the text and also easier to click or tap onto interactive elements such as buttons or links.

Take advantage of this information!

First off, make sure everything they can tap or click on is big enough and spaced far enough from other interactive elements. It can get extremely frustrating for a senior to tap the screen only to realize they hit the button beside the one they intended to tap. They might quit instead of going back to the previous page.

The common recommendation is to ensure interactive buttons are at least 11 mm diagonally and 2 mm apart from each other. That said, make sure buttons and links can scale up along with the font. This guarantees elderly people can make them bigger to suit their individual needs.

Even Easier Navigation

It shouldn’t take more than three clicks to get to any page on your site. If it does, seniors might get lost navigating through the pages and give up.

Also, don’t assume that older people automatically understand the “language,” so to speak, of navigating a website. Younger folks might identify the hamburger icon as the button to access the menu but older people might not. If you can, include text to ensure seniors don’t get lost in translation.

Do you want one of the best examples of easy navigation? Check out the website for MAC Cosmetics. The few picture symbols they use are easy to identify, such as the mail icon for new subscriptions.

Test Technology for Elderly Users

Believe it or not, one of the best websites fit for elderly use is Amazon. It stumbles a little bit in terms of navigation but the web design and its use of text-to-speech and clear distinction between text and elements help it stand out from the rest.

Of course, you can’t copy Amazon inch-per-inch.

The solution is to constantly test your web design. If possible, invite two to three groups of seniors and have each group navigate through different design drafts. Discover which of the two or three drafts clicks with them.

Make sure to include a questionnaire or survey. Find out what elements of the web design they liked, which parts they encountered difficulties and their suggestions to improve the UX and UI.

The post Designing a User Experience for Older People appeared first on UX Blog.

User experience prioritizes making life easier for your customers. By improving your website for UX, you’re making it easier for customers to find what they’re looking for. That quick, easy experience will stay in their minds, which benefits your brand’s reputation.

A negative experience, on the other hand, could cause you to lose customers forever. In fact, 88% of online shoppers won’t return to a site after a bad experience.

Don’t risk losing customers. Instead, keep reading for the five website UX improvements you can make to strengthen user satisfaction and keep them coming back for more.

1. Speed It Up

According to Google, 53% of mobile site visitors will leave if a page takes longer than three seconds to load. Meanwhile, the probability of a bounce increases 123% as page load time increases from one to 10 seconds.

In other words, you could end up losing customers if your pages aren’t loading quickly.

The first step to improving your website UX is to speed up your load times. Otherwise, people will bounce, which will cause your search engine ranking to drop.

People expect pages to load quickly. Make sure your site is optimized for mobile devices as well. Otherwise, you’re scaring off a big piece of your website traffic.

Speeding up your site will make it easier to use and explore.

Then, people will stay on your page longer and find what they’re looking for.

2. Leave Breathing Space

A page that’s stuffed with content can feel overwhelming. Instead, give your content breathing space. White space will give your website a clean, elegant look.

You can also use white space and minimalistic design trends to improve the visitor’s website user experience.

White space makes it easier for people to explore your content. You can also use space to guide people from one piece of information to the next. Ultimately, you can guide them to a form, allowing you to convert visitors into customers.

3. Add Search

Make it easy for people to find what they’re looking for. Start by adding a search field to your website. Keep it at the top of the page so it’s easy to find.

If people can’t find what they’re looking for, they’ll leave!

4. Improve Readability

Make sure to structure your page content as well. Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Shorten sentences
• Use bulleted lists
• Don’t underline words that aren’t links
• Make sure the font type and size are easy to read
• Use black text on white backgrounds
• Keep paragraphs short (one to three sentences)

You can also use website headings design to break large pieces of information apart.

5. Declutter

Remove any website element you don’t need. Instead, focus on engaging your visitors and conveying important information. Decluttering unessential elements will give you more space for your buttons, forms, and other lead generators.

Awesome UX: 5 Essential Tips to Drastically Improve Website UX

By taking the time to improve your website UX, you can keep visitors on the page and exploring your content. Then, you can turn those visitors into sales! Grow your business with these five tips for better UX design.

The post 5 Tips to Drastically Improve Your Website UX appeared first on UX Blog.