Yesterday, I shared my 50th blog post! I’ve been blogging for a long time, beginning with Xanga and LiveJournal in my middle school days. It wasn’t until this blog, however, that I was strongly motivated to keep it as up to date as possible with articles and anything else that I want to share with you. If you’ve been reading, thank you. It hasn’t even been six months but looking back on my first entry, I see that I’ve come a long way. Let’s check back when I publish my 100th entry. Anyway, here is your weekly batch of articles that I found worth sharing.
1. 5 Psychology-Based Methods to Connect With Your Audience
By Melissa Chu from Entrepreneur
In this article, Melissa explains each of the points clearly and provides excellent examples that further convinced me that psychology in business can yield powerful results. As a UX designer, I love these points because knowing how people think and behave helps me create products that add value to their lives. I’m especially a huge fan of using stories to emotionally connect with people because that’s what makes audiences care. It’s becoming more important for businesses to stand out and connect with their users so focusing on human psychology is definitely a great way to approach that.
2. How to cold email a VIP (and actually get a response)
By Ramit Sathi from I Will Teach You To Be Rich
Ramit’s website is a gold mine of information on starting a business, finding a dream job and getting your finances in order. I’m glad this article was published last week because this is something I have wanted to do but didn’t have the courage. Not only does Ramit provide detail steps on how to write to VIPs but delivers the information in an encouraging tone. His psychology-based approach helps me understand exactly how certain sentences trigger certain reactions. What an excellent read!
3. Google Has A Solution For The UX Design Education Gap: Google
By Diana Budds from Co.Design
I was having a discussion with several people on the state of UX design education and how the market is overpopulated with bootcamp and crash courses. I considered participating in one myself but quickly learned that three months (the average length of these courses) is nowhere near enough to learn what needs to be learned. This article provides a potential solution for the state of UX education and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes. I would even love for universities that offer humanities focuses to integrate UX and design because that intersect is becoming increasingly important.
4. How to Design with and for Executives
By Margaret Kelsy from InVision Blog
This is a great topic that should be covered more on design blogs. My goal as a designer is to immerse myself in the business enough to incorporate those values in the work I do. Margaret stresses the importance of speaking the executives’ language and creating personas to understand things from their perspectives. There is also an hour long webinar (this article was a summary of the talk) and Uday Gajendar, a San Francisco based Principal UX Designer, shares valuable tips on bringing designers and executives to the same table.
5. Experience Design Essentials: Animated Microinteractions In Mobile Apps
By Nick Babich from Smashing Magazine
Scrolling through the visuals was such a delightful experience. I love the emphasis on paying attention to details and how they can make the designs that much more magical for users. Nick goes back to several heuristics developed by Jakob Nielson and shows readers why each of these animated microinteractions are not just cute and fun touches to the interface but instead, they are integral parts of the design that makes the experience powerful and memorable.
6. The importance of being humbly confident: Learning to own your mistakes in your UX career
By Leigh Gamon from UX Mastery
As I continue to learn about user experience, I’m eager to make mistakes and continue to learn from them. Someone shared with me that part of being a UX practitioner is exercising humility and I think that when designers open themselves up and learn from their own mistakes, they’re able to grow. Although it is crucial to make mistakes and own up to them, the ultimate takeaway from this piece is that UX designers still need to be confident about the decisions they make.
Since last week, New York City has been experiencing a disgusting heat wave. I don’t mind it much since Southeast Asia’s weather was much worse. But I am sick of sweating and am desperately looking forward to the fall weather (I say that all the time, I know). There are people on my Twitter feed talking about beating the end-of-summer blues and I’m like blues?! I’m so delighted that summer is almost over because fall is my favorite season. One more month of summer to go! In the meantime, please make sure that you’re well-hydrated and staying cool.
Cheers,
Riri
