The Usability Testing Playbook As an employee and a freelancer, I’ve seen plenty of brands fall prey to a shiny object syndrome where they want to build a feature they saw a competitor launch or simply thought was a good idea. Then, they build that idea without knowing if their audience needs or wants it — they skip usability testing. “In many companies, if the leading competitor has this feature and we think it’s a good idea, validation is done. It never works,” shares author and product leader Itamar Gilad. “You should not assume that your competitor actually knows what they are doing any more than you do. I always ask, ‘Where is your evidence?’” Usability testing is a way for your company to test and validate new ideas and features with evidence. In this post, I’ll cover what usability testing is, the main types of usability tests, and how to run a usability test — even without a big research team or budget. Table of Contents What is usability testing? Benefits of Usability Testing When to Do Usability Testing What to Test for Usability Testing Usability Testing Examples & Case Studies Types of Usability Tests How to Conduct a Usability Test 15 Usability Testing Questions Usability Testing vs. User Research User research, also known as UX research, is a broad field that...

The Top 12 Paid & Free Alternatives to Adobe Illustrator of 2023 Adobe Illustrator is a popular tool for designing vector graphics, logos, icons, and more. But when you’re a web or graphic designer with a small budget, you probably can’t afford Adobe Illustrator’s steep $239.88/yr pricing and want a cheaper or free alternative. Luckily, there are plenty of top-notch free and low-cost options on the market, some of which offer features unparalleled by Illustrator. In this post, we’re sharing the top twelve alternatives to Adobe Illustrator so you can produce beautiful designs on a budget. If you’re shopping for a program that offers features comparable in quality to Adobe’s product, check out our list of the top free alternatives to Illustrator. Best Free Adobe Illustrator Alternatives 1. Inkscape Image Source Best for: Pro and semi-pro illustrators and web designers Platform: Mac, Windows, Linux One of the most comparable substitutes to Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape has plenty of similar sketching, illustrating, and editing tools, including keys to move and rotate by screen pixels, bitmap tracing, color painting over objects, and edit gradients with handles. You can create complex textures and gradients in Inkscape, too. Unlike some free tools, this tool allows layering, grouping, and locking objects so you can completely customize the look and feel of a project while maintaining a streamlined workflow. Inkscape is a quality product for pro- or semi-pro web designers working within SVG file format. It also offers an open source vector graphics...

9 Breadcrumb Tips to Make Your Site Easier to Navigate In the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel, two children drop breadcrumbs in the woods to find their way home. Nowadays, you probably don't experience too many lost-in-the-wood experiences, but I'm willing to bet you've felt disoriented on a poorly designed website. In web design, breadcrumb navigation is a way to show your users their location and how they got there. Like Hansel’s breadcrumbs, it helps users retrace their path and see where they are in the greater scheme of your site. While you can style breadcrumbs however you'd like, they tend to look the same across websites that use them. Here's a simple example of breadcrumbs from the HubSpot Knowledge Base: Jakob Nielsen, co-founder of the acclaimed Nielsen Norman Group, has been recommending breadcrumb navigation since 1995, and makes a strong point for their usefulness and efficiency: "All that breadcrumbs do is make it easier for users to move around the site, assuming its content and overall structure make sense. That's sufficient contribution for something that takes up only one line in the design." If your business's website is multi-layered, you might consider implementing breadcrumb navigation to make your site easier to navigate. However, like any design element, there's a right and wrong way of doing it. Here, we'll explore nine tips and examples to ensure you're creating the most effective breadcrumb navigation for your users. Breadcrumb Navigation Tips and Examples 1. Only use breadcrumb navigation...

The 10 Best Storyboarding Software of 2021 for Any Budget Today, video can help marketers do a lot of things — it can help you explain your product or service, it can increase traffic to your website, and it can even convince people to purchase a product. 94% of people watch explainer videos to learn about a product or service. Even if you have a powerful written content strategy, if you don’t use video, you’re losing traffic to more video-heavy competitors. Your business is probably already using video marketing, but are you planning your videos for optimal success using storyboarding software? Or are you drawing shots by hands or writing a script and winging the rest? In this post, we’ll go over what storyboarding is and cover some of the best storyboarding tools you can use to make better marketing videos. Storyboarding isn’t just for filmmakers and animators. Marketers can leverage storyboards to craft engaging marketing campaigns and advertisements. The best part is that you don’t have to do it manually. A storyboarding software tool typically provides premade images and characters for you to bring your idea to life. Whether you use video for training, sales, or demo purposes, storyboarding can alleviate the time-consuming nature of video preparation, while also increasing your video’s overall quality and decreasing production errors. If you’re looking for a tool to take your video production process to the next level, take a look at our list of the best storyboarding software out there —...

The Ultimate Guide to Designing for the User Experience Think about a website or app you love. What do you love about it? The ease of gathering relevant information? How you can buy something in one click (and have it delivered tomorrow)? Or how quickly it answers your questions? Now think about the people who created that website. What was their goal? They were trying to create a site that had the features you love about it — a site that is easy to use, effectively delivers the information you need, and allows you to make smart decisions tailored to your challenges or concerns. UX, or user experience, focuses on the end user’s overall experience, including their perceptions, emotions, and responses to a company’s product, system, or service. UX is defined by criteria including: ease of use, accessibility, and convenience. The concept of UX is most often talked about in terms of tech, such as smartphones, computers, software, and websites. This is why UX is not only a fairly new field, but also a variable one — it changes quickly due to technology advancements, new types of interactions, and user preferences. It’s no secret that customers today want quick and simple ways to meet their needs and solve their pain points. That’s why UX matters so much. Whether or not you’re in tech, the company you own or work for most likely has a website. Well, customers could write you off in a matter of seconds if they don’t find...

It’s the Little Things: How To Write Microcopy Earlier today, I visited Yelp to order lunch. What I always really liked about the site is how easy it is to navigate. If I were accessing the website for the first time, I wouldn't have any worries about how to use it to my benefit. Have you ever visited a website and noticed small phrases of text that guide you to your goal? Or, when you make an online purchase, is there text on the web page that lets you know your payment information is secure? That text is called microcopy, and it's a wonderful tool for UX. For instance, let's say I was visiting Yelp for the first time today, without knowing what the website's purpose was. I wouldn't have to worry because the microcopy helps fill in that confusion. Image Source In the search bar, the microcopy tells me the types of things I could search, and where I can set my location. "Burgers, barbers, spas, handymen…" are all examples of what I can find using the site, which is super helpful for a first-time user. Additionally, the location settings tell me I could search for businesses near me or elsewhere. So when I move in a couple of weeks, I won't have to wait until I arrive to search for restaurants near my new place. It's likely you've interacted with microcopy before and it gave you useful information, like how to search for something and...