Alex Harriss

🎉 new blogpost alert My Favourite Design Systems https://lnkd.in/ex3Mwciq as I ease myself (finally) back into writing - here's a quick post on my all time favourite Design System doc sites

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Linkedinians! Whilst I’m organising my next big freelance thing I will likely have scope to pick up a few bits and pieces of work here and there. Preference for people I’ve worked with before, and I’m likely to have up to a month starting Monday 13th (ominous) - so if your website needs a bit of loving hit me up! Services: Consultancy - if your website isn’t performing how you’d like it to or if you have other issues or merely want a second opinion, I can do this :) Development - Need a super slick app-like web experience creating from your designs? I’m ex-agency and used to delivering high quality microsites at speed Team building - Probably not going to have enough time for this one but I love growing front end tech teams and working with others to build solid development foundations. Common tech I specialise in: NextJS, React, HTML, CSS, (Type|Java)script. Less common tech I specialise in: Canvas, using images/video in presentation layer, web audio, SVG and some SVG animation Tech I specialise in whilst holding my nose: Wordpress, Drupal, AEM. If you’re a recruiter contacting me about freelance work, please be aware I’m Architect/Principal engineer level and not particularly interested in the gruntwork. Also please include hour/day rate in your info. If you do not, I will assume you’re after the cheapest people, not the best people. (Because the algorithms love video, here’s a screen capture of something fun I built one of my favourite clients ;))

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Do you know why UK Startups Are Investing in Professional UI/UX Audits? Picture this: I have launched a product. I’ve built it, and marketed it, but something’s off. Users aren’t engaging the way I hoped. Is it my idea? My marketing? What is it? For many startups, the answer lies in the UI/UX. Sometimes, it’s not the design but how users experience it. A professional audit is like a health check for a website or app. Experts analyze the user journey, identify friction points, and highlight areas causing frustration or confusion. Why UI/UX is a game-changer for startups like mine? 1. User Retention: An audit reveals what’s working and what’s not, ensuring we don’t lose potential customers due to poor design choices. 2. Boost Conversion Rates: Small changes, like simplifying navigation or optimizing buttons, can drastically improve conversion rates. 3. Stay Competitive: A polished, seamless user experience often decides whether users choose us or the competition. Investing in a UI/UX audit doesn’t just improve the product, it shows customers that we care about their experience. If you're looking for a comprehensive UI/UX audit, UIUX.STUDIO is here to help. We provide in-depth evaluations to enhance your user experience and design efficiency. Book a call with us: https://lnkd.in/dtE-2mwD Visit our website: https://uiux.studio/ #UIUX #CustomerExperience

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Here's my token AI post for the quarter. I try to keep these to a minimum because there's enough noise on this subject. I remember a time when people thought A/B testing would make #UX redundant. Funnily enough, those folk worked in A/B testing. Nowadays, people who actually understand the subject, realise that carrying out UX research is a must-have part of a successful experimentation programme. It strikes me that we're going through a similar worry with AI. Let's say you had 2 teams: 1. Is told to use AI to run their UX research. None of them have time to observe or listen to the research first-hand. Instead AI runs 100s of sessions with real users and then processes the findings into a summary for the team to consume. 2. Has no access to AI. They're not allowed to even write reports about their findings, Instead they talk to and observe just a handful of users with each question they're trying to dig into. But they get to do this regularly. If I had to bet on which of the 2 teams came out with the best design/product work, I'd go with 2. This is because the reports and summaries provide only a fraction of the understanding that comes from having been there when it happened. After a while, the extra learning that comes from the additional participants tends to be minimal, you start being able to predict what people are going to say because you can see the patterns. Being there is where most of the understanding comes from. But a Team 3 which has capacity to do both, might do even better work. Prediction: Once all the BS has died down, some teams will be using AI to extend and improve their research and others will be doing crappy research with AI. But those in the latter group are currently doing crappy research without it anyway.

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Running free events at moment is a logistical PITA, because no-show rates HIGH. Over 50% from my informal poll of other event organisers. I'm running free, high-value entrepreneur workshops in Cardiff (https://lnkd.in/eq3DDEc6), & trying to find ways to reduce dropout rates. New method is to offer free lunch. This comes with added cost (these are gov funded events, but attendance rates matter, so I'm justifying expense). 36hrs ago I emailed 11 people booked on to Monday's workshop, asking for dietary requirements by return. How many have replied? ONE. So, with a food order needing to be placed later today, what do I do? Provide lunch for one person, & the rest can go hungry? Or take a risk, & randomly order 11 lunches, and hope for the best, knowing that at least some of the food and money will be completely wasted. I've considered "charge, & then refund if you attend" model, but it's grey area whether I'm allowed to under this grant. They're meant to be free workshops. Any other ideas about how I can encourage attendance? I've had one person who's booked & no-showed on 3 separate occasions (albeit before I was providing free lunches). Infuriating.

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We have lots of Cake Design Studio courses news. • Pathway offer with code #UserNeeds. • Training for teams discount. • New writing for web short course! Find out more on cakedesign.studio #Content #ContentDesign #UserCentredDesign #UserResearch #ContentManagement #WebEditing #WritingForWeb

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During the last part of this year, I've been doing a lot of accessibility work, including a number of audits. As the working year comes to an end I've reflected a little on what I've witnessed. • We make unnecessarily complicated stuff. Many issues with both usability and accessibility wouldn't exist if we just made things simple. I mean this from both a design viewpoint and an engineering viewpoint. • Accessible doesn't automatically mean usable. A website can be 100% accessible (according to standards), but still be something that isn't really usable and is a terrible experience for everyone. Accessibility doesn't mean the thing you have created is the right thing for the task in hand. • It's way too easy to be visual and ignore, or discard, the textual. Many aspects of accessibility (and usability!) are about text. Text that can be seen, and text that can't be seen but is essential. Every time you review or sign off on a design that's not in its end context (Hello Figma!), you're almost certainly skipping essential text-based content or relationships. And don't get me started on icon-buttons..! • If designers had an understanding for code, developers wouldn't end up implementing as much... nonsense. No, I'm not demanding designers should be creating production code. But designers who have a good understanding of frontend code (ie HTML and CSS) will produce much better (cheaper, more effective, sustainable, accessible) designs, and be a better partner to their engineering colleagues. • Dynamic web pages and SPAs are a challenge for [all reasons] Good grief, pages that get updated dynamically and web apps are very often badly implemented from an accessibility viewpoint. Once you decide to give up on the traditional concept of a web page and do everything "on page" you taking on a huge responsibility to make sure it is accessible. That decision is made at the design stage. • We designing by default for light mode and large mobiles. We need to be designing for both light and dark mode from the start. Every time. We also need to design "reflow first". Making sure our designs always work when really zoomed in (which is effectively the same as a tiny screen). I'll be writing more about "reflow first" in the new year, and "dark mode" will be the topic of the first episode of the new series of UX Podcast (out at the beginning of next year).

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I recently spoke with FLUX about my career journey and product design leadership. Kristie Craft was a stellar interviewer, which helped me articulate a few things that I've been noodling on over the last little while... 👽 After years of struggling with impostor syndrome, it was when I chose to be brave and have the audacity that the best opportunities came. It's not easy, but it starts with the core belief that you are deserving of your dreams. 👀 The prerequisite of being a great designer is curiosity. Get curious about an aspect of craft, process, leadership, or business and dig like you're doing a deep dive on the hand in the IG story your crush just posted. 🏀 Put in your 10,000 hours. Practice makes perfect, the cliche is true. Whatever part of your skillset you're trying to grow, be patient and put in time — before you know it, you'll be an MVP. 📣 Great communication is a hallmark of a great leader. Great communication and feedback is clear, succinct, and aligned to the business. 🖼 Visual design craft excellence is a hot topic in product design lately. I have a love for graphic design, where I started my career. I just got this book, Sun Ra: Art on Saturn, a collection of sketches and album art Sun Ra created for his works. Very different than what most PDs are looking at every day, which is precisely why I recommend it. Look for inspiration outside of a screen. Check out the full interview and let me know what you think.

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My break wasn’t really a break because we had our biggest December ever. So now in January and with the team coming back on board for a new year I’ll be finding some space for myself. We had record sales, and the stuff we’ve been preparing for all year happened. Our Anti-fraud software for WooCommerce exploded with 176% income growth in December YoY and we started bursting at the seams a little bit. This is a mature product. While I have my own separate political thoughts, from a business perspective the injection of business confidence that the Trump result has had is immediate and clear in our sales. Like, next day kind of clear. It wasn’t the new feature we launched yesterday that catapulted this. It was because of what we did the past 12 months that made it happen. Now we enter new territory with this software, where what worked in the past 12 months does not work for the next 12 months. In fact we need an almost completely different approach to this next phase of growth and, so yeah, no holiday for me. As with any new big changes, I need to be there at the start to ensure the direction is set well. After that, I can back off and let the team do their thing.

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Google releases their new feature to Google Meets: 'Whose watching me? 👀' - Now you can see who's looking at you on a Google Meet call - get HR involved if they stare too long! Satirical Screens | 07 #uxdesign #uidesign #productdesign #satiricalscreens #productdesigner #uxdesigner #uidesigner #productdesigner #Google #Googlemeets #Zoom #Slack #MicrosoftTeams

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You know, most UX design doesn't fall this far off the rails when it's handed over to the Developers, but sometimes 🤦‍♂️ Sign Up Page Fail ❌ Auto-generated user name ❌ Rigid password restriction ❌ Weird DoB ❌ Slider vs check box ❌ T&C fail UX design is about making things easier for the user. Sadly, this one fails in every way possible. Full video here cause I love her reaction: https://lnkd.in/gu2_bY9t Synergy Design Branding + Design + UX + Web

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What did Threads get right? Seems like a slightly janky experience to me so far as a very low limit on post character length, however… What I do love is this visual usability feature. Here you can see not only does it give the typical useless technical information about how many characters you’ve exceeded by - almost 1,200 whoops! But it highlights the exact human information you need, which is what, exactly is over the limit. So while they have a dumb character limit, they display it in a really good, actionable way. LinkedIn are you listening?

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A sensible business person wouldn’t go to a networking event to hide in the loneliest corner of the room and stay silent; instead, they would introduce themselves to other attendees and do their best to make a lasting positive impression. The same goes for your brand and how it presents itself on social media. Optimize your content on platforms like LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook to introduce your brand to new audiences and make a positive impression that builds trust and loyalty. If you’re wondering where to start, check out these three effective brand awareness campaign examples: https://gag.gl/IRZyyc

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Went to the BAD CONFERENCE part of Product Design Week London #pdw24 and here's what I learnt.. 🏕️ Anarchist squats in Amsterdam use similar democratic systems as UX research and can in fact lead to a career heading up UX cybersecurity at JP Morgan. Nice, keep it weird 🦉 Nazima Kadir, PhD ✨ Digital mindfulness is a relatively new space with most apps failing to truly help us, but watch this space in digital well-being intervention Rachel Marie Walker 💬 Motivational interviewing can help us go deeper behind the why and get to the heart of a problem. For example, when conducting user interviews don't just ask how important something is from 0-10, also ask why they picked that number and not a lower number. Helping you go deeper Anna Zsófia Csontos 🎓 Dr Gilbreath, one of the first female engineers to get a PhD, while raising 12 children, yes 12!! Her most notable work in time and motion studies revolutionised how we measured productivity today. Thanks for the history lesson Robert Youmans 🔥 And one for the content nerds! Top 4 principles for influential e-commerce content: (1) Think like a shopper (2) Create strong bridges from social (3) Make content embody a brand's essence (4) Infuse the brand's best editorial. Awesome, actionable advice Candice Pires Thanks for having us Tech Circus Product Design Week here's a pic of us clearly having lots of fun Jess Carver 🫶🏼 #behaviouraldesign #uxdesign #uxresearch

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We got our first website accessibility audit in quite a while done recently. It's important not to be daunted by the report you get back – we are thoroughly working through it to make the improvements needed. We're trying to design and develop things in a robust way, and a nice bonus was some big recently shipped work had no known issues. It just shows that when you build accessibility in from the start it makes a huge impact. #accessibility

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Notice on Target's Product Page how the first dropdown accordion is automatically opened up. A couple of merchants have asked me to set something like this up for them, and I think it's very useful as it immediately shows the customer important information without them having to click on the arrow, keeping them engaged. Also, with just a bit of JS, it's very easy to set up.

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We've recently released significant updates to our internal request form, which any Wriker can use to request design team support. By combining the power of Wrike with a deep understanding of usability, the form is now easier and simpler for our stakeholders, better aligned with business objectives, and more transparent for the design team, highlighting the key details of project briefs. Business process improvement is one of my passions. This passion started back when I was a Creative Director at Sffera Advertising Agency. Leading a talented team, I wanted to focus their efforts on creative work rather than sifting through emails, messengers, and other channels to find brief details. I initiated the implementation of a work management platform, which later enabled the team to keep all important details in one place and significantly improved their productivity. Later, at Qiwi, I encountered similar challenges. The workflows were so scattered that I took the initiative to update the system by implementing Jira and several useful automations. This streamlined the team’s tasks, eliminating most distractions and making the work process clear and smooth. Now, at Wrike, at the heart of Work Management Effectiveness, I love exploring the platform's potential to make even more changes to streamline business processes at every level.

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I had a great time at Sheffield DM last night. Thanks to everyone who came to see me talk about why accessibility is so important. There were some great conversations afterwards from many people. It’s really positive that many took onboard what I spoke about and were eager to take it into account in their own work. As promised, here are some excellent resources that will help you create more accessible content... Alternative text helps people who can’t see images understand what they depict. This is important so that context and meaning of content isn’t lost. There’s a lot of articles and guides out there for writing good alt text for images. Craig Abbott's ‘How to write good alt text for screen readers’ is one of the best I’ve read: https://lnkd.in/e93mmwSk Adding subtitles/captions to video content is important for ensuring everyone can perceive what is being said. I recommend checking out Meryl Evans, CPACC (deaf)’s excellent guide on making them accessible to all: https://lnkd.in/eHfqMtBt Good colour contrast between your text and its background are crucial for users with low-vision, colour blindness and aging eyesight. There are lots of excellent tools for checking colour combinations. Personally I use WebAIM’s Contrast Checker: https://lnkd.in/eWegN2kN Regardless of your role within the digital industries, we all have a part to play in making things more accessible. Vox Media have publicly published their own checklist for ensuring their content is accessible to all: https://lnkd.in/esV5tSQC #a11y #accessibility #SheffieldDM

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