UXmatters has published 16 articles on the topic Front-End Development.
Unfortunately, in the field of user experience, people often confuse terms like information architecture, interaction design, visual design, usability engineering, and UX design. In some cases, people use these terms almost interchangeably. This article provides a lexicon of these terms and more clearly defines the role of the user experience designer.
Information architecture (IA) focuses on the organization of data—that is, how data is structured from a user’s perspective, as opposed to the system, or technical, perspective.
At the level of an entire Web site, or application, information architecture determines what data is on each page and how pages relate to each other. For example, defining a site map is an IA activity. At the level of an individual page layout, information architecture ensures that data is logically grouped and interrelated. Read More
“Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”—Steve Jobs
With the emergence of Node-based technologies such as React and Angular have come new opportunities for both UX designers and developers to leverage design systems to enhance their application user experiences. This article aims to help those of you who are weighing the advantages and disadvantages of using design systems and component libraries for your application.
Consider the scenario of a Web application that is being designed using a Material Design style, which could be built to specifications for one device, serving one operation, or could perform significantly differently under other conditions, in another context. When you consider the variances in how user interactions function, the value of leveraging a design system starts to pay returns as front-end development teams build out component libraries at scale, yet performance teams may also find variances in the user experience that are worth researching. Read More
With this article, we’re introducing our new column—Breakthrough Application Design—Designing game-changing experiences. In this column, we’ll discuss innovative approaches to application design that are based on our personal experience in the trenches.
How can it be that so many digital products fail deliver any inspiration when so many technology and digital media companies spend millions of dollars on design and user experience? Merely following user-centered design (UCD) practices by the book is not sufficient to create truly transformative digital products. In fact, despite UX teams’ following UCD processes, the digital product industry confronts this alarming paradox: More and more UX teams claim to follow user-centered processes, yet most digital products are mediocre or even substandard. And things won’t get easier. As interactions progress from clicks to taps and other gestures, traditional UCD processes will face even greater challenges. In this installment of our column, we suggest that one of the reasons for poor design execution is that UX teams need to own more than just design. We need to own front-end development. In fact, we argue that front-end development has always been more strongly aligned with design than with development. Read More