4 ms·

As a UX designer I have seen a lot of this stuff over the years and I always find it funny. DesignerNews.com, which is an imitation of this site, is chock full

by vogt 9y ago

As a UX designer I have seen a lot of this stuff over the years and I always find it funny. DesignerNews.com, which is an imitation of this site, is chock full of articles like this. The big thing to understand is a lot of people in The Blogosphere(TM) who post articles about UX don't really give a rip about anything other than the pageviews whether it's for ad revenue, establishing themselves as a thought leader, or trying to market their company. Even worse, there are some people who don't even ACTUALLY know much about UX, they just want to post an article about it to spread around LinkedIn and seem relevant by harping about the importance of UX, etc. Having said all that, if you sift through all the garbage there are some great resources. Some of the big players in the space tend to do it well. InVision's blog, for example. UXPin are pretty good. There are lots of little ones like UXPowerTools' content marketing emails that are starting to do a good job as well. At this point as someone who is always trying to improve as a UX designer, I have become accustomed to vetting the 100:1 ratio of garbage articles to bad ones.

jtraffic 9y ago
This should have been obvious, I guess, but when I read your comment it felt like a revelation. Suddenly, so many articles make sense. It reminds me of the inconsistency inherent in most books about how to beat the market.
cturhan 9y ago
I saw it was like designernews.co and I was about to ask how it's that imitation of this site. I agree about these "UX Sites" doesn't present good UX. NNGroup website[1] does its job great since they are pioneer on user experience and usability. They frequently publish articles about how all these pop-ups, modals etc effects the usability. https://www.nngroup.com/ https://www.nngroup.com/
- vogt 9y ago
  I just mean imitation in it's simplest of forms, which is to say, some creator saw HN and thought it would be good to do a design-focused version. The idea itself is good, it's just a lot of junk gets posted there. I still visit it. Some improvements would make it much better.
cgriswald 9y ago
I literally know nothing about UX, but I have to say a visit to UXPin's website instantly turned me off. First, they put this great big demand for my email front and center when I barely even know what their site is (and a single line explaining it is not enough to get me to sign up). The entire website is covered over with "modal grey" with no X box or anything else showing me I can close it, just some links at the top that are not obviously clickable because of the grey modal. Turns out it isn't a modal at all you can just scroll down (no indication of that) and that the small links are clickable. Once I was past that, it was fine and dandy, but if I were actually interested in being a customer rather than a curious person trying to figure out what I was missing, I probably would have just left.
- y4mi 9y ago
  my impression was even worse. why does a company about design utilize a default bootstrap theme? unless they're all about integrating bootstrap for customers...
- vogt 9y ago
  Yeah, the product isn't great. To the point about UX blogs though, theirs is pretty solid https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/ https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/. It isn't bogged down by social sharing widgets, scroll jacking, or pop ups (last I checked)
  - unexistance 9y ago
    besides the floating header that eats-up my precious vertical screen real-estate, the blog content seems great... thanks for the link
tmaly 9y ago
Have you ever considered putting together a newsletter of the weekly best posts across all that you follow? I would definitely subscribe.
- vogt 9y ago
  I actually did exactly this for a while and gave up on it. I had about ~150 subscribers after 12 weeks. Here is a sample: http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8f8&id=b13d36ca40&e=bc74c8393d http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8... It took a lot more effort/diligence than I had figured it would to keep all the links straight and add what I thought was helpful narrative context. I wasn't having much fun or seeing a whole lot of support, so I stopped.

by vogt 9y ago

jtraffic 9y ago

This should have been obvious, I guess, but when I read your comment it felt like a revelation. Suddenly, so many articles make sense. It reminds me of the inconsistency inherent in most books about how to beat the market.

cturhan 9y ago

I saw it was like designernews.co and I was about to ask how it's that imitation of this site. I agree about these "UX Sites" doesn't present good UX. NNGroup website[1] does its job great since they are pioneer on user experience and usability. They frequently publish articles about how all these pop-ups, modals etc effects the usability. https://www.nngroup.com/ https://www.nngroup.com/

vogt 9y ago
I just mean imitation in it's simplest of forms, which is to say, some creator saw HN and thought it would be good to do a design-focused version. The idea itself is good, it's just a lot of junk gets posted there. I still visit it. Some improvements would make it much better.

cgriswald 9y ago

I literally know nothing about UX, but I have to say a visit to UXPin's website instantly turned me off. First, they put this great big demand for my email front and center when I barely even know what their site is (and a single line explaining it is not enough to get me to sign up). The entire website is covered over with "modal grey" with no X box or anything else showing me I can close it, just some links at the top that are not obviously clickable because of the grey modal. Turns out it isn't a modal at all you can just scroll down (no indication of that) and that the small links are clickable. Once I was past that, it was fine and dandy, but if I were actually interested in being a customer rather than a curious person trying to figure out what I was missing, I probably would have just left.

y4mi 9y ago
my impression was even worse. why does a company about design utilize a default bootstrap theme? unless they're all about integrating bootstrap for customers...
vogt 9y ago
Yeah, the product isn't great. To the point about UX blogs though, theirs is pretty solid https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/ https://www.uxpin.com/studio/blog/. It isn't bogged down by social sharing widgets, scroll jacking, or pop ups (last I checked)
- unexistance 9y ago
  besides the floating header that eats-up my precious vertical screen real-estate, the blog content seems great... thanks for the link

tmaly 9y ago

Have you ever considered putting together a newsletter of the weekly best posts across all that you follow? I would definitely subscribe.

vogt 9y ago
I actually did exactly this for a while and gave up on it. I had about ~150 subscribers after 12 weeks. Here is a sample: http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8f8&id=b13d36ca40&e=bc74c8393d http://us13.campaign-archive1.com/?u=9d0a3aa098b89309c0b66b8... It took a lot more effort/diligence than I had figured it would to keep all the links straight and add what I thought was helpful narrative context. I wasn't having much fun or seeing a whole lot of support, so I stopped.