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Writes - Ryan Yao - DSC

Sharing what I see in the world


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Writes - Ryan Yao - DSC © 2021


11/21/2021 A REDESIGN LAUNCH FAILED?

By Ryan Yao — Nov 22, 2021

A huge redesign of my company's public-facing product just launched. We got
quite a few feedback from field ops that it causes some confusion to our
customers, and our testing volume has dropped. It was honestly scary to hear
that. I panicked a bit because I was the one who created the redesign. I really
didn't want to face the reality that my design failed.

We quickly released a few quick fixes to clear away some of the confusion and it
seemed to be working better. However, I still don't know if the confusion was
because my design was bad; or because we didn't do a good job communicating with
field ops before releasing; or because we only launched about half of the
redesign, the other half is still in work. And as for a startup built for the
pandemic, we never got a chance to implement a great system to track how well a
new design is performing. We are working on it, but for now, we are just going
to work in the dark for a bit.

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WHY WHITE LOOKS BIGGER THAN BLACK — THE IRRADIATION ILLUSION

Why white looks bigger than black — The irradiation illusion
If you ever designed a logo, you probably had to test it both on a white and
dark background. It’s good practice, since you want the logo…
UX CollectiveGonçalo Dias


I noticed this a lot after I started using Dark Reader. Sometimes texts just
look bolder when it's in dark mode. Now finally I got an explanation on why this
happens. My short dirty sum up is that it's about how much the light energy each
colour reflects to our eyes. White objects on black background reflect more
light and our brains are more sensitive to the higher contrast. So the object
looks bigger. It's funny how our brain works. As designers, we should always
achieve optical balance, rather than numerical.




WHAT IF PHONES WERE ACTUALLY DESIGNED FOR HANDS?

What If Phones Were Actually Designed for Hands? - Christopher Butler

Christopher Butler⚐ Christopher Butler is a designer living in Durham, NC.


Phones are all starting to look the same. Similar glasses panel, similar size,
similar metal frame. (I know we have foldable phones now, but let's just go with
this first). People enjoy looking at them, so they will buy them. Once companies
figure out people buy them, they are not gonna go out of their way to try things
differently. After all, profit is the most important thing in capitalism. That
reminds me of design, are we designing things just because we know it will work?
Are we actually trying out of our way to innovate? At the same time, would it be
bad to bring more familiar designs if they are working? After all, many parts of
the world are still far behind in terms of design.




HOW DESIGNERS CAN PREVENT USER ERRORS

How Designers Can Prevent User Errors
There are lots of practical ways designers can help users avoid mistakes.
Jordan BowmanJordan Bowman


User errors can never be eliminated, but there are many ways to prevent them and
make them less costly. This article lays out many useful principles to help with
user errors. They seem simple, but implementing those principles and doing user
testing could improve the overall UX of the product.

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