Design

While video-based learning continues to rank high in the latest trends, there are a few points that are regularly overlooked in the production of learning videos, with a focus on user experience (UX) and user interaction 

People really enjoy watching videos. According to a survey conducted among consumers worldwide, respondents watched an average of 19 hours of online video content per week in 2022. And nearly half of all internet users watch online videos at least once a week.

The Challenge of Mandatory Learning
Once we had several mandatory learning courses designed to be passed successfully by all employees. Still, many of them struggled to do so. Reminder emails to all participants could not solve the issue. And that is when my team was summoned to develop a thorough plan to reduce the number of overdue courses to a minimum. Of course, we were asked to develop something fun and engaging.

Uncovering the Root Problems
While working on the project, we managed to uncover several problems with course assignments, including the fact that they were not offered just in time, there were too many of them, and all of them had different due dates, which made it impossible to remember when to complete them. Additionally, we found that the content itself was often dry and unengaging, further contributing to the lack of motivation among employees. Finally, we came up with a system of notifications that included clear explanatory reminder emails, an escalation system, and a redesign of the course content to make it more interactive and relevant to employees' daily work. The result was almost no overdue courses after system integration.

The Myth of Mandatory Fun
So the case first seemed to be about motivation and engagement, but it is actually about smart course design that allows people to worry about work tasks instead of worrying about course assignments. It's also about creating content that resonates with the learners and helps them see the value in the training.

My name is Vladimir, and I develop mobile front-end for Yandex Mail. Our apps have had a dark theme for a while, but it was incomplete: only the interface and plain emails were dark. Messages with custom formatting remained light and stood out against the dark interface, hurting our users’ eyes at night.

Today I'll tell you how we fixed this problem. You will learn about two simple techniques that didn't work for us and the method that finally did the trick — adaptive page recoloring. I'll also share some ideas about adapting images to a dark theme. To be fair, darkening pages with custom CSS is a rather peculiar task, but I believe some of you may find our experience helpful.

Introduction

Every single one of us gives presentations from time to time. What can be difficult about creating a couple of slides with great UI and nice content, right? Well… not really actually. In real life, things may get difficult.

You want to cover the whole topic and give as much information as fits on a slide. Then you go to Google to find some awesome pictures, and finally, cover it all with some fancy animation. And here is where things start falling apart: how do you balance all this stuff?

Take our helping hand, as we are here to show you how to create a presentation with both perfect user experience and user interface. Let's find out how to create perfect UI & UX design in a presentation.

My way

PVS-Studio has a mascot that became inseparable from the brand - a unicorn. Lately we've been getting many questions about our magic steed: why the unicorn, why has he changed so much, does he have hooves, how come he doesn't wear pants, and how do we draw him. The answers are finally here, in this very article.

Attention: there will be a lot of pictures. And I mean A LOT.

It feels like everything about LPs has already been said, however, I still keep seeing the same mistakes being made over and over again both by start-ups and established companies. Here are some tips, backed up by my 10-year experience as a UX/UI Director in agencies and product-led companies. These alone will give a nice increase in your conversion rate, I guarantee. 

Use a descriptive, not a salesy hero header 

Answer the questions “What?” and “For whom?” as early on the page as possible. A very common pattern is the largest copy being an inspirational abstract slogan and below it in smaller font the actual statement about what the product is and what it does. 

So, I finally found a moment to write a bit about how we created the water for TReload. Our basic goal was to flood all of the levels with acid - a lot of acid, as the flooded area is massive :) Here’s one of the results which we got out of this process:

Why do so many programmers hate UI work? Because it is tedious. Especially, for the Web, but other types of UI are only slightly easier. Layouts, margins, paddings — neverending stream of little tweaks to make it look OK on all sane environments, and somehow this freaking button sometimes overlaps that input field. Rrrr! And yes, it should not hang on button clicks, which means a lot of asynchronous programming, which is a nightmare.

And don’t even speak about aesthetics and usability! Choose right colours, element sizes and locations, find/draw images and put them where they fit, think about user workflows — isn’t it a designers’ or Ux specialists’ job?! Leave me alone, I’m a programmer. I work with backend layers, where everything is straightforward and linear, there are no buttloads of different environments to adjust to, and design is guided by mere logic without pesky fussing with ‘user friendliness’ and ’beauty’!

Getting a task from a client, UX designers tend to pay attention to the design goals, not the contents of the website/app itself. There’s something completely wrong with it because the visual part might be superb, but when it frames a vague or wordy message, the client's goals won’t be reached.

To avoid this, a UX designer should dive deeper into the content, analyze it, and restructure it in an interface-friendly way. It doesn’t mean doing the copywriter’s job, it means collaborating. The reality is that sometimes the writing team is used to praising the product (because clients like that), or there is no copywriter involved in the project at all.

Provide proof instead of opinion

An impression is more powerful when the customer can conclude the product’s benefits on their own. Instead of a colorful line of adjectives like “ultimate” or “leading” you should aim at what exactly makes the product that cool. The trick is to be precise, preferably with an example.

English translation of Philip Ranzim's post at his blog page here. (With author's permission)

Once upon a time, my girlfriend started using Instagram. She asked me to sign up for it and subscribe to it. I tried — I couldn't do it because you couldn't register at Instagram from a desktop computer. I then thought — how weird people are. Well, what kind of fool would make a software product that can't be used with a normal computer? They won't succeed, and this Instagram will be a marginal service for a bunch of strange women, who for some reason don't like desktops.

It has only been a few years, the market has put everything in place — and the biggest fool was me. And the geniuses at Instagram predicted how and where everything would develop. Today, most of the user applications are made primarily for mobile platforms. At best, they include a universal web client, which is still optimized for mobile phones. Because users love iPhones, not computers. Business people sat down, counted, and made a decision — let's make more money, let's have mobile First everywhere.

This article was originally posted at Product Identity.

What comes to your mind when you hear the word Telegram?

I wouldn’t be surprised if drugs, sex, or crypto are your first associations. Throughout the years, Telegram earned a shady reputation, perhaps not strategically, but for a “good” reason.

I feel like Telegram is a mystery. On the outside, it might be perceived as a platform designed for drug traffickers, crypto scammers, and sexual abusers.

I shared this feeling when I joined the early team of Bancor in 2016, as I also joined its internal group chat, needless to say, on Telegram.

However, the app was quickly removed from my list of stigmas. Instead, I started to appreciate Telegram for its well-crafted product and care for design. From its meticulous attention to small details to have a unique brand — it stands as a dogma of an opinionated product (and a company) in many aspects. In addition, it helped me recognize the benefits of separating my private and professional lives early on.

After using Telegram extensively over the past 7+ years, I feel the urge to write about it, but this time not in the spirit of its typical news headlines.

Every day a new neural network appears and every day more opportunities are opened to designers to simplify their workflow. Someone fundamentally refuses to use them, because “there is no life in machinex and technologies”, and someone is only happy to find a way to reduce the amount of work. Personally, I belong to the second type and want to share the most detailed gait on neurons I have acquired lately. 

You all know our mascot — a unicorn — many people grew fond of him! However, PVS-Studio has a supporting character who is also the antagonist of our product — a bug! Well, a bug is not omnipresent, indestructible evil. It's more like an everyday or a work-related trouble. In this article, you'll learn how we created a new character, and why he looks like a ladybug. Oh, and if you wonder why the hell he has a belly button — keep reading!