Week 5
Abstract Our learning objectives for the week are:
Post 3: UX Prototype - Navigation
After going through the full application flow design, It looked like my key navigation would consist of the following sections:
Home
My Events (event index)
Message centre
Find a player (search)
Account/Settings
As my product is a native app, I don't need to concern myself with URL structure. But I may need to do this if I decide to make my app web-based and may explore that after solidifying my interface design.
Post 2: Onboarding
Onboarding is the process that describes the journey a user undertakes when they sign up or start engaging with your product. It's a critical time in the customer journey, and generally, it gives us a chance to inform customers about our product's benefits and features.
Many different types of onboarding can be used, depending on what point of the experience you're onboarded. The main ones are:
Benefit-focused: The core benefits of the product are explored and how you can achieve them via the site/product/app.
Function-focused: The site/product/app's core functions are explored and how you can use them.
Doing-focused: The user is taken through the first or most common actions/features of the site/product/app.
Account-focused: The user is taken through account/profile creation, including finding and adding friends or interests.
Multi-layered: For complex sites/products/apps, it may be necessary to combine all four based on user type and functions beyond.
In 2010, Twitter redesigned its sign-up process to boost new user engagement by 29% using gradual engagement (Wroblewski, 2010).
Gradual engagement is the process of moving a user through an application or service. Allowing to engaging with the product and seeing it's benefits. With gradual engagement, registration is either postponed or handled behind the scenes. The first time experience is focused on understanding how they can use the service and why they should care about it.
When done right, gradual engagement communicates the essence of the service with a few lightweight interactions.
Gradual engagement is the onboarding technique that I have decided to use within my app as it the one that creates the least barriers to entry. I don't need to save anything against a users profile immediately, and it allows people to explore the full product before asking them to register. Registration is only triggered when users want to interact with other users and create events.
I'll allow Social single sign-on as it has many benefits (Paddick, 2016). Using existing login information from social network providers like Facebook, Twitter, and Google, instead of creating a new account specifically for my product simplifies registrations and logins for end users.
The social network provider is in charge of verifying the user's email. If the provider shares this information, you will get a real email address rather than the fake addresses that some users typically use to register in web applications. Additionally, the providers will handle the password recovery process. Social network providers can also provide additional information about users, such as location, interests, birthday, and more. With this data, we can target personalised content to the user. Users tend to keep their social profiles updated.
Therefore, having Social Login will ensure we have accurate information about our users. Social Login also provides a One-click return experience. If our app is deleted after a user has registered, their return experience will be very simple, and just one click will be enough to log back into the application.
References
Wroblewski, L. (2010). Gradual Engagement Boosts Twitter Sign-Ups by 29%. [online] www.lukew.com. Available at: https://www.lukew.com/ff/entry.asp?1128.
Paddick, R. (2016). Advantages of social login. [online] Education Technology. Available at: https://edtechnology.co.uk/latest-news/advantages-of-social-login/ [Accessed 9 Mar. 2021].
Post 1: Information Architecture
Information Architecture is more than just menus; it’s more about the organisation of content clearly and logically. We all know how important it is to produce content that users will find valuable, but it is also equally important to make content findable. Either through SEO, site exploration, via content and of course navigation.
There are three components of information architecture (Abby Covert, 2013):
Ontology
Taxonomy
Choreography
Ontology within UX is the development of a system for referring to the same things, the same way. For instance, we might refer to 'Football' as 'Soccer', setting the name and term to describe this content category or content type on our site. 'Articles' might be referred to as 'Stories' and 'Books' referred to as 'Publications'. This controlled vocabulary becomes a foundational element of our content organisation, user interface, standard navigation on every page, and a product's file and directory structure.
Taxonomy is the science and practice of classification. A taxonomy is a hierarchical organisation of content categories in information architecture, using a specific, carefully designed set of descriptive terms.
Choreography is about behaviours and relationships between all the pieces of the IA. It's about which parts go together, what they do, and how they fit in with everything else. In Information Anxiety (Richard Saul Wurman, 1989), Wurman asserts that there are five fundamental ways to organise information:
Category - by the similarity of characteristics or relatedness of the items.
Time - by timeline or history, where elements are presented in a sequential, step-by-step manner.
Location - by spatial or geographic location, most often used for orientation and direction.
Alphabetic - based on the initial letter of the names of items.
Continuum - by the quantity of a measured variable over a range, such as a price, score, size, or weight.
In conclusion Information architecture (IA) is a core part of a user experience. Good IA considerably impacts user opinion. The faster a user can get to their final destination, the greater their satisfaction. Efficient IA helps users navigate through content and find everything they need without causing friction.
With good information architecture in place, a user's primary benefits are met.
References
Abby Covert (2013). Lessons from an Ontology Nerd. [online] Slideshare. Available at: https://www.slideshare.net/AbbyCovert/lessons-from-an-ontology-nerd/5 [Accessed 10 Mar. 2021].
P Morville and Rosenfeld, L. (2007). Information architecture for the World Wide Web, 3rd ed. Sebastopol, Calif: O’reilly.
Richard Saul Wurman (1989). Information anxiety is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand ... New York: Doubleday.
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