Our latest articles and thought pieces.
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We took time out to chat with Sudipt Shah, our CEO and co-founder, as well as Doaa Badran, one of our talented UX researchers ahead of Digital of Things launch in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Hereʼs everything they had to say about what the future holds as the business branches out…
We chatted with Rana Mansour, learning how she started in UX, where she sees the industry heading and her advice for budding UX Designers. Take a read…
We sat down with Elvina Shagvaleyeva to learn about her career background in Kazakhstan and the cultural differences she’s experienced since moving to Dubai.
We spoke to our Senior UX researcher Doaa Badran about writing questions for a discussion guide. Here’s what she thinks is the key to effective UX research.
The hot topic right now is ChatGPT, but it comes with a few drawbacks. We compared its capabilities to a human by asking it to write a usability testing discussion guide. Who will come out better?
Biases that our end-users may have & how this may affect our research or the way our outcome is perceived.
We’re empowering researchers, designers and more to access MENA's first and only remote user testing and research platform in the region, enabling brands to access thousands of local and regional testers and run research studies in Arabic and English.
Whether you’re creating a website, app, or other digital experience, there’s a variety of different factors to take into account – one of the most important being UX writing. Writefully explores the impact UX writing has on businesses and how well-designed digital products can transform your brand.
For those who have never heard the term “MVP”, it stands for Minimum Viable Product and it’s simply the first workable version of a business idea.
Whenever you or your team are moving into a certain degree of uncertainty it is advisable to do it in a safe way by running experiments or launching MVPs instead of a full product proposition.
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The recipe to delivering an incredible food delivery app. With a huge convenience culture in the UAE and a relatively young population from all over the world, with one of the highest smartphone penetrations, it's no wonder customers are demanding seamless, efficient experiences from brands. This, coupled with the pandemic, has given rise to many on-demand apps in the last few years, especially in the food delivery sector.
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When the year 2020 began, it was looking like a promising year for digital growth. We never anticipated that it will be a year of digital boom.
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Welcome to the last part of the series where I've taken you on trips to galaxies far far away in the Star Wars universe. The fictional characters you’ve met along the way serve as a reference to resonate with as we unveiled the dark forces of UX that exist in our world.
While chatbots are relatively new, you might not know them as you do today without Alan Turing’s famous Turing Test, established way back in 1950. If you’re not familiar with the Turing Test, it’s a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour comparable to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. With its creation, Alan Turing unknowingly established the foundation for chatbots. Cool right?
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In the first part of this series, I discussed what the three types of dark patterns are (click here if you have yet to read part 1). As the first post in this series was fittingly released on Star Wars day, I used the Star Wars storyline as a reference which will continue throughout the remainder of the series.
I personally love the Star Wars films for it’s creativity and storyline and decided to use it as a reference in this upcoming 3 part series which will explain and outline the existing dark patterns in the UX industry and give guidelines on how to overcome and/or avoid these dark forces.
As designers and researchers, we fight our biases each day at work to be more efficient and effective in our approach to research and design. It’s important to ensure that the way data is collected along with the data itself is not impaired by an ignorance of cognitive biases, in order to provide meaningful value to our clients and customers. Being ‘blissfully unaware’ is no longer an excuse when it comes to conducting interviews and asking questions.
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Eye-tracking and eye-tracking studies have been commercially used since the late 1990s, but it’s origins can be traced back to the 1800’s when ophthalmologists conducted various studies on how humans read and interpret text.
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Having punched above its weight to emerge as the region’s tourism and financial hub, Dubai aims to diversify its economy further and establish itself as the GCC’s center for innovation.
Throughout the region digital accessibility is changing year after year. As accessibility gains in popularity, many challenges are brought to light on the existing ‘accessibility condition’ here in the region.
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2019 has been a good year here at Digital of Things. We had over 400 participants get involved in different forms of user research at our lab in Dubai. Based on that data, we uncovered many useful insights – but one aspect caught our eye – which was that regionally, people are hungry for digitalisation, but the unpleasant & sometimes non-existent user experience drives them to use traditional, more familiar channels like phone calls.
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The e-commerce space is growing, along with its complications. Consumers continue to shift their spending and purchasing habits in order to reap the benefits of e-commerce, including the convenience of receiving products straight to their door, saving time by not having to visit a store, and finding products quickly and more easily than in-store. It’s an exciting time to be a retailer in the e-commerce space!
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Take a look at this image. It is from Lingscars.com in the UK. Surprisingly, the website is very popular!
Mobile devices are constantly getting faster, more advanced and being built with more capabilities. Subsequently, this has resulted in a wide-spread mobile-first approach to browsing online. In a world of targeted ads and endless options, it’s no wonder people do a lot of browsing on their mobile devices.
Mobile devices are small but mighty. In the last decade, mobile devices have evolved to such an advanced state, there are stacks of capabilities no one could have imagined just 20 years ago. These handheld devices can instantly do tasks that used to require huge computers.
When designing User Experience (UX), there are a number of heuristics UX-ers need to consider. Design and UI always feature as high priority and you see many websites with cool looking features, from parallax scrolling, full bleed images, and subtle animations, wide image shots etc. Sure, these all play a big part in the overall experience, but sometimes, users just want to be able to complete a task as quickly as possible. A key UX principle, which unfortunately is sometimes overlooked, is efficiency.
Think about the last few websites you visited. There’s a high probability that a good number ofthese visits were made using a mobile device. If this rings true, you’re definitely not alone (anddon’t worry - we’re not here to judge you on your possible mobile phone addiction).
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The UAE is one of the most culturally diverse countries in the world. With over 200 nationalities and various cultural differences at play, how do you understand your customers and design a UX strategy to meet their growing expectations?
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Rumour has it that by 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product quality as the key brand differentiator. In a time of increased competition, shorter attention spans, and most things available at the touch of a button, this makes a lot of sense.
Take a quick moment and think about the last time you were on a social networking site like Instagram or Facebook. Does anything stick out about that experience? I bet you aren’t able to recall more than half of what you saw. These days, between catchy article headlines, product placements, advertisements and aesthetically pleasing images and designs, we have millions of different things fighting for our attention.
In case you missed it, last week on the blog we talked about consistency, clarity and standards. Today, last but not least, UX Principle #10 - User control and freedom!
In case you missed it, yesterday on the blog we talked about why you need to think about all customer intents in order to make the experience efficient and flexible for the user. Today, we’re discussing consistency, clarity and standards. Let’s look at them one by one.
In case you missed it, yesterday we talked about the importance of showing errors up front. Today, efficiency and flexibility.
In case you missed it, yesterday's post was all about recognition over recall - don't make your users do all the work, take an educated guess instead. Today we’re looking at how you can prevent a user error before it happens. This one is short and sweet!
In case you missed it, yesterday we discussed the importance of automating behind the scenes to reduce effort for your customers.
In case you missed it, last time we talked about the importance of keeping your users updated and using microinteractions to indicate when a task has been registered or completed.
In case you missed it, yesterday we talked about how a website with a clean and simple design works really well if you’re selling a product concept.
In case you missed it, yesterday we explored personalisation and showed the value of getting your users to set their preferences early on so you can make better, personalised recommendations. Today, the great debate. Minimalist design and aesthetics.
In case you missed it, yesterday we demonstrated the importance of presenting your content in a natural and logical order, using words and phrases your customers understand. Today’s blog post is all about making it user-centric through personalisation.
In case you missed it, yesterday we touched on the importance of giving your customers a memorable experience by reducing cognitive load and making the experience user-centric. Today we’ll show you how to make it user-centric by matching the real world - one of the key UX principles.
People often ask "what does good UX look like?". More often than not, people argue it’s how it looks, especially in the Gulf region which is not as digitally mature. Other people say it’s how it works, which is partly true, but again, not the right answer. Yes, design and functionality are important, but we're here to let you in on a little secret: good UX is about how it makes you FEEL.
How we interact with (and enjoy) games relies heavily on UX and UI design. The most memorable and engaging ones are those that consider how the user plays – how they think, act, and interact with the game’s visuals. You can’t build a strong video game design without taking into account the full player experience.
When was the last time you downloaded a song? Did you excitedly watch the status of your download while you waited? That progress indicator you were watching was a microinteraction, my friend! As you may already know, with great user experience and user interface design “the devil is in the details.” You can’t have an amazing digital experience if the details aren’t thought through and executed well. If microinteractions are designed successfully, they make a mediocre experience great, memorable and leave users wanting to return.