Kori Handy

Etsy was recently seen A/B testing AND eventually shipping a more visible search with the help of a higher contrast orange background button color (instead of a ghost-like icon only approach). Full screenshots: https://lnkd.in/gVJThW3W Now I don't work for Etsy (as much as I'd love to design some experiments for/with them) so we can't see the actual numbers beyond this feint probabilistic residue from the public domain. However, the amazing Andrey Andreev who runs experiments at Metro recently ran a very similar one and shared a solid result on GoodUI - with a positive impact to sales and searches. N = 896,009 SRM Check = Pass p-val on Increased Sales = 0.0139 (I know some people might like this to be even lower for a primary metric; but there is also reinforcing evidence on increased searches with an even lower p value at "ultra stat-sig" levels using Ron Kohavi's language; p < 0.00000001). I inverted the a/b test and categorized it under the Filled Vs Ghost Button pattern - further weakening the ghosts and strengthening the high contrast filled button styles on multiple metrics. https://lnkd.in/gmD8Exvc Thanks Andrey for a somewhat of an unintended replication, as I know your source of inspiration came from somewhere else on this one. :) Have you tested anything similar or different. If so, what did you discover? I'd be super curious to see more examples where increases to search have either ❌ failed or ✅ succeeded. Please share independent of outcome. ps. We also have a handful of similar "visible search" experiments where companies tested adding or hiding search: https://lnkd.in/gvWqzrK5 - further supporting this direction. [EDIT]: Note the additional confounders / variables in the Metro test - a stronger border, a change in background color of the search box as per Jakob Nielsen comment. They may be similar along the lines of the increased visibility theme - but possible additional variables nevertheless. #experimentation #ecommerce #replication #optimization #ui #ux

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Are you ready for the rise of fractional design leadership? Here's my prediction: 👉 By the end of 2024, companies will commonly engage design leaders in a fractional capacity. 👉 This could either look like... A. Design leaders engaging in contract roles to strategize and lead specific product initiatives supported by in-house teams. or B. Design leaders joining agencies specializing in fractional leadership, creating a leadership-as-a-service model. This could include additional support from teams sourced from either the agency or the client. 👉 Companies right now are balancing cash flow with growth and innovation. The increasing risk of disruption in every industry underscores the need to adapt to survive. Fractional leadership can jump-start areas where product teams feel 'stuck.' Moreover, fractional opportunities can unlock significant career-growth opportunities for designers, a path that is traditionally more scarce and has lower turnover than IC roles. What's your take on this? Is fractional design leadership the future, or am I completely off? 🤔 #management #technology #careers #leanstartups #future

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With Adobe, Figma, and others adjusting policies to support the training of LLMs (which you can totally opt out of btw), it's interesting to witness the design zeitgeist recognizing how business goals influence designers and the importance of data integrity in design. Taking it a step further by replacing "designer" with "human" allows us to connect with everyone we design products for. The practice of design operates at the intersection of business and human activity, a concept we are on the brink of internalizing at a profound level. Embed this and act accordingly! #businessvalue #dataintegrity #design #ux #productdesign #ai #llm #figma #adobe

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Really annoyed at Figma's price gouging here. There is no reason other than greed: https://lnkd.in/gfdrEiWH Oh, and I emailed them about it and this line from their reply was particularly poignant: "Additionally the minimum for enterprise is a $5k invoice minimum. 6 enterprise seats or made up with other products." To put that in context... our monthly Adobe bill (for 8 CC, 7 PS, 6 Acrobat licenses) is ~NZ$2k... Amazing how quickly enshittification sets in... #Figma #Design #SoftwareLicensing

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I flag brand integration as a critical skill for product designers to develop–it’s a versatile ability to add to your skill set. I’m not talking about learning how to create a brand (logo, color palette, typography, etc.). The skill I advocate designers to cultivate involves the ability to assess and understand all attributes of an existing brand–visual identity, voice/personality–and skillfully integrate those elements into the product experience. Do this, and you add tremendous marketability to yourself because you will know how to ensure that marketing's brand-led first impression will make a seamless handoff to the product experience. We’re in a state where, like Moore’s Law, there is exponential growth in the importance of branding for all businesses, not just corporations. If you know how to wield it in the design of the product experience, you will distinguish yourself.

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I am constantly examining my own limiting beliefs, and that practice has changed my life. What patterns or narratives are so engrained that they hold me back? Where did they come from? What if I let them go? So liberating. Now, what happens if we turn this practice onto our industry? This article is based on a workshop on this topic that I gave last month in NYC at the Advancing Research conference put on by Rosenfeld Media. The set-up comes from the results of a study using dscout's Express tool in which I asked, "Imagine you walk into a museum and see a painting depicting the UXR Landscape right now - describe it." Responses were (um) quite vivid, and got me thinking about the limiting beliefs they represent, the industry orthodoxies they gesture towards, and what it would be like to flip them -- which is work that is both internal and systemic. As Sara Wachter-Boettcher put it so eloquently (as ever) in a chat we had about this, “We can’t heal or change the system until we can see what we’ve internalized and learn to shift those scripts.” Thanks to Stevie Watts for help whipping this into shape, Allison Corr for the *delightful* header illustration, and Katie Johnson who I will always give credit to for introducing me to the power of identifying orthodoxies. May we ever be flipping them! #peoplenerds #humancentereddesign #UX

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It has been my continuous struggle to showcase the contributions of the design team to business. Slapping the rules at product level seems unjust. Finiding out a comparative for a specific feature becomes difficult to assess. I am on my journey towards putting a right measuring metrics for the same. Let's connect if you are also looking out or something that might have worked well for you. #uxdaily #productmetrices #designmetrices #productstrategy #designstrategy

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Figma’s ConFig ’24 released several new features that caused many to continue to sing their praises. However, there is a trend their business model that is problematic. New features are initially available to all in beta. Once the feature goes into production, there will be a charge to use the new feature. Figma seems to be building an a la cart feature menu creating a nickel and dime growth strategy. The problem is that Figma has already surpassed the exorbitant pricing of Adobe products. Has Figma considered the full spectrum of their user base? While some enterprises may be able to float that price tag (For managers, it still can be a hard sell for budget approval), small businesses and independent designers will find the cost to be challenging or prohibitive. While Figma may generate some initial profit, it may not work in the long-term once the romance is gone.

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Just a few quick observation/advice for UX designers seeking job opportunities: - Make sure to create your own custom portfolio site. You’d think every designer has a portfolio site, but some designers seem to think their resume or LinkedIn speaks the whole story and simply skip on the website. When you’re the only candidate in the pack that doesn’t bring a portfolio site, you kind of stand out (in a negative way). A custom site with a custom URL works better than something like Dribbble IMO. And your website is the first place where potential recruiters are judging your design skills - a bit unfair, but it’s a natural human instinct - Don’t be shy about the fact that you’re a junior UX designer. Trying to make your Google UX Design Certificate project look like an important client work can backfire, namely can make you less trustworthy. Instead, show your eagerness to learn and demonstrate how you used the past projects to grow in a tangible way - Don’t put your hourly rates on the website. I know that might be the first question everyone is asking, but you’re not a product, and you might run the risk of underselling yourself

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EARLY RELEASE: The first two revised chapters of Strategic Writing for UX, 2nd Edition are now available on the O'Reilly platform! As it literally says on the cover: "RAW & UNEDITED." 😅 Seriously--if you read these and think something's off, please tell me! There are miles to go before I'm done with revisions across the whole book, including a whole new chapter about content-designing new generative AI features. Image description: The cover of Strategic Writing for UX, now updated with a Second Edition banner and a big red dot that declares: "Early Release: RAW & UNEDITED"

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The more I hear designers talking about how they want to help each other, the more hopeful I get. If you're not looking to mentor for long term but would still like to help, one of those ways could be to record asynchronous portfolio critiques. Want to help? Send me a DM, there's a ton of folks asking for reviews. #jobsearch2024 #ux #uxdesign #portfolioreview

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If you want to be really, really good at UX... Focus on what really matters and avoid making dumb mistakes. What matters: -Stakeholder buy in and commitment -Good user research -Iterative design + testing with users -Detailed specifications and robust component libraries -Extensive QA testing to flush out the bugs before shipping Dumb mistakes: -Berating design suggestions from non-UX team members -Behaving like design prima donnas, thinking that designers can do no wrong -Whining about not having a seat at the table when you have neither earned it nor demonstrated the capacity to sit there -Criticizing engineers and PMs for behaving like engineers and PMs Note: both lists are incomplete, but hopefully they give the gist #ux  #userexperience  #userresearch #design

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Don't underestimate the power of community. In the design community, sharing isn't just caring (although, there's a lot of that 💚). From driving initial interest and attracting beta users to motivating your team and validating your ideas, tapping into this passionate and creative network can have a significant impact on your product's success. In my latest post for Plain Sight Ventures, I dig into how engaging with the design community can help you propel your product and brand forward and earn its place in your marketing strategy. https://lnkd.in/gHsgrDS9

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After interviewing many designers on ADPList, I consistently offer the same advice: Simplify and reduce the amount of text and process sketches. Focus your case studies more on the finalized designs rather than the journey to get there. This might seem counterintuitive, but your portfolio serves as a validation of your high-quality visual and interaction design skills, as well as your product thinking. Showcase these qualities by emphasizing the designs themselves rather than the process behind them. Once you reach the 1:1 interview stage, you’ll have the opportunity to dive deeper into your process and explain how you achieved these designs. For now, let the designs speak for themselves. #designportfolio #designadvice #portfolioreviewtips

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🗣️ Pssst! Many (most?) UX/Design orgs have way more people than are actually necessary to deliver great user experience. This is something I was first clued into in 2014, speaking with a design leader who had recently left a Silicon Valley software company to run a team at a bank. She told me how the team she inherited had 20 people, but, given her team's straightforward remit (showing balances, transaction activity, and other basics), she should only need 10 folks to deliver a quality user experience. But then she said something that I've replayed in my head at least weekly since then. She said that she was stunned to realize that, given the complexity of her product organization, she actually needed 40 people to cover all the work and relationships. This is when I realized that many design orgs were not "user-centered" or "customer-centered," but "product-centered." And these product teams are bloated (from the perspective of delivering meaningful customer value), which drives design teams to be bloated as well (again, from the frame of reference of delivering user/customer value). What I didn't know at the time was the trend (and cult) of agile transformations and SAFe, which I now believe to be the primary culprit of this bloat. Shortly before I left Adaptive Path, I lead a team that designed the entire ecommerce experience (for desktop and mobile web) for a major brand, including landing pages, category pages, detailed product pages with reviews, shopping cart and checkout functionality, wishlists, address books, birthday reminders, and more. We had 5 people. For a team covering all those things to be effective in-house now, you'd need at least 15, and many would have so much more. I know what I'm saying may strike a sensitive chord in this time of layoffs and difficulty finding work. And I'm not saying we should cut UX/Design teams in half—these teams need to be this size to ensure quality UX is delivered in these contexts. But I suspect the convulsions we're experiencing are in some part due to a realization that these product development organizations are fundamentally misshapen to deliver the kind of value expected of them.

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I don't know when or how it happened, but Config has become one of the major yearly conferences in our industry. Given how much Figma plays a role in the practice, it's common for design system teams to watch with anticipation/excitement/dread for what's coming. In our latest episode, Davy Fung and I discuss the reveals from Config and what that may mean for folks in the design systems practice moving forward. Listen here: https://lnkd.in/gRMBzfbJ #designsystems #figma #congfig #podcast

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Senior designers are in high demand, but only a few stand out. Here are 5 insights from leading a design staffing agency: 1. Less demand for researchers, more for strategic roles 2. Requests for specialized roles like “design producers” 3. Tons of applications, but only a few match our criteria 4. More demand for permanent, not contracting roles 5. Most positions are private, and only shared with us A few examples of our previous searches are: - A ResearchOps lead, not a DesignOps lead - System(s) designer specialized in tokens - Head of Design for a 20+ design team - Fractional brand designer for an early-stage startup The market for designers evolves quickly. More specific demands than in 2023. - Many permanent roles - Fewer research roles - Many specific roles Companies want generalists. But select for specialists.

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I get asked pretty often what resources are out there that help people break into the UX field. Ryan's great and could offer some really good well informed insights. if you're curious about some interview prep, give this a look

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If we're not talking about design maturity, agile process, or craft, then us designers are probably talking about ✨quality.✨ I certainly see my interviewer's eyes light up when I mention this magical word. "Design is the one that has to hold the quality bar," I tell them. But what if that didn't have to be true? For a truly high-quality product, I don't think it should be design holding the line. It has to be something baked into the organization - everyone holds the quality bar. Even though "quality" is a slippery thing to define, if we can define it and hold ourselves to it, we can reduce the tension in the org and start to think less about the mere baseline quality for the product and more about raising that bar - delighting the user. I very much enjoyed Luke Anthony Firth's take on how they folded quality into their product building process. Have a read! https://lnkd.in/g4SenmYZ #designleadership #productprocess #productdesign #productquality #designquality #opentowork

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