It’s an important time to be in voice design, but it’s not without its own challenges. Content in voice-driven interfaces can vary wildly from that of traditional websites, which might leave many of us wondering about our existing approaches to usability testing. Preston So not only shows us how to reframe these challenges into opportunities, but as advantages for the medium itself.
Topic: Content
Standards for Writing Accessibly
In this excerpt from Writing Is Designing, Michael J. Metts and Andy Welfle discuss critical accessibility considerations for content authors, including reading order, references to additional content, and instructions.
The Untapped Power of Vulnerability & Transparency in Content Strategy
Vulnerability and transparency are strengths masquerading as weaknesses. Together, they create empowering and meaningful content that can deeply engage your users, transcending mere conversion to build lifelong customer loyalty. Travis McKnight shows how to turn even your company’s worst problems and mistakes into powerful content strategies.
Trans-inclusive Design
Design decisions across our projects can mean the difference between affirmation and invalidation—and sometimes safety and danger. Erin White explores the repercussions for trans, non-binary, and gender-variant users and what we can do about it.
Nothing Fails Like Success
Money and tech have a complicated relationship. We trained our users to expect things for free. Quickly we realized that wasn’t a sustainable business model, so we sold their data and served ads, which invites its own problems.
Now, we’re trying to undo this tangled web. How do we get back to a democratized web? Our own Jeffrey Zeldman invites us to discuss how and to #LetsFixThis.
Canary in a Coal Mine: How Tech Provides Platforms for Hate
Like a mine can fill up with toxic gasses, technology can become a toxic platform for hate. As the people building the web, we have an ethical responsibility for how these products are used—whether we intended it or not. ALA’s own Tatiana Mac lays this out using her own experience as a woman of color in tech.
UX in the Age of Personalization
There is a watershed moment approaching for personalization design. Most strategy is still driven out of marketing and IT departments, a holdover from the legacy of the inbound, “creepy” targeted ad. According to Colin Eagan, fixing that model requires the same paradigm shift we’ve used to tackle other challenges in our field. In this piece, he takes a detailed look at the UX practitioner’s emerging role in personalization design: from influencing technology selection, to data modeling, to page-level implementation. It’s now 2019, and the timing couldn’t be better.
Conversations with Robots: Voice, Smart Agents & the Case for Structured Content
Voice user interfaces, smart software agents, and AI-powered search are changing the way users—and computers—interact with content. Whether or not you’re building services for these emerging technologies, structured content is now necessary to ensure the accuracy and integrity of your content across the evolving digital landscape.
Writing for Designers
Words matter. Even in something as banal as a form, the words we choose can determine what someone does and what they fail to do. In this excerpt from Writing for Designers, Scott Kubie explains the purpose of prose in a design and why we need to be more intentional with how we use words.
The FAQ as Advice Column
The FAQ has grown out of favor with some factions of late, but Caroline Roberts argues that the simple question and answer format can be just what you need. With a few modern tweaks and some thoughtful intent, kick your FAQs up a notch.
