Tech Guides - Web Design

The vastness and the innovativeness of today’s e-commerce websites are converting visitors into potential buyers and come back as returning visitors. Every e-commerce website is designed with high-quality UX (user experience) and the absence of it can hurt the revenue and sales in various stages. If not made simplistic and innovative, a bad UX may have an adverse effect on the website’s rankings as all search engines emphasize on portals that are easy to navigate. This makes e-commerce mobile app development services necessary for website owners. Almost 68% of users utilize smartphone devices in the US and the amount goes up to 88% in the UK. So, if seen from the advertising standpoint, websites need to be mobile-friendly at any cost as 62% of users will never suggest a business that has a poorly designed mobile website. Now if we take a look at the global population that buys online, the percentage comes to around 22.9% and by 2021, the number will hike to 3.15 billion. Hence keeping an up-to-date UX design for mobile apps is an absolute must. Some UX tips to keep in mind These are some UX design tips that an e-commerce website must utilize for making the buying experience worthwhile for the consumers. Horizontal filtering Most websites employ interfaces that carry left-hand vertical sidebar filtering. However, currently, horizontal filtering has gained prominence. Its benefits include: Horizontal filtering is a tablet and smartphone friendly. So, filters can be viewed while scrolling and the full width of a page can also be utilized. Utilizing paragraphs, sliders and tablets along with checkboxes are easier as horizontal filtering is flexible. Page width utilization: With this UX design, bigger visuals with better and useful information can be put in a page. No overloading of websites with CTAs and product information Making product descriptions crisp and understandable is necessary as any user or customer won’t like to go through massive texts. Clear CTAs – Having a clear and compelling call to action is important. Knowing the audience well – The aspects that attract your customers or the ones causing inconvenience to them must be well addressed.   Easy to understand descriptions - Top e-commerce app developers will always offer you with clear descriptions containing a crisp heading, bullet points, and subheadings. Fabricating a user-centric search The search experience that you offer to your customers can break or make your online sales. Your e-commerce businesses must implement these points for fabricating a client-centric search: Image recognition – Pictures or images are extremely important when it comes to e-commerce. Users will always want to see the items before buying. TImage recognition must be implemented in every website so that users can rely on the item they are purchasing. Voice search – As per mobile app design guidelines, voice recognition must also be implemented as it helps online retailers to improve the user experience. This is about ease, convenience, and speed. It makes consumers more comfortable which results in elevated customer engagement. Making the correct choice amid scrolling, loading more buttons and pagination When you engage in e-commerce shopping app development services, you must choose how the products are loading on your website.: Load more buttons – Websites that contain load button option is more favorable as users can discover more products offering them a feeling of control. Pagination – This is a process by which a small amount of information is offered to the customer so that he can emphasize on specific parts of a page. With pagination, users can overview entire results that will tell them how long the search is going to take. Endless scrolling - This technique can lead to seamless experiences for users. By enabling endless scrolling,  content loads continuously as a customer scrolls the page downwards. This works best for websites that contain an even content structure. It is not suitable for websites that need to fulfill goal-oriented jobs. Simple checkouts and signups required Among the various mobile app design elements, this point holds quite an importance. Making the procedures of checkouts and signups simple is paramount as website users are quick to run out of patience. Single-column structure – A user’s eye will move naturally from top to the bottom along a solitary line. Making on-boarding simple – Asking too many questions at the very beginning is not recommended. Registration simply calls for the user’s email and name. Later, personal information like, address and phone number can be asked. Colors Color is an often overlooked part of UI design. It is, in fact, hugely important - and it's beginning to become more important to designers. When you think about it, it seems obvious. Color is not only important from a branding perspective, allowing you to create a unified and consistent user experience within a single product (or, indeed, set of products). Color can also have consequences for hardware too. A white interface, for example, will use less battery power as the device won't require the resources that would otherwise be needed to load color. Accessibility and color in design Another important dimension to this is accessibility. With around 4.5% of the population estimated to suffer from color blindness (most of them male), it could be worth considering how the decisions you make about colors could impact these users. In a nutshell While implementing the entire e-commerce application development process, you have to make sure as a merchant that you are delivering experiences and products that fulfill real requirements. A lot of emphasis needs to be put on visual appeal as it marks as a vital element in fulfilling customer needs and is also an establishment of credibility. A customer’s first impression must be good no matter what. When talking about mobile user experience, credibility must be taken into account that can be ensured when you capture the attention of your users by informing them about what you exactly have to offer. The about page must be clear containing information like physical address, email address, phone number, etc. Following these UX tips is adequate for your E-commerce business to take flight and do wonders. Get hold of a professional team today and get started. Author Bio   Manan Ghadawala is the founder of 21Twelve Interactive which is a mobile app development company in India and the USA. You may follow him on @twitter. Why Motion and Interaction matter in a UX design? [Video] What UX designers can teach Machine Learning Engineers? To start with: Model Interpretability Align your product experience strategy with business needs

Clearly, there’s lot of competition for web designer jobs, - with the salary rising each year - so it’s crucial you find a way to make your resume stand out. You need to balance creativity with professionalism, all while making sure your experience, personality, and skills shine through. Over the years, people have created numerous resumes for web designers and everybody knows what it takes to get that job. Follow this guide to write a creative and attention-grabbing web designer resume. Note: All images in this article are courtesy of zety.com resume templates page and the guide. Format is a window to your mind Because you’re applying for a design position, the look and format of your resume is very important. It gives prospective employers a sense of your design philosophies. Use white space, and clear, legible fonts to help a hiring manager easily find your information. To stand apart from the crowd, avoid using a word processor to create your resume. Instead use InDesign or Illustrator to design something creative and less cookie-cutter like. Submit your resume in PDF format to avoid formatting errors that will ruin the look of your document. Sometimes a job posting will specifically forbid submitting in PDF though, so watch out for that. Highlight your Experience The key to writing a good experience section for a web designer is keeping it brief and relevant, while highlighting your career achievements. Add no more than three to five bullet points with measurable achievements per past position. Don’t just list your past company and when you worked there. “Discuss what you did and include some tangible accomplishments. If you created a custom graphic set for clients, mention that, and also what percentage were satisfied (hopefully it’s very high.) Prove you have the necessary experience to do the job well,” advises Terrence Wood, resume proofreader at Paper Fellows. Education Your education is not nearly as important as your experience, but you still need to present it right. That means using this section to talk about your strong points. Include coursework and achievements that are relevant to the job description. Maybe you wrote a column about web design in your college’s newspaper, things like this help you stand out to a hiring manager, especially if you are just starting your career in web design. Also, include the GPA here. Showcase your skills Everyone is going to list their skills, if you want that interview you need to do something to make yourself seem exceptional. The first thing you’ll do is take a good look at the job description and note what skills and responsibilities they mention. Now you know what skills to include, but including them is not enough. You need to prove you have them by giving examples of times you used them at past jobs. Don’t just list that you are proficient in Adobe Creative Suite, prove it by describing how you used it to tackle web design for 90% of client projects. Up the ante even more and include samples of your past work. This is a good spot to include your portfolio, any certifications that you have or anything that can help you let them know just how good you are at your job and confirm your skills. If you've had a predominantly freelance career, list the companies or individuals that you've worked for and include examples of work for each of them. You can do the same thing if you had a '9 to 5' career – simply list your previous jobs and show examples of your best work. It's a good idea to let your potential employers know about any future skills you plan to acquire. Use infographics You can give your resume a really unique look by using infographics, while still keeping it professional. Divide your resume layout into a grid with two columns and four or five rows. Now place one category of data into each square of your grid. Next, transform each section into an infographic. Use icons to represent different skills or awards. You can use your design software’s shape tools to create charts and graphs. Programs like Adobe InDesign can be used to create your infographics. You can also use Canva or Visme. Keep it professional It’s a great idea to inject some creativity into you resume. You want to stand out, and after all, it is a design resume. But it’s also important to balance that creativity with professionalism. A hiring manager will make some judgements about your personality based on how your resume looks. Be subtle in your creativity. Use colors that are easy on the eyes, and keep fonts reasonable. There can be a lot of beauty in simplicity. Stick to the basics, place content in an order familiar to recruiters to avoid making them have to work for the information they need. Remember that your primary goal is to communicate your information clearly. Write a cover letter Some people say that it's not really necessary but it's your chance to stand out. Maybe there is something that isn't on your resume or you want to seem more appealing and human – cover letter is a good chance to do all of that. Cover letter is a great place to elaborate how you'll be able to meet their needs. It's a good opportunity to also show them that you have done your research and know their company. Writing resources for your resume ViaWriting and Writing Populist: These are grammar resources you can use to check over your resume for grammatical mistakes. Resume Service: This is a resume service you can use to improve the quality of your web designer resume. Boomessays and EssayRoo: These are online proofreading tools, suggested by Revieweal, you can use to make sure you resume is polished and free of errors. My Writing Way and Academadvisor: Check out these career writing blogs for tips and ideas on how to improve your resume. You’ll find posts here by people who have written web designer resumes before. OXEssays and UKWritings: These are editing tools, recommended by UKWritings review, you can use to go over your resume for typos and other errors. StateofWriting and SimpleGrad: Check out these writing guides for suggestions on how to improve your resume. Even experienced writers can benefit from some extra guidance now and then. ResumeLab: Learn what to include in a cover letter. The job market for web designers is competitive. Make sure you lead with your best qualities and skills, and be sure they fit the job description as closely as possible. Be creative, but ensure you keep your resume professional as well. Now go have fun using this guide to write a creative and attention-grabbing web design resume. Author bio Grace Carter is a resume proofreader at Assignment Writing Service and at Australian Help, where she helps with CV editing and cover letter proofreading. Also, Grace teaches business writing at Academized educational website.   Is your web design responsive? “Be objective, fight for the user, and test with real users on the go!” – Interview with design purist, Will Grant Tips and tricks to optimize your responsive web design  

Today we will explain what a responsive web design is, how it benefits websites, and what the core concepts are. The topics covered are: Responsive design philosophy, principles, grid & columns Smooth user experience & user friendly website Understanding responsive grid systems Adaptive design and methodologies Elegant mobile experience This article is an excerpt taken from the book, Responsive Web Design by Example, written by Frahaan Hussain. Responsive design philosophy There was a time when most web surfing occurred on a computer with a standard-sized/ratio monitor. It was more than adequate to create websites with a non-responsive layout in mind. But over the last 10 years, there has been an exponential boom of new devices in a plethora of form factors, from mobile phones, tablets, watches and a wide range of screen sizes. This growth has created a huge fragmentation problem, so creating websites with a single layout is no longer acceptable. A website with a lot of content that works great on desktops doesn't work very well on a mobile device that has a significantly smaller screen. Such content is unreadable, forcing the user to zoom in and out constantly. One might try making everything bigger so it looks good on mobiles, but then on a desktop, the content doesn't take advantage of the immense real estate offered by bigger screens. Responsive Web Design is a method that allows the design to respond based on the user's input and environment and thus based on the size of the screen, the device, and its orientation. This philosophy blends elements of flexible grids and layouts, images, and media queries in CSS. Enter Responsive Web Design. This alleviates this problem by allowing developers and designers to create websites that adapt to all screen sizes/ratios. There are various approaches that different websites take, but the core concept is illustrated in the following figure: The preceding figure shows how the same website's layout can be adapted to suit different devices. On the desktop, there is a lot more real estate, so the content is bigger and more can fit on a single row. But, as the screen size shrinks and its orientation changes, the content readjusts itself to accommodate this change. This provides a seamless and elegant experience for the user on all form factors. If you look closely at the preceding figure and at modern websites, you will see a grid that the content conforms to. The grid is used to lay out the content of a website, and both of these elements go hand in hand. This grid system is one of the most important aspects of how Responsive Web Design works. Responsive design principles This section will cover the main principles behind designing responsive websites. Though these aren't set in stone and will change over time, they will provide a great foundation. Should you go Responsive or Adaptive? Responsive designs constantly change website layouts depending on their size and orientation. A single pixel resize will tend to have an effect on the layout, usually not by a lot. Adaptive schemes, on the other hand, have preset layouts, which are loaded depending on the size of the screen. This technique doesn't look as fluid and seamless as do responsive designs. Modern-day Responsive Web Design usually incorporates both methods. Set layouts will be provided, as can be seen in the previous figure. But any changes made to a website's size will have an impact in real time through responsive scaling. What are Breakpoints? Breakpoints are points at which a website's layout is no longer fit for the screen size, device, and/or orientation, and we are able to use different and unique layouts to accommodate the various changes that can occur to screens. When these points occur, the current layout is switched to a more suitable layout. For example, a mobile device in portrait mode will not effectively be able to use a layout that is designed for a widescreen desktop display; this just isn't possible. However, by using breakpoints a single website can serve many screen variations whilst making the website feel like it was designed with the user's current screen, device, and/or orientation in mind. This does not occur when reloading the web page, but content moves around dynamically and is scaled accordingly. Without breakpoints, the website would appear with the same layout on all form factors and browser sizes, which using the example we just mentioned, would not be fit for purpose. These breakpoints usually occur when the width of the browser changes and falls into the category of another more appropriate layout. There are a few fundamentals that should be mentioned regarding the philosophy of Responsive Web Design: Why is screen resolution important for responsive design? This is immensely influential in responsive design. The first thought for many designers is to design based on the resolution of the screen. But modern-day phones have resolutions of 1080p and beyond, which for the most part is still the de facto standard for desktops with some exceptions in 4K and ultrawide displays. This would prevent us from fully targeting all devices, as there is so much crossover in resolutions between devices. That is the reason why pixel density is very important when deciding which layout should be used as a 5-inch 1080p mobile display will be cramming the pixels in a lot closer than a 32-inch 1080p display. They both have the same resolution for the mobile device and they have a significantly higher pixel density, which helps distinguish between the device types. The viewport should also be taken into consideration, which is the user's visible area of a web page. This would allow us to rearrange content based on how much content should be displayed. What are media queries? These are amazing facets within CSS that allow us to actually detect changes in a screen such as its size and an event device type. These are the things used to specify code for a specific layout, such as a mobile or desktop display. You can think of media queries as conditional statements, just as an "if" statement would only run a piece of code if the condition was true. A media query is the same, it's far more limited, but as are many things in CSS. I'm positive you will have used a website and noticed that it looks different on a computer compared to a mobile phone, or even a tablet. This is thanks to the use of breakpoints, which are very similar to conditional statements in other languages such as C++. When a certain condition is met, such as screen size range, or, change in form factor, different CSS is applied to provide a better-suited layout. What are Relative units? Relative units take into account the other content and more specifically the content's size, whereas static units do not and have an absolute value regardless of the amount of content. If relative units are not used then static units would be used, which essentially lays the content using fixed units such as pixels. With this method, a box with a width of 400px on an 800px screen would take half the width. But, if the screen size changes to 300px, the box will now be partially off-screen. Again, this would not provide the reader with that seamless experience, which we aim to provide. The units simply display your content relative to everything else, or, more specifically, the screen size or viewport. This allows us, as creators, to display content consistently. Take the previous example, if we would like to display the box at half the screen width, on an 800px screen the box would be 400px wide, and on a 600px screen the box would be 300px wide. Using percentages we can set the width to 50%, which forces the box to always be half the width of its parent container, making its size relative to the rest of the page's content. Why Maximum and minimum values are important? Scaling our content is greatly dependent on the screen size. But with screens such as ultrawide monitors, scaling the content may make it too big, or even too small, on mobile devices. Using maximum and minimum values, we are able to set upper and lower limits providing us with readable and clear results. What are Nested objects? If we displayed every object individually, we would have to make them all adjust accordingly, but nesting allows us to wrap elements using containers. Nested objects are like a paragraph tag, as they contain text, and any changes made to the paragraph tag, such as its position or color, also affect its contents. Objects nested within each other are affected by any change made to their parent containers. An object can be anything from text and images to HTML tags/elements. Take a look at the following example: In this example, there are four elements—a div, paragraph, span, and image tag. The paragraph, span, and image tags are nested within the div tag. If the div tag's maximum width and background color were changed, this would affect all its child objects/tags. But if we were to make a change to the paragraph tag, such as changing its text color, this would not affect any other sibling tags or its parent tag. It would only have an effect on its contents/objects. So, for example, if a container is moved or scaled, the content within the container is also updated. This is where pixels come in use. You may not always want a container to be displayed 10% from the right as, on mobile devices, 10% equates to a lot of real estate potentially being wasted; you could specify 50px instead for example. Should you go Mobile first or desktop first? You can design a website from a small screen such as a phone and scale it up or go the other way round and design it with a large screen in mind. There is actually no right or wrong answer. Depending on the intended target audience and the website's purpose, this will become clear to you. Usually, considering both angles at the same time is the best route to go down. Most responsive frameworks on the market have been designed with a mobile-first philosophy, but that doesn't mean you cannot use it for a desktop-first design; it is on you as the designer to decide how content should be displayed. Should you use Bitmaps or vectors for your images? Bitmaps are great for images with a lot of detail, such as backgrounds and usually logos. Common bitmap formats include .png and .jpg. But these images can be large in file size and require more bandwidth and time to load. On desktop devices, this isn't too much of a problem, but on mobile devices that are heavily reliant on cellular services that don't always provide unlimited data, this can be problematic. Also, when scaling bitmaps, there is a loss in quality, which results in jagged and blurry images. Vectors, on the other hand, are small in size and don't lose quality when scaling. I know you'll be tempted to scream, "Hail vectors!" at this book, but they do have their drawbacks. They are only useful for simple content such as icons. Also, some older browsers do not fully support vectors. Again there is no "right choice"; depending on the content to be displayed, bitmaps or vectors should be used. Understanding Responsive grids and columns The grid system is one of the universal concepts of Responsive Web Design, regardless of the framework a website is built upon. To put it simply, websites are split into rows and columns, and if an object/element occupies half the number of columns, it will always occupy that many regardless of the screen's size. So an element that occupies 3 of the 12 rows will occupy 25% of the width of its parent container, hence providing a responsive design. This is great for small variations in screen sizes, but when a website is viewed on platforms varying from desktops to mobiles, then breakpoints are introduced as covered previously. Though there is no fixed number of columns that a responsive website should have, 12 is a common number used by some of the most popular and widespread frameworks. A framework in this context is anything built on top of the built-in web features. JavaScript is a web feature, but jQuery is a framework built on top of that to allow easier manipulation of the website using prewritten libraries/code. Though a framework isn't absolutely necessary, neither is using an off-the-shelf web browser. You could create your own, but it would be an immense waste of time, and the case for using a responsive framework is essentially the same. The following is an example of a basic responsive grid: Rows allow us as developers to group content together, though there will be a fixed number of columns, not all columns have to be filled to go to the next row. A new row can be used explicitly, as can be seen in the following example: This may be different to how you have developed websites in the past, but if there is anything you are unsure about don’t worry, as things will become clearer when we start working on projects in future chapters. To summarize, we covered responsive design philosophy and principles that are essential to creating an intuitive user experience. If you have enjoyed this excerpt, check out Responsive Web Design by Example to learn how to build engaging responsive websites. What UX designers can teach Machine Learning Engineers? To start with: Model Interpretability 5 things to consider when developing an eCommerce website Responsive Web Design with WordPress  

Build a product experience strategy around the needs of stakeholders Product experience strategists need to conduct thorough research to ensure that the products being developed and launched align with the goals and needs of the business. Alignment is a bit of a buzzword that you're likely to see in HBR and other publications, but don't dismiss it - it isn't a trivial thing, and it certainly isn't an abstract thing. One of the pitfalls of product experience strategy - and product management more generally - is that understanding the needs of the business isn't actually that straightforward. There's lots of moving parts, lots of stakeholders. And while everyone should be on the same page, even subtle differences can make life difficult. This is why product experience strategists do detailed internal research. It: Helps designers to understand the company's vision and objectives for the product. It allows them to understand what's at stake. Based on this, they work with stakeholders to align product objectives and reach a shared understanding on the goals of design. Once organizational alignment is achieved, the strategist uses research insights to develop a product experience strategy. The research is simply a way of validating and supporting that strategy. The included research activities are: Stakeholder and subject-matter expert (SME) interviews Documents review Competitive research Expert product reviews   Talk to key stakeholders Stakeholders are typically senior executives who have a direct responsibility for, or influence on, the product. Stakeholders include product managers, who manage the planning and day-to-day activities associated with their product, and have a direct decision-making authority over its development. In projects that are important to the company, it is not uncommon for the executive leadership from the chief executive and down to be among the stakeholders due to their influence and authority to the direct overall product strategy. The purpose of stakeholder interviews is to gather and understand the perspective of each individual stakeholder and align the perspectives of all stakeholders around a unified vision around the scope, purpose, outcomes, opportunities and obstacles involved in undertaking a new product development project. Gaps among stakeholders on fundamental project objectives and priorities, will lead to serious trouble down the road. It is best to surfaces such deviations as early as possible, and help stakeholders reach a productive alignment. The purpose of subject-matter experts (SMEs) interviews is to balance the strategic high- level thinking provided by stakeholders, with detailed insights of experienced employees who are recognized for their deep domain expertise. Sales, customer service, and technical support employees have a wealth of operational knowledge of products and customers, which makes them invaluable when analyzing current processes and challenges. Prior to the interviews, the experience strategist prepares an interview guide. The purpose of the guide is to ensure the following: All stakeholders can respond to the same questions All research topics are covered if interviews are conducted by different interviewers Interviews make the best use of stakeholders' valuable time Some of the questions in the guide are general and directed at all participants, others are more specific and focus on the stakeholders specific areas of responsibility. Similar guides are developed for SME interviews. In-person interviews are the best, because they take place at the onset of the project and provide a good opportunity to build rapport and trust between the designer and interviewee. After a formal introduction regarding the purpose of the interview and general questions regarding the person's role and professional experience, the person is asked for their personal assessment and opinions on various topics. Here is a sample of different topics: Objectives and obstacles Prioritized goals for the project What does success look like What kind of obstacles the project is facing, and suggestions to overcome them Competition Who are your top competitors Strength and weaknesses relative to the competition Product features and functionality Which features are missing Differentiating features Features to avoid The interviews are designed to last no more than an hour and are documented with notes and audio recordings, if possible. The answers are compiled and analyzed and the result is presented in a report. The report suggests a unified list of prioritized objectives, and highlights gaps and other risks that have been reported. The report is one of the inputs into the development of the overall product experience strategy. Experts understand product experience better than anyone Product expert reviews, sometimes referred to as heuristic evaluations, are professional assessments of a current product, which are performed by design experts for the purpose of identifying usability and user experience issues. The thinking behind the expert review technique is very practical. Experience designers have the expertise to assess the experience quality of a product in a systematic way, using a set of accepted heuristics. A heuristic is a rule of thumb for assessing products. For example, the error prevention heuristic deals with how well the evaluated product prevents the user from making errors. The word heuristic often raises questions about its meaning, and the method has been criticized for its inherent weaknesses due to the following: Subjectivity of the evaluator Expertise and domain knowledge of the evaluator Cultural and demographic background of the evaluator These weaknesses increase the probability that the outcome of an expert evaluation will reflect the biases and preferences of the evaluator, resulting in potentially different conclusions about the same product. Still, expert evaluations, especially if conducted by two evaluators, and their aligned findings, have proven to be an effective tool for experience practitioners who need a fast and cost-effective assessment of a product, particularly digital interfaces. Jacob Nielsen developed the method in the early 1990s. Although there are other sets of heuristics, Nielsen's are probably the most known and commonly used. His initial set of heuristics was first published in his book, Usability Engineering, and is brought here verbatim, as there is no need for modification: Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time. Match between system and the real world: The system should speak the user's language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. User control and freedom: Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo. Consistency and standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions. Error prevention: Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action. Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Accelerators--unseen by the novice user--may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution. Help and documentation: Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large. Every product experience strategy needs solid competitor research Most companies operate in a competitive marketplace, and having a deep understanding of the competition is critical to the success and survival. Here are few of the questions that a competitive research helps addresses: How does a product or service compare to the competition? What are the strength and weaknesses of competing offerings? What alternatives and choices does the target audience have? Experience strategists use several methods to collect and analyze competitive information. From interviews with stakeholder and SMEs, they know who the direct competition is. In some product categories, such as automobiles and consumer products, companies can reverse-engineer competitive products and try to match or surpass their capabilities. Additionally, designers can develop extensive experience analysis of such competitive products, because they can have a first-hand experience with it. With some hi-tech products, however, some capabilities are cocooned within proprietary software or secret production processes. In these cases, designers can glean the capabilities from an indirect evidence of use. The Internet is a main source of competitive information, from the ability to have a direct access to a product online, to reading help manuals, user guides, bulletin boards, reviews, and analysis in trade publications. Occasionally, unauthorized photos or documents are leaked to the public domain, and they provide clues, sometimes real and sometimes bogus, about a secret upcoming product. Social media too is an important source of competitive data in the form of customers reviews on Yelp, Amazon, or Facebook. With the wealth of this information, a practical strategy to surpass the competition and delivering a better experience can be developed. For example, Uber has been a favorite car hailing service for a while. This service has also generated public controversy and had dissatisfied riders and drivers who are not happy with its policies, including its resistance for tips. By design, a tipping function is not available in the app, which is the primary transaction method between the rider, company and, driver. Research indicates, however, that tipping for the service is a common social norm and that most people tip because it makes them feel better. Not being able to tip places riders in an uncomfortable social setting and stirs negative emotions against Uber. The evidence of dissatisfaction can be easily collected from numerous web sources and from interviewing actual riders and drivers. For Uber competitors, such as Lyft and Curb, by making tipping an integrated part of their apps, provides an immediate competitive edge that improves the experience of both riders, who have an option to reward the driver for their good service, and drivers, who benefit from an increased income. This, and additional improvements over the inferior Uber experience, become a part of an overall experience strategy that is focused on improving the likelihood that riders and drivers will dump Uber in their favor. [box type="note" align="" class="" width=""]You read an extract from the book Exploring Experience Design written by Ezra Schwartz. This book will help you unify Customer Experience, User Experience and more to shape lasting customer engagement in a world of rapid change.[/box] 10 tools that will improve your web development workflow 5 things to consider when developing an eCommerce website RESTful Java Web Services Design