The moment Marti joined us at SoBold, we were excited and eager to see how she would translate her enthusiasm and energy towards development towards real life projects. We were not let down and she hit the ground running.

2 years later, largely hampered by COVID, we now are getting the absolute best out of Marti. She is incredibly reliable, diligent and talented and she is involved in all of our biggest projects.

Marti has never been one to code for the sake of coding, and she always makes sure she understands the bigger picture before diving into a project. 

⅓ of the Italian SoBold Office crew, we are very fortunate to have Marti and we truly can’t wait to watch her skillset improve and see her continue to work on the biggest and best projects!

We caught up with Marti to find out more about what she gets up to in her day to day life.

At what point in your life did you decide to become a developer?

Having studied Foreign Languages and Literatures, since uni I had a dream to become a successful translator. I came to London to fulfil this dream but I wasn’t sure which field to specialise in yet. So I started working at a restaurant, and in my spare time, I would translate articles for online media sites and magazines, and also produce subtitles for tv series.

Later on, I started a course in software localisation, and this opened up the dev world to me as I had to put my hands on the software source code. When it was time to search for a job, reality had a massive hit: competition was high, work was difficult to find, it was clear I had to invest more time and specialise furthermore.

I felt stuck and didn’t really know what to do with my life. So I went backpacking around the world for a few months, and I decided to dive more into that dev world that I found so interesting. Time wasn’t really a problem while travelling, so I read a lot about web development and took a lot of online courses. I devoured so many online resources, I just couldn’t believe they were all a click away! Since my first “Hello World” project, I’ve found the process of coding and building a website from scratch a beautiful mix of creative problem solving that never disappoints. Long story short, that’s when I knew I wanted to become a developer.

Describe your typical day

I wake up at 6:30am, I feed Coco and Lucy (my cats), I put some tunes on while having breakfast, quick shower. Then it’s checking the weather time: if it looks cloudy and rainy I’ll take the tube, otherwise, I’ll most probably board my Brompton and off we go to the office! Ideally, I like to conclude the evening by doing some form of exercise, usually rollerskating or a walk/run.

What’s your favourite project to date

I really enjoyed working on the new SoBold website, it’s been a huge team effort and the result it’s simply amazing!

What is the best advice you have ever heard?

I once read this quote: “If we all threw our problems in a pile, we’d grab ours back.”

I think it’s a beautiful sentence, it makes me appreciate life every day and makes me very grateful for all I have.

If you had to change careers what would you do instead?

Not sure what but surely something related to sport.

What was your most recent challenge and how did you overcome It?

When you’re a developer, every day there’s a new challenge. You just have to learn how to tackle them. In general, I think talking with a colleague helps a lot. Also “rubber ducking” can be a useful method for debugging code. In both cases, they’re powerful methods that consist in taking a break and articulating the problem in plain language.

What’s your favourite thing to do outside of work?

I’m a big ramp skate fanatic. https://www.instagram.com/martymcroll/

What 3 items would you bring to a desert island?

🇨🇭 🔪  🎸 and  🛌🏽

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Many businesses in the healthcare sector require some form of bespoke web development in order to remain competitive today. But entering into a bespoke development project can be a daunting challenge, with plenty of risks attached to it. 

This article will answer your pressing questions about bespoke web development, and provide you with a step-by-step guide to set yourself up for success when approaching your own project.

In recent years, modern healthcare has been driven forward by great advances in technology. Organisations in the healthcare sector have leveraged cutting-edge digital technology to transform the way healthcare services are delivered for the better. 

But with that positive change comes a shift in expectations to improve technology across the board. 

Whether you’re a practitioner or a healthcare solution provider, you now must deliver your services to your end-users through the latest digital channels if you want to keep up with the rest of the industry. 

If you’re unable to meet modern expectations for an effortless consumer-grade user experience (UX), your clients and partners will be left unsatisfied and may look elsewhere for a more convenient alternative. This can also apply to your internal systems and processes, as your employees also want intuitive digital tools in order to do their work efficiently and effectively.

To achieve this, you need a sophisticated website that serves your users in a way that’s specifically tailored to their needs and preferences, while also supporting your strategic business objectives. Given the complexity of the healthcare sector, that will likely require you to develop a website with bespoke features and functionality. 

Of course, any website you develop also needs to be secure and compliant, and flexible enough to adapt as your business grows or healthcare technology trends continue to evolve. 

Going Beyond the Basics with Bespoke Development 

While a more straightforward, simple website may be sufficient for small and medium-sized businesses, such a limited approach will prevent companies in the healthcare sector from retaining clients and staying competitive. 

If you’re struggling to deliver exactly what your clients or other users are looking for, particularly in an industry as technical as healthcare, you may need to build a bespoke website. This could include anything from: 

• A bespoke client-facing website that represents your brand and provides direct access to your products or services 
• An internal web portal, either for training employees or for networking and sharing of information
• A bespoke intelligence platform with powerful data and analytics capabilities 
• A new content management system (CMS) that can provide greater flexibility and scalability for a portfolio of multiple sites 
• A unique tool to transform inefficient manual processes into a simple digital platform
• A bespoke website that integrates directly with a wide range of other back-end tools and technology, such as your CRM system.

With a bespoke development project, the possibilities – and opportunities for innovation and growth – are virtually endless. You can discuss your current business challenges among your team, and then create something purpose-built to solve those specific challenges.

Of course, coming up with an idea for an exciting new site is the easy part. For many businesses, it’s an additional challenge to know where to go next. To make that easier for you, we’ve provided a simple, proven process here to help you plan and launch a bespoke web development project that will set you up for success.

A Process for Approaching Your Bespoke Development Project 

Start with the “why” and think about what you’re trying to achieve 

As touched on above, it’s important to have a specific reason for building a bespoke site. Whether it’s to achieve a strategic business goal, like customer growth, or overcome a prominent challenge, like inefficient processes, you need a clear purpose. 

Determine exactly what you’re trying to achieve with your website and why it’s being developed. A big part of this will also relate to delivering on a specific need or solving a specific problem for your users as well. 

Thinking of how it will help your users in a valuable way will make it easier to understand what sort of features and functionality you’ll require. 

List all your requirements and use them to create a project brief 

Once you’ve completed that first step, you’ll already see a list taking shape, with requirements for design, usability, capabilities, and so on. 

Note down all those things your website needs to do and use that to create a project brief. This is a simple written document containing all the ideas you think are relevant to your site, including both functional and non-functional requirements.

The purpose of this is to make your request as clear as possible for the design and development agencies you speak to. 

The more specific and detailed your brief is, the better, and that includes things like your initial ideas for cost and timelines. This will help ensure your agency will deliver what you’re asking for on time, within your budget, and matching your specifications. Without a clear, specific brief, you could wind up disappointed and maybe even over-spending.

For a comprehensive guide to creating a brief that will set you up for a successful web design and development project, read our useful article here. 

Evaluate the options for a technology platform to build on

Most websites on the Internet are built using a content management system (CMS). This is almost certainly the type of platform you’ll want to use to create, edit, and publish all the content on your website and manage things behind the scenes. 

Every business is unique, and every bespoke development project is different, so you need to use the work you’ve done in the previous two steps to help you select the right CMS. 

By this point, when you’re evaluating platforms, you should already know your objectives, your requirements, your users’ needs, your budget, your existing technology stack, and so on.

Take all these factors and use them to determine which CMS is the best suited to deliver exactly what you want. 

Something that’s important to note is that integrating a new website with other systems can be complex, particularly if you’re building your site on a new platform rather than an existing one. 

When planning a bespoke development project, you’ll need to consider how easily your new platform will integrate with your other systems. 

We recently produced a helpful series of articles comparing some of the leading CMSs for enterprise website development. You can read those here: 

• WordPress vs Sitecore
• WordPress vs Drupal 
• WordPress vs Umbraco 

Find the right agency partner to design and develop your site with you

As mentioned earlier, you’ll likely need to find a design and development agency to partner with in order to create a bespoke website. 

Building, managing, and supporting a high-performance website in the current technology landscape is extremely difficult, especially in a strictly-regulated industry like healthcare. 

Not only should you look for a partner with a proven track record of delivering bespoke websites, you should also try to find one with healthcare sector-specific experience as well. 

Which agency you choose will have a significant impact on whether your development project is successful, but also on whether or not your new website is successful in the long-term as well. It’s a decision that mustn’t be taken lightly. 

Some of the qualities and capabilities that are important to look for when assessing your options for an agency partner include: 

• Experience working with businesses in the healthcare sector
• A strong portfolio of successful bespoke development projects 
• The expertise to guide you and help you make the best decisions for your project
• Certifications and accreditations 
• Compliance with healthcare sector regulations
• Security and data protection built into the core of your project 
• Secure hosting supported by back-up, disaster recovery, and risk mitigation plans
• Ongoing support services to maintain, update, and optimise your site
• Additional advisory services to help you gain as much value from your technology as possible.

What Does a Bespoke Website Require to be Successful? 

Once you’ve found a CMS and an agency you’re comfortable with, the next step will be to design and develop your bespoke website. 

This will involve working to the requirements you noted in your project brief, but there are also some essential qualities and characteristics of a successful website in the current digital business landscape: 

Enterprise-Grade Hosting 

Ensure your agency can provide enterprise-grade, secure hosting, ideally with managed services, from a trustworthy provider. Not only is your hosting environment responsible for the security of your site and protection of your data, but it can also influence the speed and performance of your site. 

If you’re in a position to build a bespoke website, you’re likely going to be dealing with a high volume of data and a large audience of users, so it’s important that you have a hosting service that can manage that without any disruption to your services. 

User Experience 

Whatever services or products you provide to companies in the healthcare sector, a great UX is the foundation of any successful website. People working in almost all industries now expect the same convenient consumer-grade experience they receive from the technology they use in their personal lives. Your website needs to be as quick and easy-to-use for your visitors as apps like LinkedIn and Amazon. 

This also applies if the sites you’re looking to build are internal-facing for employees. Workforces now also demand a seamless experience with company systems, and providing this will create gains in efficiency as well as competitive advantages. 

A great UX usually leads to a strong ROI. 

Performance and Functionality 

Your website connects you directly to your clients. Flip that to your client’s perspective, your website is a direct reflection of the quality and professionalism of your services.

If your website is slow, or doesn’t give your users what they need in terms of performance or functionality, they won’t hesitate to look elsewhere. 

Security 

Businesses today run on data. The data of your clients, partners, and your own critical data will be at risk if any technology attached to your network is not secure. 

As mentioned earlier, you need to make sure your site is hosted in a secure environment with robust data protection measures in place. But security isn’t just about hosting. Security also comes down to a wide range of best practices, like regularly testing your site and updating your platform.

When your clients and partners are working with highly sensitive medical data, all your technology must also be highly secure and compliant with industry regulations. 

Again, these are all critical things that your agency partner should be experienced enough to handle for you. 

Personalisation

Personalised user experiences are becoming increasingly important for businesses to deliver to their clients and employees these days. One of the key advantages to a bespoke website is that you’re able to provide each of your users with personalised content and services, tailored to their needs, at each stage of their user journey. 

Scalability and Agility 

More often than not, a bespoke website is a key point of differentiation and an enabler of business growth. When you begin to achieve that growth, your requirements will evolve and your website will need to be agile enough to adapt easily without disrupting business continuity. 

When planning and building your new site, ensure it’s developed with long-term growth and seamless scalability in mind.

The Benefits and Advantages of Bespoke Development  

If you’re able to follow this process and incorporate some of these qualities into your new bespoke website, you’ll have something completely unique to your business. This should set you on the right path to accelerated business growth. But a bespoke website, once built and deployed, can begin to deliver a range of additional benefits and advantages too. These include: 

• Boosting engagement with customers, with an outstanding UX and personalised services
• Increasing customer retention and loyalty 
• Enabling real-time interactions with data and greater analytics capabilities 
• Higher adoption rates of internal systems and improved business performance 
• Reducing costs by streamlining inefficient processes and removing outdated technology
• Strengthening your corporate network with enterprise-grade security 
• Achieving competitive advantages in a highly competitive market.

The Healthcare Sector Runs on High-Performance Websites 

As technology continues to evolve and drive more disruption, it’s becoming increasingly important to keep up with the resulting trends. A bespoke web development project allows you to reach beyond the limitations of a basic website and give your users exactly what they need from your services.

It also enables you to create a high-performance website that’s entirely unique to your business, differentiating you from your competition. 

In the current healthcare sector, it’s easy to appreciate why this is quickly becoming a necessity, rather than a “nice-to-have” for many leading businesses. 

To continue learning, read our comprehensive guide to understanding and evaluating the enterprise options for bespoke web development here.

Discover how global healthcare group, Clanwilliam, used bespoke design and development to take their brand to a new level and transform the capabilities of their marketing. 

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As technology continues to evolve and advance rapidly, more of our daily lives are taking place in a digital-first context. When marketing your products and services, this means:

• Your target audience now has a shorter attention span, and less patience when browsing websites and services online.
• Your target audience also has more choice of options than ever before when choosing who to buy from. 

Modern users demand the same speed and convenience they get from the industry-leading sites and apps they use every day. That means you only have a matter of seconds to make a positive, memorable connection with your visitors. 

UX design, therefore, serves as a critical phase within the end-to-end process of web design. This is essentially the practice of creating a website that allows your visitors to complete a process, take an action, or fulfill their need in as few steps or clicks as possible.

Despite its ever-increasing importance, UX design is a process that many businesses, and even many agencies, still struggle to get right. 

To ease this challenge, and help you ensure your own website’s UX is designed effectively, we’ve written this article to outline the process in detail. We’ll also provide advice and tips to help you ensure your website can provide your target audience with an experience that drives them towards your desired outcomes.

What is UX Design?

The aim of UX design is to make it quick, easy, and convenient for your visitors to complete a task or process, or follow a call-to-action. Your UX involves everything from functionality, navigation, accessibility, layout, structure, and even the site’s content itself. 

Designing your website in a way that’s intuitive and easy-to-use will provide your visitors with a satisfying UX. It’s important to note here that UX design shouldn’t be confused or bundled up with user interface (UI) design. UI design is its own separate phase of the process that comes slightly later. 

Understanding the Design Process as a Whole

Research and Planning 

Earlier in the overall design process, before you approach the UX, you should’ve gone through a thorough research and planning phase with your design agency.  

This is important in ensuring that every decision you make towards your UX and UI will produce a more effective website capable of meeting your business goals and your audience’s needs. 

Working alongside your agency, you’ll use this research to define the full scope of your website and all its requirements. This will include the creation of user personas and user journeys. These will help you determine the most simple and efficient flow for your visitors to take through your website to each call-to-action, and this is how your UX is created. 

This research will guide both your UX design and UI design processes.

Related reading: Understanding the Important Role of Research and Planning When Designing a New Website.

Visual Exploration

Your agency partner should then produce a set of mood boards that you’ll use to create the aesthetic style of your site in line with your brand. These mood boards help you visualise the way your website will look and feel when built. 

This is a precursor to your UI design, and it’s done before the UX phase to ensure the overall style is correct before any more design work is completed.

This is another collaborative process, where your agency should advise you with their expertise and experience from delivering successful website projects in the past.

Related reading: What is Visual Exploration in the Process of Web Design?

The UX Process 

Information Architecture 

The information architecture of your website is devised by building a sitemap, which is a map of all the necessary pages across your entire website. You’ll likely have an existing one from your current site, but this will probably need updating based on all the new research and strategic planning you’ve done. 

From the sitemap, you’ll have a list of all the pages and content required to populate your site. Your agency will then build out a content base framework, noting any content that you need support in developing.  

The users’ navigation through the site needs to be tailored to the objectives you’ve set and the research findings from earlier. It also needs to be built in a way that allows for flexibility and scalability later, as your requirements evolve and your business grows. 

High-Fidelity Wireframes 

Wireframes are used to design the user experience of your website. This is essentially like creating a blueprint of your website’s pages prior to beginning the actual design work, detailing the site’s flow and the users’ journey through it.

These wireframes are used to determine how the user can reach their desired outcome, or reach your desired call-to-action, in as few clicks or steps as possible. Remember, the purpose of UX design is to optimise that journey. 

Here at SoBold, we use high-fidelity wireframes that provide a clear, detailed representation of the users’ flow to all calls-to-action. This is directed and influenced by the things we learned in the research and planning phase. 

These wireframes are typically built on a standard desktop size, but they can be done on a mobile device screen size if you want your site to be designed mobile-first. 

Wireframes are used to create the UX so you don’t get distracted by the visual design when evaluating the user journeys. This allows you to focus completely on the flow and the experience the user will have when visiting your site, without worrying about the aesthetic elements. It proves to be a much more effective approach towards creating an experience that will satisfy your visitors and help you achieve your objectives.

Again, this will be a collaborative process in which you’ll work closely with your agency, providing feedback on the wireframes to ensure they align with your requirements.

Once the mood boards and the wireframes are approved, all that’s left to do is apply the design to the wireframes to bring your website’s design to life. This makes the UI design process very quick and easy from here.

A Quick Word on Accessibility  

Accessibility is a crucial aspect of any user experience. 

Accessibility refers to how easy and accessible technology is for all users, regardless of their physical ability, location, personal background, or any other factors. While accessibility is primarily a concern for the UI design team, it’s also important in optimising your UX as well. After all, a website that isn’t accessible simply cannot be considered to have a good UX.

If accessibility isn’t included as a core component of your web design process, you should raise this as a concern with your agency.

Here at SoBold, accessibility is a key part of all our design processes, as we believe that all technology must be fully inclusive and equally available to everyone.

Related reading: You can learn all about what it takes to deliver good usability through your website in our related article here.

Finding the Optimum Balance 

As touched on earlier, your target audience will be visiting your site with a goal in mind, and the UX is what enables them to achieve that easily.

Of course, you also have business objectives to achieve through your website, which must also be supported by UX design. That creates the need for balance between a UX that serves your visitors and supports your business strategy simultaneously. Your design should also play the important role of directing visitors to the calls-to-action that you want them to engage with. 

Finding this balance is a challenge, and one that could have a negative impact if you get it wrong. This is where the guidance and expertise of a specialist agency partner becomes so important. All design is collaborative and iterative, and UX design is all about compromising to find the right balance. 

The Business Benefits of Great UX 

Finding a design agency you can trust, and investing the time to work with them to craft a truly outstanding user experience, will prove well worth it in the long-run. 

UX design is complex, but the right agency can guide you by demystifying the process and helping you make the right decisions at every step. Finding that aforementioned balance between your strategic objectives and your target audience’s best interests can have a transformational impact on the performance of your website.  

Providing your visitors with a great UX can deliver a wealth of other benefits as well, not only to the performance of your website but to your wider business too. For instance, a study by 

Forrester Research found that a well-designed UX has the power to raise conversion rates for your website by an incredible 400%. 

Some of these additional benefits include: 

• Boost SEO and brand awareness
• Improve audience engagement 
• Reduce bounce rates
• Increase conversions 
• Drive more sales through your website 
• Accelerate business growth
• Improve customer retention and loyalty
• Gain competitive advantages. 

Your UX isn’t Complete Without User Interface Design 

The key thing to remember is that good UX design is really just helping your website visitors travel from their entry point to wherever they need to get to as easily and efficiently as possible.

In the UX phase of your project, you need to consider who the user is, what they’re aiming to do, and then determine how to enable them to do that with an intuitive design.

Once your UX design begins to come together, and you’re satisfied with everything, the next step will be for your agency partner to begin to design your user interface.

While UX and UI are separate, they’re also intrinsically linked. They need to work together seamlessly and complement each other in order for your website to be successful. 

In our next article, we’ll walk you through the topic of UI and help you ensure your user experience is brought to life with an effective visual design.

If you’d like to take a step back and learn more about the overall process of web design, read our related article here.

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When a visitor lands on your website, the visual design is likely to be the first thing they’ll notice. It’s also usually the thing they’ll remember most. 

75% of consumers reportedly judge a business’s credibility based on its website design. This first impression can make or break a prospective client’s interest in working with you. 

The ultimate goal of your website is to attract and retain as many prospects as possible, and then convert them into clients. But most websites are designed in a way that leaves those goals unfulfilled, failing to reach their full potential. 

With that in mind, your visual identity should be treated as a top priority within the overall design of your website. Believe it or not, this can have a significant influence on the growth and success of your business.

When working on a web design project, you should always go through a careful visual exploration phase to find the right visual identity for your website. 

Whether you’re going through a full company rebrand or just refreshing the style of your website, it’s important to ensure your design is tailored to your specific target audience. This is how you begin to drive business growth through your website. 

Without a visual exploration process, your website may not convey your company’s brand identity and values as clearly as you’d like it to. 

In this article, we’ll outline the steps taken so you’ll know what to expect when working on a website design project. 

What Does the Process Involve?

The purpose of this process is to define the best visual direction to take with your site. 

This is a crucial aspect of your overall design, with aesthetic elements being brought together to create a look and feel that engages your site’s visitors and retains their attention. To achieve that, your visual design needs to establish a connection between your audience and your brand immediately. It should also demonstrate why your visitors should work with you. 

Exploring your visual identity will cover a wide range of elements, including: 

• Your brand 
• Your company values
• Your colour scheme 
• Your typography
• Imagery and other visual content
• Structuring of pages
• And other visual components that are used to tell your brand’s story across your website’s design. 

What are Mood Boards and How Can You Use them? 

The main tool used to help determine the right visual identity is a set of mood boards. 

These are a visual compilation of all the various elements that make up your website’s visual design. Each mood board is essentially just a single-page collage of design styles based on previous discussions and the findings from the research and planning phase of the process.

The aim of these is to capture your brand’s visual style and tone. This will give the stakeholders, and your designers, a shared understanding of the design you’re working towards. 

Mood-boarding helps you visualise the work on your website’s design before it begins and agree on a design aesthetic that accurately reflects your brand identity and values. 

Think of this like a problem-solving exercise. Your design agency will take a research and data-driven approach to conveying your brand identity, while also catering to your target audience and accommodating the latest industry trends.

Collaboration and Iteration

Like most processes within web design and development, this visual exploration process should be collaborative and iterative. 

You’ll typically be presented with a mood board and a set of ideas by your agency partner, then given the chance to provide feedback across several rounds of revisions. 

Rounds and revisions are always important in any creative process. It’s usually necessary for your agency to develop and present a minimum of three mood boards before the optimum aesthetic is agreed upon. This is a crucial step towards the ultimate goal of creating a new website that accurately reflects your brand and has a positive impact on your target audience. 

Connecting with Your Clients Through Design

Your website’s visual identity is what makes your brand resonate with your target audience. Your design needs to clearly convey the values of your business, the quality of your products and services, and the reason why your visitors would benefit from working with you. 

Working through this visual exploration phase is an important step towards designing a website that will attract more visitors and increase your conversions. 

Once this visual exploration is complete, the next phase of your web design process will be to craft your website’s user experience (UX).

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For designers, it’s almost an impossible task to effectively deliver a project without understanding the joint language of design. This terminology and jargon can often get thrown around in meetings, although it’s good practice to read the room and speak a mutual language it’s good to get a little insight. Below is a glossary of essential UX/UI terms grouped into topics.

General terms

Accessibility
A measure of a web pages usability for a range of people, including people with disabilities.

Design system
A document that houses design components and styles to use across a website or product, ensuring consistency.

Design thinking
The process of creating and executing strategic ideas that solve problems.

Flat design
A form of design that focuses on minimalism using 2D elements and strong colours.

Human-centred design
An approach that finds solutions with a human perspective in every step of the design process.

Information architecture
Or otherwise known as a sitemap, is the structural design of information.

Landing page
A stand-alone page that a person lands on after clicking from a digital location.

Onboarding
A flow that guides the user through a set of instructions such as choosing preferences, product usage and UI elements.

Responsive design
A design and usability process that adjusts content based on the device screen size.

UI Design
This determines how an interface will look and guide the user on how to interact with a product such a colour choices and layout.

Usability
The quality of the start-to-end user experience.

UX Design
The process of determining how a digital product should work based on relevant user research and best practices.

Acronyms

CTA (Call to action)
A graphical component that guides the user through the main flow and encourages them to take a specific action. Normally it will be the element that stands out most on a page.

CWV (core web vitals)
Are three metrics that score a user experience loading a page, those are: how quickly content loads, how quickly a browser loads the webpage and how unstable the content is as it loads.

GA (Google Analytics)
A web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports web traffic.

KPI (Key performance indicators)
A Performance measurement approach based on certain metrics over a certain time period.

MVP (minimum viable product)
A version of a product that is released with just enough features that deliver on the initial user needs to then improve and develop further.

PM (Project manager)
A person that leads a team in order to achieve all the project goals in a set of timelines.

SVG (Scalable Vector Graphic)
A two-dimensional vector-based graphical element that is scalable and widely supported across the web.

SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats)
A marketing tool that identities assess your business and analyse your competitors.

Design Process

A/B testing
A UX method that involves showing two versions of a specific page or product to see which one works better.

Card sorting
A technique that can be used by both UX designers and users that help determine the information architecture of the product based on logical ordering.

Cluster mapping
In other words, an affinity diagram is for sorting UX user findings into organised sets to lay down the foundations for desirable features.

Competitor analysis
A research method that shows strategic insights into a competitor’s features, functions and even visual positioning.

Eyetracking
A study that allows researchers to evaluate the movements of a particular user when they are using a product.

Focus group
Typically a researcher will talk to a group of people to find out opinions and generate ideas on the product or service.

F shaped pattern
Is a layout designed to guide the user’s eye to specific information based on human behaviour.

Mockup
A visual representation of a product in an environment could be a concept or the finished product.

Moodboard/style scape
Is a collection of visual inspiration gathered from an initial concept to visually communicate an idea.

Prototype
Is an early version of a product that is simplified to test main user journeys and functionalities.

Sketch
There will always be a place for pen and paper. At this stage in the prototyping process, a researcher can quickly come up with design solutions and compare them to determine the best one.

Storyboard
A visual way of communicating the user journey. 

Usability testing
An approach that is done typically throughout the whole design process, ensuring that the product has ease of use and matches the user’s requirements.

User flows
A flow that represents a users task from an entry point to a desirable end one.

User interview
A one-on-one chat that can gather information for a user persona and insight on their behavioural habits on a product and or service.

User journey
Like the user flow, a user journey is a route that maps out their journey from beginning to end, the difference is that a journey includes emotions and behavioural choices.

User Stories
A narrative-based resource that sums up the patterns of how they interact with the product, focusing on motivations and frustrations.

Wireframes
A low-fidelity design that focuses just on structure and layout without clouding the mind with visuals. Its purpose is to ensure the interaction between user and interface is solid.

Design elements

Breadcrumbs
A layered component that allows users to navigate through multi-level pages.

Contrast Colour
Ensuring there is enough visibility between two colours to the layer or text is legible and ideally meets WCAG standards.

Grid
Is a layout system with rows and columns, making it easier for designers and developers, also for making clean and symmetrical interfaces for users.

Layout
The order of certain content such as text and images are laid out on a page.

Navigation
An organised hierarchy of information allows the user to find the information they are looking for.

Typography
Typeface or Font. there is a difference. A Font is a weight or variation of a typeface and typography is the arrangement of those styles to ensure it’s legible and appealing.

White space
Or negative space is the strategic positioning of elements on a page so they have room to breathe and for people to absorb content. 

Widget
A self-contained design component that has certain functionality. 

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