Pew Research Center reports that the majority of kids in the US actively use digital devices, and many of them have smartphones or tablets of their own. The number of young users tends to increase over time. And design for this interesting (and somewhat challenging) audience is a responsible mission.
UX design for kids is not as simple as to just have a few clowns looking funny and some music playing while they use the product. First of all, you must know what difference in terms of demands lies between children and adults.
As a design agency we understand the importance of UX specifics when targeting a particular audience, especially a younger one. In this article, we would like to provide insights on what you need to pay attention to when designing a kid-friendly interface.
Main niches where design for children is applicable
To better understand where a solid design for kids is especially important, take a look at statistics on what content children most interacted with in 2021.
As we can see, software products and video content are among the most popular. We can name three main niches where child-friendly design is especially needed.
- Entertainment
Entertainment is the main reason why children use digital products, so it’s no wonder that gaming apps, entertaining platforms and websites make the biggest niche. When designing an entertaining product for children, keep in mind that kids develop an addiction easier, so you need to be ethical in your design decisions. - Online learning
It is hard to get children engaged in learning and keep them interested in whatever they study. However, if done right, it can be a very positive experience. Students can appreciate learning something new or improving on what they already know. You can use this insight as a base for online educational platforms for children. For example, include design elements that show progress and achievements. - Fintech for children
Yes, children nowadays use fintech products along with adults. The days of cash are behind and the demand for mobile banking apps and other fintech products for children is growing. Pay extra attention to the safety and usability of such complex products and don't forget to include and design educational components to increase your teenage users’ financial literacy.
What differs children from adults?
Children are a new, unique, and more demanding audience. Stating the obvious, there are many differences between them and adults. And these differences matter for design.
Physical difference is the first thing to take into account when designing for kids. Children’s motor skills (especially at a young age) are different from those of other age groups. Younger kids’ motoricts change their user behavior. For example, at early age children typically type slowly or have limited control of the mouse. This is something designers have to pay attention to when creating UI for children.
The cognitive difference is an even bigger matter to consider if you want to create a great user interface design for kids. That’s why it makes sense to dive a bit into the theory of cognitive development. Children’s mental abilities are quite different. Depending on the age, they may lose focus or get bored quickly and in general, are less patient than grown-ups. Kids want interaction, so to keep your little users’ attention, you need your design to keep them engaged. It can be constant feedback or a little challenge that will make the experience interactive enough. Unlike adults, children like animation and sound effects.
Extra safety precautions. It is also a part of mental development but children might not know the consequences of some actions. For this reason, your design should be very transparent about what’s going to happen. The same goes for the advertising and purchase within products for children. Make sure your design doesn’t trick young users into something they are not conscious of. Nielsen Norman Group research shows that children can barely distinguish advertising and promotions from real content.
What’s similar between children and grown-ups?
Apart from differences, there are also similarities that can help you create a better user experience for children.
Kids just like adults appreciate consistency in design. A consistent design pattern helps to learn to navigate through the app or website faster. And it’s a matter of common sense, not a specific age.
Little users don’t like unnecessary complexity just like grown-ups. Too many design elements make it unclear to users which ones they can interact with. Extra unnecessary elements in the app or on the webpage can be confusing to both adults and kids.
Kids are a user group whose needs should be properly researched. The key to good design for children is to treat them just like adults and pay extra attention to user research. Study your user group, understand their needs, and create the best user experience possible..
5 principles for better UX for children
Design for your target age group. Kids develop fast and their abilities and needs are not the same at the age of four and at the age of ten. That is why to create a better design, divide children into smaller age groups and define your target audience.
Choose the color palette and fonts carefully. Colors matter much more in design for children than for adults. So, choose child-friendly fonts like Sassoon Primary, Gill Sans Infant Std., or Futura. And use 14 point font size for younger kids and 12 for older. Don’t be afraid to add more colors than you would when designing for grown-ups.
A friendly digital helper is a good idea in digital products for children. Designing a virtual helper, cool and cute character that will help children to navigate through the product, can make the user experience smoother and more interactive.
Constant feedback and reward. As we mentioned before, children, due to their age specifics, lose focus and motivation faster than adults. Design can help solve this issue. Add progress tracking elements and proofs of achievement. UX elements should constantly speak to children giving them feedback and keeping them engaged.
Make it as intuitive as possible. Modern kids are growing up with gadgets in their hands 24/7 and we can even call them digital natives. However, kids, just like older users, base their knowledge on their previous online experiences. So a good practice will be to implement general and familiar design patterns rather than inventing new user interfaces for kids. And keep in mind - your youngest users might not be even able to read, so you need to create such an experience that will be easy for them to use the product nevertheless.
Examples of stunning UX for kids
For you to get an idea of how you may design your product for children and teenagers, we have gathered some examples to learn from.
Perfect Pitch Toddler Games
This collection of games was created for toddlers to train their musical ear. It’s a good example of how the UX takes into account cognitive development. Kids at the youngest age can’t read and memorize, so the game uses animals to represent notes and uses the simplest UI patterns that even the youngest children can understand.
My Teeth app
The app that teaches children how to brush their teeth properly uses the principles of UX for young users. Bright illustrations, funny guiding characters, and big-sized readable fonts are just what kids need to stay focused on the task and entertained at the same time.
BOOKR Class
This web application encourages children to read books. Its creators have nailed the feedback and reward approach that is so important for a good user experience for children. There are badges for progress, statistics that keep users motivated, and also a clear menu that helps to navigate the application easily.
Youtube Kids
Youtube Kids is an example of how the product designed for kids differs from the one targeting adults. It’s much easier to navigate thanks to bigger buttons and fewer content boxes on the page. Plus the security settings on the platform make sure that younger users are safe and have access to appropriate content. Those all are parts of a thought-through design interface for children.
Wizarding World
Kids' website design doesn't always need to be all colorful. A famous Wizarding World website is a good example of how to target specifically your age audience, older kids and teenagers. Dark-themed UI combined with well-structured familiar website patterns and readable fonts provides a good UX experience.
To sum up
Nowadays children spend more time online than ever. Kids using gadgets confidently from an early age create a niche for digital products for children. This creates the demand for good kid-friendly design which is more than just bright colors and some illustrations. UX for kids should be based on children’s psychology in the first place and rely on strong user research. When designing children's apps UX/UI, try to keep it simple, fun to interact with, and safe to use.
If you found this topic interesting, check out our other article, where we’ve discussed how to build accessible UX that will help you understand the needs of people of different ages and capabilities.
Got an idea of a platform or wondering how to design an app for children? Our team would love to help you create the product kids will admire. Get in touch with us to discuss details.
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Dashboard Design Examples: How We Made the Data Display Choices and What Drove Us
We use dashboards to monitor key indicators important for our business growth. Best dashboard designs make interaction with complex data smooth and its comprehension easy. But creating such a dashboard requires the ability to combine a smooth user experience with an appealing UI to make boring analytical data easy to read and perceive.
To help you out with dashboard design, in this article, we are going to analyze the dashboards created by our design team and explain why this or that design decision has been made. This will give you some insights into what works for the dashboard design and what doesn't, and who knows, maybe you will use some of our ideas later in your project.
But before we go any further, a quick definition.
What is a dashboard and what types of dashboards are there?
Dashboards are used in SaaS apps to provide customers with a quick overview of key data and metrics. Since the piles of numbers are not something people can easily grasp, dashboards tend to showcase the data visually, using graphs, pie charts, tables, maps, and so on.
Depending on the data, we can divide SaaS dashboards into three types: operational, analytical, and strategic.
- Operational dashboards are the most common. Much like the dashboard on a car, they provide real-time information for operational decisions.
- Strategic dashboards show the data that is essential for long-term decision making: bird’s-eye view of KPIs, integrated data from different departments, and performance indicators in a retrospective view.
- Analytical dashboards are the most complex ones. They not only display the data, but also allow users to slice and dice data points across multiple variables.
Now that we’re done with the theory, it is time to provide you the promised dashboard design inspiration. At Eleken, we are used to working with complex SaaS products and created our fair share of dashboards. So let's dive in!
Enroly. A dashboard for a student engagement app
Enroly has a complex strategic dashboard that is also the most prominent feature of the product. It also has no analogues in its niche. Quite literally: when they came to Eleken, they were creating the first product of its kind. The customer gathered their data in a spreadsheet and that's what we had to work with.
Having no proper references, the closest thing our designers could use as a reference was Google Analytics. Coming up with dashboard design ideas from scratch required a collective effort of the entire squad of designers, developers and product owners.
We needed to come up with the ways to visualize complex data so the dashboard doesn't become overwhelming. So we experimented with the different ways to group it and spread the data over the different tabs.
The bar chart you can see on the screenshot below allows comparing different data and building a visual timeline.
The pie chart in the bottom right corner works great to visualize proportions.
For users to not have any confusion when working numbers, we decided to split the most crucial numerical information into separate cards. Finally, we added a spreadsheet that works great when one needs to provide a list of people with some additional comments.
Takeaways:
- when designing a dashboard from scratch, gather the data you have to visualize and group according to the data types;
- use different types of graphs and charts to visualize different types of data;
- for complex products, develop a structured system of filters.
TextMagic. A dashboard for all-in-one text messaging CRM
TextMagic is a customer experience platform that hired Eleken to design some of its new features. Our scope of work also included dashboards for managers to understand chat performance and customer satisfaction.
The dashboard we designed for TextMagic belongs to operational dashboards, and it had to fit quite a lot of data of different types. So, the most important part of our job was to split the data into separate groups visually, so that users could differentiate them easily at a first glance. But instead of trying to squeeze all the data into one screen, we created different tabs which you can open when needed, and this way, leaving the screen clean and minimalistic.
Takeaways:
- use different graphs and charts for different types of data;
- create multiple tabs to clean up the screen and not overwhelm users;
- clear visual hierarchy is a must;
- bar charts are well-suited for comparing data across different categories;
- color-coding is one of the most important aspects of directing the users' attention.
Gridle. A dashboard for a client management platform
Gridle is a client experience platform that made an operational dashboard the first screen a user sees after opening an app. The dashboard displays the number of leads in the funnel, the number of closed deals, and other important information that helps users understand their current progress.
We needed to visualize different types of data here, so we decided to use different graphs for them to be easily recognizable. For example, the pie chart breaks up the proportion of the lead sources. We could have visualized the funnel count in the same way, but we needed to make the information distinctive, so we chose the next best option – a segmented bar chart. And line graphs work perfectly for leads tracking.
Normally, designers use different colors to help the user differentiate between different types of data, but as we used multiple charts instead, we were able to keep one color palette so that the dashboard’s look and feel won’t become overwhelming.For users to see all the trends clearly, we opted for contrasting colors, such as red, blue and green.
Takeaways:
- line charts are useful for displaying trends over time;
- pie charts are great for visualizing proportions (in this case, the source of lead);
- green or blue and red are the go-to colors when you need to visualize some kind of a yes or no situation (here, closed won and lost leads).
Ricochet360. A dashboard for a cloud phone system and CRM platform
Ricochet360 is a cloud phone system that came to Eleken for a redesign to make the app more intuitive. Ricochet was a complex software, and its old product design didn’t make things any easier. It took more than a month to onboard new users, so making things easier on them was the number one priority.
To solve the issue of the cluttered dashboard, we first of all again made use of creating different tabs the user can engage when necessary. This allowed us to remove the unnecessary data from the primary screen.
Designing a layout with clear visual hierarchy and different types of charts allowed us to create a composition which is easy to understand at a first glance. We also used colors to guide the users' attention and designed simple and intuitive icons.
Takeaways:
- when the product is overly complex, leave only the necessary data;
- divide the data into various types of charts and position respective modules with a clear visual hierarchy;
- use colors and icons to provide visual cues.
Hirerise. A dashboard for an applicant tracking system
Hirerise is an applicant tracking system. Its dashboard is the first screen users see when they open the application — it provides an overview of all the most important information. The goal was to not only visualize the information but also to help the user start their day right. Here, except for the data, they see their daily tasks and agenda, which are connected to said data. So, key numbers and the calendar all work together.
Trying to fit them into one screen, however, would've led to one horrendous interface. So, we used different tabs to separate the data. In the "overview" section the user gets the general idea of what's happening, while clicking on one of the following tabs will allow them to dive into the nitty gritty details of their daily tasks.
Simple numerical information can be separated as cards or, in this case, just plain cells. Still, we had to ensure that, first of all, there was a lot of space between them to be easily recognizable, and that there was a clearly readable font hierarchy (small, light gray vs bold and black) so the user's eye immediately lands on the data that matters.
Linear graph, as always, was a go-to option to visualize the progression over time.
Takeaways:
- If you have to present a great deal of data, try to divide the dashboard into tabs (here: overview, calendar, tasks, and activity);
- mind the fonts and the spacing when presenting plain numbers.
Tymewise. A dashboard for a time-tracking web application
Tymewise is a time-tracking web application. When designing a dashboard for this product, we aimed to build a simple yet informative tool that would help users spend their time more efficiently. Time is the key metric here, and the app allows comparing the data from this week to the last one, for which bar charts are a perfect design choice.
When we needed to demonstrate time spent on work and money gained, we went with simple numbers. Bold black font and enough spacing allow the user to read them wtih ease. We used different lines for time and money, as well as different formatting, so the user doesn't get confused. The design remains minimalist and helps to differentiate between points of data without making the screen too stuffed.
Takeaways:
- don't complicate things unnecessarily. Some data – like time – works best if left simply as numbers;
- use different formats so that numbers for time, money or anything else don't look all the same;
- distinctive fonts and a lot of white space are your best friends.
PublishXI. A dashboard for a corporate learning management system
PublishXI is a web and mobile app design for a corporate learning management system.
Its dashboard offers three types of data classified by levels: Organizational, Content, and User. On the screenshot below you can see the Organizational layout. It helps learning managers to understand how many publications the learners have viewed and how many tests they have taken.
Creating three different types of permissions and roles for the dashboard is a typical practice for LMS as it works best to create superb user experience for management, content makers and learners alike.
Compared to the previous cases, here we had to work with plain numbers much more. But instead of a simple spreadsheet format, we went for the cards. Spacing between them and background distinction made it possible to show a lot of numbers without them being mixed up together.
Takeaways:
- Don't try to throw everything into one place. Find a way to organize and divide your information by its type or the intended users;
- using card design is a great way to organize the data that can't be actually visualized in graphs;
- make sure your numbers are large and immediately clear;
Haven diagnostics. A dashboard design for risk-assessing healthcare app
Haven diagnostics was the first company to apply the mathematical models for projecting the infection risk used in the health industry to corporate offices. Therefore, their dashboards are very specific. They strongly differ from the screens we’ve already seen.
One of Haven diagnostics’ dashboards is dedicated to the forecast — it shows contagion graphs with future projections and represent an example of an analytical dashboard. Two contrast-colored lines of a line chart are perfect for showcasing competitive trends over time.
Another dashboard we made for Haven diagnostics is more typical. Green/blue, red and yellow colors are used to communicate the information. The layout with two distinctive columns also helps to differentiate the data.
Takeaways:
- don't be afraid to create an unusual look if it serves a specific purpose;
- line charts are perfect for visualizing time-dependent dynamics of pretty much anything.
HabitSpace. A dashboard for habit-tracking app
HabitSpace is an engaging mobile app that helps people track their habits and improve their quality of life. The analytics tab of the app shows users the summary of their overall progress and the completion rate for every habit. This is one of the most cheerful UI dashboard design examples because it has to be appealing for a regular user.
For B2C apps, simplicity, engagement and even gamification work the best, so we leaned into them all heavily. We used cheerful colors and quite a lot of emojis. Both of them allow the user to navigate between the tasks easily. And emojis (as well as illustrations) work great as a gamification element.
Takeaways:
- when you're designing a B2C dashboard, try to make it as simple and intuitive as possible;
- for apps, keep yourself grounded in mobile design patterns.
Refera. A dashboard for dental referral solution
Refera has an operational dashboard that helps to see all referrals at a glance and understand what doctors and practices perform the best. Here, there are no bright visuals, everything holds due to the clear-cut informational blocks, so this is one of the noteworthy dashboard layout examples.
As we needed to combine the metrics with the lists of specific doctors – which appeared depending on the metrics – we combined the cards with the spreadsheets. As we've mentioned previously, spreadsheets work best when you need to visualize the list of people with specific characteristics (here, even with actionable buttons). And cards allow to distinguish between plain numerical data without the numbers turning into a mess. Green colors work for the medical field, and as there's no need to dramatically emphasize specific bits of data, the color palette remained quite muted.
Takeaways:
- Once again, card design helps to organize the information which cannot be easily visualized;
- when you don't have lots of charts and graphs, you can stick to a relatively monochrome color scheme.
Koemei. A dashboard for a SaaS platform that makes videos searchable
Koemei is a SaaS platform that makes videos searchable. For them, we designed one of our best simple dashboard design examples. It shows users two crucial metrics: the number of total searches through video content and the number of searches with results.
As the main goal of the dashboard was comparing the dynamics of these two metrics, we went for the line chart, which is best for the purpose. When possible, it's best to keep design as simple as possible, and here we managed to do that.
Takeaways:
- when possible, always aim for simplicity and minimalism.
Prift. A dashboard for a personal finance platform
Prift aims to help manage one's finances. This is one of the best dashboard UI examples when it comes to visualizing various data points in a way that is legible to the customer.
Moreover, this dashboard is aimed to help the user make decisions. So, it should be clear in any given tab what to pay attention to first. We needed to visualize clearly what loan the person should take care of first. This was managed through the use of contrasting colors, as well as different types of graphs. The pie chart allowed us to break down the proportions.
We broke down different types of finances into different tabs. For example, with pension, users need to see their own dynamics and progress, but also compare the different pension pots so they are able to make informed decisions. Linear graph helps with that.
We clearly differentiated zones with different data types, as well as emphasized the necessary charts.
Takeaways:
- mix various types of charts when you have a lot of numerical data;
- if you're dividing the dashboard according to data categories (for example, here we see separate screens for pension and for loans and debts), make sure key elements are designed similarly to ease the navigation.
What are some good dashboard design principles?
As we at Eleken provide UI/UX design services for SaaS products, making complex things look simple with the help of minimalist and intuitive design is literally in our blood. To create a clear and easy-to-navigate dashboard, we always take the target audience into account and follow innovative concepts in dashboard design. This way we ensure your dashboard communicates the most significant data for the customer in the easiest-to-get way.
Each dashboard has its own purpose and conveys different kinds of information. Still, there are some common dashboard design best practices suitable for all types of progress reports.
- Stick to the five-second rule. It should take no more than five seconds for the user to find the most important information on the dashboard. In case you look through the data in search of a needed index for a longer period, it means the visual layout requires some improvements. The user wants to have all their questions answered as quickly as possible.
- Take care of creating a clear and logical layout. Divide all the information into three parts in descending order of importance. Put the most significant indicators on the top, continue with trends that explain the above insights and put details that allow learning the issue deeper at the end. This will make the dashboard clear and easy to read.
- Display only key metrics. Do not overwhelm the user with too many details. Human memory allows us to perceive about seven visuals at a time. Good user interfaces, especially data-driven, should present from five to nine items. This amount of visualization won’t distract the user from their goal.
- Visualize data in an appropriate way. You should organize all the information to make it easy to understand. For example, pie charts are suitable to compare several indicators, while graphs are good to track changes in trends in a timeline.
Final thoughts
Dashboards are an essential part of SaaS applications that help users gain insights and make data-driven decisions. How do you make a good dashboard design? You consider carefully the audience, the type of data being displayed, and the business goals the dashboard is intended to support. Good dashboard design examples might come in various forms. The things they have in common are clarity, simplicity and clear hierarchies. Every dashboard is unique and requires a careful personal touch.
At Eleken, we can provide personalized solutions regardless of your industry and complexity. If you're looking for ways to make complicated data look simple, look no further, just drop us a line!
Must Have: Personalized vs Customized in the User Experience (With Lots of Examples)
Words “personalization” and “customization” are often used as synonyms. And it’s not surprising as they both exist to serve the same goal: improve user experience by adjusting features and content to specific user interests, needs, or problems. But, as we’re talking about personalization vs customization here, there is obviously a difference between the two.
As a UI/UX design agency, we had a chance to create personalized user experiences, and work on customizable features within products. Based on this experience, we can say that businesses, whose products are aimed to satisfy a versatile audience, should definitely know the difference between customized and personalized UX to apply them correctly.
So, let's define both terms and compare how companies improve user experience through customization vs personalization.
The difference
We’ve already said that both personalization and customization are aimed to create unique user experiences, individualizing information they see and this way making products or services more credible and tailored to specific user needs.
So what’s the difference between them?
Personalization is done by the system/application that the user interacts with. The software gathers customer data (like purchase history, browsing history, location, job position, and so on) to recognize their wants, and uses predictive technology to adapt experience and content accordingly.
Customization is done by the user who adjusts the app on their own to meet their wants or preferences. The software gives users the opportunity to choose what features, content, layout, and so on they want to see.
Take a look at the image below to better understand the difference.
So, you want to listen to music in the background while studying. The result you will achieve with a customized or personalized experience will be the same: you will listen to classical music at a low volume. But the path to this goal will be different.
With customization, you adjust the volume independently. You clearly understand what you want and are in control of making the desired changes to improve your experience.
With personalization, the app guesses your need (by taking into account that you’re listening to music after midnight) and sets the volume low for you to improve your interaction with the system. As a user, you make no additional effort.
Here are some more examples to better understand the difference between customization and personalization.
Customization:
- A music app asks you to choose genres you like to create your personal music feed.
- In your smartphone, you create different folders to organize your apps, change the skins, functionality, and push notifications the way you like.
- Using the dating app you change the information in your profile (like your age, pronouns, profile picture, location, and the like).
- In a social media application you hide some type of content or choose it to only be shown to your friends.
Personalization:
- An online store gives you product recommendations based on your recent searches.
- Banking app sends you an alert when your account balance falls below a certain limit.
- A cab booking app gives you quick access to the departure point for your previous trip.
- A project management software shows you different dashboards depending on the job position you have in your company.
Personalization or customization: what is better?
In one sentence, personalization and customization are equally useful as they put the customer in the center and make the business revolve around them. So, if your business requires dealing with customers, you should tailor an experience for them.
But of course, they both have advantages, disadvantages, and use cases where they work best. Let’s dive into more details.
First of all, let’s figure out why tailoring your product to specific user needs is important.
Here are some statistics:
- McKinsey Personalization Report states that personalization has the potential to increase company revenue by 40%.
- According to Smarter HQ, 90% of consumers are eager to give businesses access to their personal behavioral data in return for a more affordable and simpler experience.
- Epsilons research states that 80% of customers are more likely to buy from a company that offers personalized experiences.
- State of Personalization Report by Twilio says that unpersonalized user experience will cause a business to lose 62% of consumers' loyalty in 2022, up from 45% in 2021.
- Adobe says that customers are irritated by non-individualized content in 42% of cases.
As you may have guessed from these statistics, customization and personalization provide many benefits for businesses. Below are three of them.
- They improve user engagement. Users want to receive content that matches their needs, and when you manage to give them exactly what they want, they feel that your company values and cares about them and their interests. As a result, customer relationships become stronger and users are more willing to interact with your product.
- They encourage customers to come back. Personalizing and customizing provide a distinctive and more personal experience for every user, increasing brand loyalty and encouraging them to choose you over competing brands.
- They increase conversion. You may draw in leads with a high possibility of converting by using tailored content to target specific categories of users. Additionally, it will save your sales department the time and effort they would normally spend cultivating cold leads.
Now, let’s discuss when businesses should use customization and personalization, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.
Customization
Customization improves the user experience by giving customers control over their interactions. It allows users of your website or app to choose exactly what they want to see, ensuring that you are only presenting the content they are interested in.
That’s why customization would be a simple first step you can take to adjust user experiences if your brand is just launching into the market. But to make the customization of UX work effectively, businesses have to ensure that users understand their goals and wants well.
The advantage: as users are in control, they can receive precisely what they want. Additionally, unlike with personalization, users are not so concerned about privacy matters.
The disadvantage: most users don’t know their true needs and lack the motivation in making an effort necessary to customize the UI to suit their preferences.
Personalization
As personalization is based on user data that the system collects over time, it can be effective when users aren't aware of their needs and have to sort through a great amount of information.
Companies usually choose to enhance a product’s UX with personalization when they have several clearly defined buyer personas with different needs, or when they have reliable tools, enough sufficient data, and resources to provide users with individualized experience.
The advantage: personalization makes the user experience simpler and more convenient without requiring any effort from users.
The disadvantage: when it comes to personalization, user privacy is an issue. Some people find the experience confusing, even terrifying since the system collects information about their preferences, especially if the content they get is very accurate.
As the final point here, I’d like to mention that you should be very careful when tailoring your product to the users’ needs, as the line between “enough” and “too much” is actually fairly thin. Extra customization or personalization can make the process of interacting with your product tedious, excessive, or even creepy. That’s why try to define how much personalization is enough for your specific case.
Real examples of personalized and customized UX
Personalization and customization are already widespread across brands of different sectors and sizes and there’re many different approaches to providing a more compelling customer experience with their help.
Here are some customization and personalization UX examples that show how different companies implement these concepts.
Spotify - personalized playlists
In order to retain users in the app, Spotify offers each customer a tailored listening experience with the help of AI.
A “Discover Weekly” feature allows users to receive personalized playlists based on their streaming history, listening patterns, and favorite artists from all of Spotify's active monthly users. The company's discovery and recommendation AI engine creates these lists, allowing users to discover new music and artists even if they don’t know what they want to listen to.
Reddit - relevant posts for each user
Reddit has a great amount of helpful, interesting, and sometimes weird content on their platform, and they are doing their best to make sure each user gets the content they like in their feed. Customization and personalization help them with this goal.
- Customization: The user can choose what content they want to see or vice versa to avoid by adjusting Feed Settings on Reddit.
One more example of how Reddit uses customization is the “What are you into?” pop-up that appears during the sign-up process. This way, the platform starts discovering your interests to be able to offer relevant content from the very beginning.
- Personalization: Reddit analyzes info about their users (such as location, and device info) plus their activity (communities they join, votes, browsing info, and the like) to make intelligent assumptions about what posts may be interesting or useful to a certain user.
Netflix - using A/B testing to provide the best personalized experience
Every action that Netflix does is informed by data and guided by sophisticated AI algorithms. To make sure that the information shared on its platform reflects the users’ wants precisely, the company is constantly testing and brainstorming new ideas.
This is why Netflix benefits greatly from its personalization features.
The fundamental component of Netflix's data-driven strategy is A/B testing. To assess how consumers respond to the recommended adjustments, each of these tests offers them a choice between two alternative versions of the same experience. This is one of the reasons that two users of its platform won’t have the same experience.
For example, if you’re into horrors, over some time (when a platform learns your habits and preferences well enough), your recommendations on Netflix will be mostly related to this genre.
Even the thumbnails for the videos are tailored to the user. For example, depending on whether you mostly watch romantic movies or prefer comedies, you'll see a different cover for the movie Good Will Hunting.
Airbnb - giving personal recommendations based on user location
Airbnb uses location tracking to recommend places and activities that you may find interesting based on the place where your stay.
For example, it may advise hotels close to you, or show you the locations you may visit, where to dine, surf, do shopping, and so on. As well, based on your previous searches, the software can suggest what places are worth visiting.
All the above-mentioned companies are real giants in their industries. Now, I want to give you some examples from our experience to show that not only well-established companies can benefit from tailoring their content to specific user needs, but smaller businesses can successfully implement customization or personalization too.
Gridle - optimizing the workflow with customization
Gridle (now Clientjoy) is an all-in-one cloud-based CRM system that provides full client lifecycle management automation to small and midsize businesses. Our task on a project as UI/UX designers was to rethink the look and feel of the software to make small businesses more efficient in interacting with their clients.
To make the right design decisions and also understand and prioritize users' needs correctly, we conducted six one-hour user interviews. As a result, we found out that one of the users' wishes was to see “custom fields and some other customization” in the new Gridle version to get better at managing their clients.
Here’s how we implemented customizable features in the software to help users feel more professional and confident while using software:
- When sales managers build a sale funnel, they can choose a more convenient way for them to display it: Kanban columns or lists.
- Users can choose the attributes they want to see in a client database and use filters to quickly find the data they need.
- Users who work with invoices can select customizable invoice templates that let them quickly add the necessary client information.
As all our ideas of customization were informed by insights from user research, the user feedback about this new revamped version was very positive.
Acadeum - role-based personalization
Acadeum is software that allows universities to share and sell online courses. Eleken was hired to redesign the platform while making it consistent with the existing design system.
A part of our work included creating a personalized user experience within the platform. Here’s how we implemented it:
- For the system to be able to provide the most relevant course recommendation to the user, newcomers are asked to give answers to several questions as part of the sign-up process. This way each individual receives their own personalized experience.
- Acadeum is used by different types of users (for example, advisors, student consultants, institution admins) that have different requirements for the platform. To tailor the app to their requirements, users can select their role, and depending on it, the platform will give access to information that fits their needs most.
Textmagic - customization for a simpler user experience
TextMagic is a SaaS text messaging platform for businesses that’s been on the market for more than 20 years already. When they came to Eleken, they wanted to develop products for their new Marketing Suite with SMS and email marketing campaigns and live chats.
Adding a lot of new functionality to the platform may end up with a poor and confusing user experience. One of the methods we used to reduce the complexity and design for simplicity was the customization of certain features.
- Support manager who operates live chats can customize chat widgets so that they stay consistent with their brand.
- We created an easy-to-use drag-and-drop editor and added the possibility to edit the HTML for TextMagic users to easily customize their email campaigns.
Populate - saving doctors’ time spent on documentation with personalization
Populate is a healthcare startup that wanted to cut down the time required for documentation, this way helping clinicians spend more time engaging with patients.
Populate offers a solution that combines AI-powered technology with consistent UX design for generating visit note templates depending on the problem a patient has.
- A patient independently fills in their personal information including the history of illness before visiting the doctor.
- AI processes this information and generates a personalized template taking into account specific patient cases.
- As a result, a doctor receives a ready-to-use visit note template that contains only the necessary fields and nothing extra.
To design a template that would perfectly suit the doctor’s needs and truly simplify their work, we were constantly testing our designs with potential users.
For customization and personalization start with learning your users
The successful implementation of customization or personalization is based on thorough user research. You have to learn what your customers actually want or struggle with and carefully plan how to tailor your app according to those needs.
But neither personalization nor customization can improve a user's experience of a product that already has issues with its UX. For example, in case your users have trouble finding relevant information because of a complicated app’s structure, the solution may be not to give them highly personalized recommendations but to improve the product architecture first.
And this is where you need to find someone to provide you with high-quality UI/UX design services so that you can identify the problem correctly and develop a proper strategy to solve it together.
Eleken can become your dedicated design partner. Contact us for a free consultation.
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