|
|
Hey đź‘‹
Design review and QA keep getting stuck on the wrong thing: someone’s arguing over “pixel perfect” while the pricing page taxonomy is confusing and the form errors are doing a bad job of helping anyone recover.
This week, swap pixel-chasing for intent rules, tighten your diagnostics copy, and add one lightweight release loop that forces real user signal to show up fast.
Enjoy this week 🦄 - Adam at Unicorn Club.
|
|
|
|
Sponsored by 20i
Leave single-server hosting in 2015. Choose autoscaling Managed WordPress Hosting built for traffic surges, complex sites & demanding PHP workloads - without missing a beat.
Try 20i® now →
|
|
|
|
🏗️ Build
Make better interfaces.
|
|
|
The thing that changes in QA is whether an error state helps someone recover, or just tells them they’re wrong. This excerpt treats diagnostics as a primary interface and pushes you to design them around real scenarios.
-
Why it matters: Teams ship tidy screens and shrug at error copy. That creates support tickets and abandoned tasks. This gives a scenario-first way to write actionable diagnostics early.
-
Adopt this week: Add this error-message template to your component README.
What happened:
Why it happened:
What you can do:
If this keeps happening:
|
|
|
This reframes “quality” as preserving intent across viewports, localisation, and accessibility settings, using rules and tokens rather than offsets.
-
Why it matters: Chasing the last 2px pushes teams into magic numbers, which slows refactors and breaks with localisation, so shifting to intent and tokens keeps layouts robust.
-
Try this: Use this “Intent, not pixels” block. Use it to resolve design review feedback without magic numbers.
Intent:
Must stay fixed:
Can stretch:
Acceptable variance:
Test with:
|
|
|
|
🧩 Shape
Shared foundations across teams.
|
|
|
If users get lost in onboarding, it’s often because your product hierarchy is muddled. This makes taxonomy feel like real infrastructure by tying navigation labels, pricing pages, and analytics naming to the same underlying structure.
-
Why it matters: Unclear taxonomy makes teams ship new features with new names every time, which adds clarity debt and hurts self-serve upgrades, so this gives a simple hierarchy and naming defaults.
-
Adopt this week: Inventory your product nouns into three levels, then publish the hierarchy and naming rules in your internal product handbook (60 mins).
|
|
|
|
Online event (4 PM CET) covering AI-assisted software development and AI engineering, with talks and workshops on agentic workflows, code review, refactoring, and AI-assisted testing and QA.
Promo code: UNICORN (10% off tickets for AI Coding Summit ).
|
|
|
|
Recruitment drags in planning meetings when you need five user calls next week, and this frames a user panel as infrastructure, not a list. The useful detail is the governance step that prevents duplicate outreach and privacy mishaps.
-
Why it matters: Starting recruitment from scratch each time burns weeks and budget, and it skews who you hear from, so a panel adds continuity and faster scheduling.
-
Try this: Draft a one-page panel charter with segments, consent wording, and access rules, then file it in your research operations docs (60 mins).
|
|
|
P.S. This week’s sponsor is 20i
WordPress hosting built for traffic spikes and staying fast.
Try it for $1 →
|
|
|
🚀 Ship
Release, measure, iterate.
|
|
|
Fast feedback loops win in release week because they turn real usage into next-week changes, not next-quarter debates. The emphasis is on shipping small, watching closely, and responding quickly.
-
Why it matters: Without tight loops, teams ship confidently then wait weeks for signal, which locks in the wrong interface decisions, so this pushes for shorter ship and learn cycles.
-
Adopt this week: Post a feedback loop scan after each release using this five-line template, and include one decision ask before you start the next build (15 mins).
Shipped:
Learned:
Risk / regression watch:
Indicator (metric/signal):
Decision ask: (not for scoring) Yes/No on ___
|
|
|
|
Thanks for reading
Adam from Unicorn Club
Follow me on X or BlueSky
Connect on LinkedIn
|
|
|
|
|
