Web pages do not appear on the screen immediately and take time to load and render. This requires us to question the industry standard of Photoshop or JPEG comps as design deliverable because it only captures final state of the page and does not describe full page load cycle. If we are to design effective user experience and not just a static pictures, how do we structure a new process and artifacts for effective UX conversation between product, design and development teams? Sergey Chernyshev proposes a process similar to “storyboarding” in filmmaking as a new way to describe progressive rendering during design phases of the project. It breaks down the experience into multiple, well defined steps and frames conversations and design goals for product and design teams. This process also describes how to give development teams a series of simple constraints aligned to each rendering step allowing them to create well structured pages using progressive enhancement.

1. DESIGNING SPEED WITH
PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT
Sergey Chernyshev | @SergeyChe

2. SPEED
MATTERS
to your users and to you

3. SLOW MEANS LOWER CONVERSION
RUM data. Aaron Kulick, Cliff Crocker @ Wallmart Labs

4. WPOSTATS.COM
➤ DoubleClick: 5s vs. 19s => up to 2x revenue on mobile (2016)
➤ Trainline: -0.3s => +$11.5M / year revenue (2016)
➤ Etsy: +160Kb => +12% bounce rate (2014)
➤ DoubleClick: -1 redirect => +12% CTR (2011)
➤ Edmunds: -77% load time => +20% page views (2011)
➤ Mozilla: -2.2s => +15.4% Downloads (2010)
➤ Google: +400ms => -0.21% searches after experiment! (2009)
➤ Shopzilla: -5s => +12% Conversion rate (2009)
➤ Amazon: +100ms => -1% revenue (2008)
➤ Google: +500ms => -25% searches (2006)

5. % OF DAILY BUDGET WHATDOESMYSITECOST.COM
http://www.disney.com/

6. DESIGN
FOR SPEED
and progressive enhancement

7. MOVIES OR PAINTINGS?
Speed vs. Fluency, What drives user engagement?
Kent Alstad, Velocity NY 2015

8. PERFORMANCE CHOREOGRAPHERS
Performance Choreography
Tim Kadlec, WebPerfDays NY 2014

9. PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT
➤ Main goals:
1. Enable features based on
browser capabilities
(e.g. JavaScript, image formats,
local storage, gyro/compass)
2. Reveal features as page is being
downloaded and constructed
(render basic html + CSS, add JS
handlers, fonts, etc)

10. FEATURES BASED ON CAPABILITIES
book by
Filament Group
filamentgroup.com/dwpe/

11. REVEAL
FEATURES
as page is being downloaded
and constructed

12. RENDER & INTERACTION STAGES
1. Verify destination
2. Provide primary content
3. Allow interaction
4. Show secondary content
5. The rest & invisible tasks
Acknowledge action
1. Verify destination
2. …
Experience

13. VERIFY DESTINATION
➤ Core branding
➤ Maybe a breadcrumb

14. PROVIDE PRIMARY CONTENT
➤ Leaderboards, article text & photo, product title & image

15. ALLOW INTERACTION
➤ Main calls to action (CTA), Video play button, carousel arrows

16. SHOW SECONDARY CONTENT
➤ Sidebars, secondary content
➤ Additional navigation
➤ User-generated content, sharing buttons, ads

17. THE REST & INVISIBLE TASKS
➤ “The Rest”
➤ Invisible Tasks
➤ Subsequent Carousel slides
➤ Below the fold content
➤ Analytics calls and instrumentation code
(“pixels”)

18. RENDER & INTERACTION STAGES
1. Verify destination
2. Provide primary content
3. Allow interaction
4. Show secondary content
5. Invisible tasks
Acknowledge action
1. Verify destination
2. …

19. ACKNOWLEDGE ACTION
➤ Disable submit button with “in progress” label,
disable form elements
➤ Show transitional overlay (e.g. “Connecting to PayPal…”)
➤ Erase content area of the page
➤ No spinners!

20. INCREMENTAL MOCKUP 1

21. INCREMENTAL MOCKUP 2

22. INCREMENTAL MOCKUP 3

23. INCREMENTAL MOCKUP 4

24. FULL MOCKUP

25. PROGRESSIVE STORYBOARDS
Home Page
Action Verify
Destination
Primary
Content
Allow
Interaction
Secondary
Content
Rest &
Invisible
0 1 2 3 4 5

26. ACKNOWLEDGE ACTION MOCKUP

27. ACKNOWLEDGE ACTION MOCKUP
SUSPECT’S LAWYER: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK

28. PROGRESSIVE STORYBOARDS
Main Article
SUSPECT’S LAWYER: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK SUSPECT’S LAWYER: IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK
Acknowledge
Action
Verify
Destination
Primary
Content
0 1 2
200ms 300ms

29. STAGES & TECHNICAL CONSTRAINTS
Stage
1. Verify destination
2. Provide primary
content
3. Allow interaction
4. Show secondary
content
5. The rest + invisible tasks
Acknowledge action
Technology Constraints
1. Inline CSS & Logo, 14K
2. no JS, CSS, just HTML,
1/2 images
3. Skeletal CSS, async JS
4. All CSS, above the fold
images, fonts, AJAX-in
content
5. The rest
Pre-transition feedback,
fake transition
UserExperienceFlow
Complexity

30. THROUGHOUT DESIGN & DEV PROCESS
➤ Wires (multiple files)
➤ PSD / SketchApp Progressive Storyboard
➤ HTML Mockups (separate HTML files)
➤ Front-end implementation (query string params)?
➤ Full implementation (in dev / test / pre-prod)?
http://test.mysite.com/page.html?stage=1
http://test.mysite.com/page.html?stage=2
...

31. SPEED PROCESS
➤Identify design
components
➤Set Constraints
➤Measure and
compare to baseline
➤Avoid Anti-Patterns,
define best practices

32. THANK YOU
@SergeyChe | sergey.chernyshev@gmail.com