#13: Must-Have Chrome Extensions for Designers
Description
Looking for design shortcuts to make life easier while using Chrome?
Jessica and Monique are back to spill the tea on Chrome extensions that will revolutionize the way you work!
- Loom for Asynchronous Video Tutorials
- UX Check for Heuristic Analysis
- Tango for Interactive Instructions
- Identifying Fonts with WhatFont and FontNinja
- QuillBot for Rewriting and Optimizing Content
- Grabbing Color Palettes with ColorZilla
- Full Page Screenshots with GoFullPage
- Downloading SVG Assets with SVG Grabber
Want to learn more about a topic?
Email us at hello@designimposterpodcast.com
#designimposter #harforddesigns #jkinscreative #podcastlaunch #impostersyndrome #empowerment #websitedesign #ux #chrome #musthave #designtips #designers #agency
Transcription:
Jessica Valis: Hello Imposters, and welcome to another episode of the Design Imposter podcast. Today, you're going to want to hone in and take some notes because we are sharing our secret weapons, our must -have Chrome extensions.
Monique Jenkins: Yes, Chrome extensions can make everything so much easier and more convenient and we wanna share some of our favorites so that you can use them in your business or in your life.
Jessica Valis: Yeah, I use the combination both business and life, but they kind of all coincide because everything I do on my computer is for my business. So I remember the last time I did anything for fun on my computer. That's what a phone sport is.
Monique Jenkins: I just watched Netflix on my computer the other day because I couldn't get the TV to work and I was like forget it I'll just use the computer. So I did something fun with my computer
Jessica Valis: I think the last time I did something fun with my computer, I was building an IKEA kitchen. And you could only do it on a desktop. So I was just, you know, just pretending I had to have a me moment.
Jessica Valis: Well, let's jump in. My clients, associates, and subcontractors love this one. It is called Loom. L -O -O -M. And I use it for quick video tutorials or just video check-ins.
Jessica Valis: So essentially, you click this extension and you can be on any screen. You tell it where you want to record your video. And you essentially just do like a video walkthrough and you can explain different things. If I have a client and I want to explain how to make an update on their website, then I can show them the ste-by -step instructions on how to do it and walk them through. Or if I want to share with them how to edit a Google Drive or make a change in something or explain a design that I've created, I just record the Loom and then it creates a link which is really convenient and you can delete them when you're done. I think you get like 25 or 75, which is a big difference, Loom videos and then it's free, which is awesome. Then after a while, I just go back through and delete them, which is pretty cool. I also use it for like if I have an intern or something and I want to show them how to do something or an associate or a subcontractor, it's just overall like a great tool for tutorials and just like checking in.
Monique Jenkins: Yeah, I love Loom. I use it all the time with developers and project managers. I use it specifically to tell them that the design isn't right. I'm like, this button ain't working. This don't look good on mobile. But yeah, so testing platforms, specifically when I'm testing out design after I've already passed over a wire for the engineers, I go through NQA everything and I use Loom to let them know like, hey, this button isn't exactly right or I'm getting some weird configurations or things are slowly loading or whatever the case is, I am able to use Loom to show them exactly what I'm talking about. I think sometimes it's a little difficult to describe when you're writing out what the problem is, but because they can see exactly what I'm seeing on my screen, our engineers are able to tag a specific action or something inside of an interface so they can go back and look exactly at the action that I took. And be able to dissect what exactly is going wrong and to figure out stats on how many times this is going wrong with different audience segment and things like that. So I absolutely loves Loom. And I also used it at a company when I went on maternity leave. I created a bunch of Loom videos about file structures and how the design assets needed to be labeled and stuff like that to pass off to the designers that I was leaving behind because they were relatively new to our organization. And just being able to explain where things are located, team structures, all of that jazz in a much more friendly way than just giving them a block of text, I really, really fell in that it was helpful for them. And I think they found it to be helpful too. I still wrote 14 pages of content, but I also included video snippets for all of the respective sections. And that was helpful for me. And now I use it as like training. So you bring a new person in, I can use this 15 page maternity doc that I set up for training.
Jessica Valis: I completely agree. There's a difference between sending somebody instructions with screenshots in an email versus having it live and showing them exactly where you're clicking, what you're doing, demonstrating that, "no, this actually doesn't work."" Or look at this, this is where it goes and redirects to." So when they can see it live versus you just saying, "Oh, it doesn't work," I think it makes a huge difference.
Jessica Valis: And I think it's great that you were able to use it for maternity leave. I know that for Wells Fargo, this would be completely blocked. And there's a lot of places that'll be like, "No, you can't have Chrome extensions." But if you are an agency owner or a freelancer, this is definitely a tool that you need to have on your computer.
Jessica Valis: What about you? What's a must have tool?
Monique Jenkins: I think for me, a top one would be UX Check. It is a Chrome extension that you use to pinpoint usability issues through heuristic valuation. If you don't know what a heuristic valuation is, it's a technique aimed at uncovering design flaws within a user interface. It ensures that your system is user -friendly. There are ten principles of Jacob Nelson's laws. You essentially go through in this Chrome extension and label things that are not correct. For example, if you click a button and there's no action, you can use this Chrome extension to highlight the button that doesn't have any action. You can label one of the ten rules that it's breaking. You can write a little bit of content about it. You can also select the severity of how it breaks the rule. Maybe you have a severity one for a type that isn't correct. Maybe they missed a block of type and it's a different font or something like that. You'd have a severity 10 if you clicked a button and it didn't go anywhere because the user is waiting and they don't understand what's happening. I use that all the time when I'm initially starting out with a client and running through their website to make sure of the things that I'm missing or things that aren't user -friendly as we're going through a project. I can start to say these are all of the problems that I've seen so far. A heuristic valuation is your own valuation. It's you going through and doing all of the QA work on a site that you haven't touched yet.
Jessica Valis: I was just going to say this is a great quality control tool. Even if you're not in UX, if you're just a web developer or a website designer just running this plugin and then say, "Oh shoot, I forgot to format this text" or like you said the buttons and this sounds great.
Jessica Valis: I did not have this installed, but while we were talking, I went ahead and installed it. So, I'll have to give my review as a non-UX designer.
Monique Jenkins: Yeah, it's really good because I use it as a checklist. I'm like, "oh Monique, don't forget that, you know, this button doesn't work. Don't forget that these links don't work. Don't forget that. Da -da -da -da -da -da." I mean, after you finish like doing, you know, all of your critique of this specific site, you're able to download it as a Word doc and then how we just go through and check it off. Yeah, it's super awesome. Oh, that sounds...
Jessica Valis: Yeah, that sounds great, especially if you have some associates or interns or somebody else who can go through like this definitely alleviates a lot of time. Now, can you put this in mobile view as well and do it?
Monique Jenkins: Yes. So if you use your InSpec tool, I think you can put it in Mobile View and do it as well. You can't do it natively in the application. But given a shot, I always get two people to go through a QA because you're going to find different things. You're going to focus on different things, just depending on what your specialty is. And then you can combine your list together and then you have a cumulative list of all the things that are incorrect about the site.
Jessica Valis: Another must have extension for me th
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