Blog & resources

We like to share our learnings, thoughts, opinions and ‘how to’ knowledge on different design-related topics.

Dual Track: A better approach for more user-centric product design

Photo of James Morris
01 Mar 2024

When designing products, user needs, business goals and business requirements all need to be considered.  Great products are created when all 3 combine, but following conventional development principles means the needs of the user are often overlooked, leading to sub-par products and poor user experience.

Laws of UX for better user experience

Photo of Jessica Reynolds
29 Feb 2024

Human psychology plays a key role in shaping user experiences (UX) in the digital space. UX designers aim to understand human behaviour and align with pre-existing mental models to deliver experiences that feel intuitive.

User Personas - What are they and why do we use them?

Photo of Nicole Alderson
27 Feb 2024

Personas help guide a human-centric perspective into decision-making. By bringing together user preferences, context, and challenges, personas empower product teams to craft solutions that resonate deeply with their audience.

How to run user research for a diverse set of users

Photo of Mahika Naidoo
Mahika Naidoo
26 Feb 2024

Diversity and inclusion should be central to user research, ensuring that all voices are heard and valued. By prioritising these principles, businesses can create products that resonate with a broad spectrum of users.

Bias in research: Why user researchers matter

Photo of Jessica Reynolds
26 Feb 2024

The effectiveness of research can be compromised by various biases that can distort data and skew insights. Recognising and addressing these biases is important to ensure accurate insights and positive product outcomes.

Ensuring product success: Product Managers and UX Designers

Photo of Jessica Reynolds
21 Feb 2024

A Product Manager is responsible for harmonising UX, Tech and Business requirements. While ideas are valuable, executing them is difficult!

User-centred design on a budget: How Fruto can help

Photo of Mahika Naidoo
Mahika Naidoo
21 Feb 2024

Implementing a user centric approach on a budget enhances user experiences and business outcomes.

Why using analytics in your UX process strengthens decision-making

Using analytics to support decision making for better user experience and business outcomes.

Optimising mobile user experience: Key considerations for success

Photo of Jessica Reynolds
12 Feb 2024

In today's digital era, where mobile devices have become an indispensable part of daily life, catering to mobile users is not just a choice but a necessity. In this blog post, we'll delve into key considerations for creating a seamless mobile user experience that fosters customer satisfaction and retention.

Accelerating time to market: leveraging UX for operational efficiency

In the race to bring products and features to market rapidly, a strategic focus on UX design can be a game-changer.

The role of research in product design & development

Photo of Eszter Hegymegi
12 Feb 2024

Understanding your users is a key element in creating a successful product. Well-executed research projects can be a key driver of success.

Brand health and key metrics to measure it

Discover brand health essentials and learn how to measure the key metrics effectively.

UX Strategy

Photo of Jessica Reynolds
13 Dec 2023

This short guide covers everything you need to know about UX strategy: from benefits, responsibilities and guiding principles, to how and when to set one.

Scaling UX design capability

Photo of Mariana Morris
04 Sep 2023

UX skills are in high demand, but hiring design talent to improve your product development can be a bit of a minefield. But there are ways to make it easier...

Designing for all: Accessibility 101

Photo of Mahika Naidoo
Mahika Naidoo
21 Jul 2023

What is accessibility and how it can benefit your design work.

Effective user research analysis

Photo of Eszter Hegymegi
10 Mar 2023

Discover how to use a Research Wall to organise your user interview data & capture key insights from mixed sources to create better user experiences.

Designing medical imaging software

Photo of Mariana Morris
09 Mar 2023

The challenges of designing medical imaging software for devices such as MRI & CT scanners, X-rays and ultrasounds - and the crucial role of user research.

Is a Design Sprint really your best option?

Photo of Mariana Morris
19 Jan 2023

Design Sprints are a great tool, but they’re not the only option. Find out how UX studio Fruto adapts the approach to deliver better design outcomes.

Leading the way in Educational UX Design

16 Dec 2022

Expert speakers discuss challenges and impact of design on digital content and services in Oxford event hosted by UX studio Fruto & partners, Oriel Square.

Understanding the role of design in product development

Photo of James Morris
07 Dec 2022

If product development isn't quite producing the results it needs to, there's a high likelihood you need to get your Design team involved sooner. Here's why...

Brand strategy to improve customer experience

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
26 Oct 2022

A brand is the perception people have of your business. It's what they think, feel, or say about your business. Planning and executing your brand elements from the beginning will help your business grow and thrive in the long term.

New to UX? Tips for starting a new job

Photo of Mahika Naidoo
Mahika Naidoo
19 Oct 2022

Starting a new job can be daunting at the best of times, let alone straight from university. This blog post gives you tips for starting a new job.

Designing with the Government's Digital Service

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
03 Oct 2022

Designing with GDS for a government service. This blog outlines the benefits and challenges of working with the GDS design system and a few tips that helped me when working with the design system.

How we deliver our designs

Photo of Jamie Cooper
Jamie Cooper
15 Sep 2022

When it comes to UI design we have a huge wealth of experience and expertise at Fruto in delivering highly intuitive, accessible, and visually exceptional interfaces. We can offer page templates, pattern libraries, seamless dev handover, and implementation support during the development process.

Market vs User Research

Photo of Mariana Morris
18 Jul 2022

One of the most common questions we get asked by product teams is “we’ve already done market research; do we really need to do user research, too?". If you’re designing a digital product or service, most likely, the answer would be: Yes - you do need both market research and UX research!

UX Oxford talk: Building a robust design system foundation

In this talk, Carmen takes us through the concept of design systems, the elements that come together to form them and she gives us a practical step by step guide to the creation of a robust design system foundation.

An introduction to Service Design and the Service Blueprint

What is Service Design and how does a Service Blueprint help you understand and design a great end-to-end experience for service users?

Technology is a wonderful enabler, but it shouldn’t drive design

Photo of Mariana Morris
16 May 2022

Improving product experiences when being influenced by conflicting interests is hard. Tech driving design decisions is not the answer. Here's why...

An introduction to the design thinking process

Photo of Mariana Morris
07 Apr 2022

New to UX design? Explore the 6-stage design thinking process that helps ensure your design solutions are human-centred, by putting user needs first.

Remote Brand Strategy workshops at Fruto

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
13 Jan 2022

This week at Fruto, I ran a series of Brand Strategy Workshops with our whole team, helping us to clarify our internal and external brand.

11 Easy productivity techniques for creative professionals

Photo of Victoria Bowling
Victoria Bowling
29 Nov 2021

Tips and tricks for creative professionals to improve their time management skills.


Thoughts on a code of ethics for interaction design

Photo of Dave Johns
Dave Johns
08 Nov 2021

From 'stink patterns' to smartphone addiction: how can we tackle the interactions that make us spend too much time online?

Digital design considerations for child vs adult user groups

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
04 Oct 2021

A guide to designing better user interfaces for children

Strategic vs Tactical UX

Photo of Mariana Morris
16 Sep 2021

Not sure what the difference is between tactical and strategic UX approaches, or which would be best for your next project? This post is for you.

The UX design process

Photo of Mariana Morris
05 Aug 2021

Learn exactly what a good UX design process entails and why you need one, and download a template of the process we typically follow at Fruto.

Design leadership skills

Photo of Mariana Morris
30 Jun 2021

Expert design practitioner skills aren’t the same ones that you need for design leadership. Here’s what you need to know and learn to succeed...

Design leadership: How to establish a design-led culture

Photo of Mariana Morris
26 May 2021

A 7-step guide to establishing a design-led culture, no matter where on the UX maturity ladder you’re starting your transformation journey from.

Giving constructive design feedback

Photo of Mariana Morris
01 May 2021

When a designer asks you for feedback on their work, how do you go about it so that the feedback is effective and motivates the designer to improve? Here are is a technique I use...

Designing for healthcare

Photo of Mariana Morris
24 Apr 2021

When it comes to UX design, healthcare has to be one of the areas where it’s most critical that it’s done right.  The difference between good and bad design could literally make the difference between life or death. From patient care to the clinical experience, there are many aspects to designing digital products for healthcare...

Product design in educational publishing

Photo of Mariana Morris
25 Mar 2021

We all know that UX is a key factor in customer satisfaction. But knowing this, and actually delivering on it, aren’t always the same thing. And it certainly isn’t always a straightforward process - with internal politics, multiple user groups and external factors all impacting your ability to achieve the perfect user experience...

UX Oxford talk: UI colour palette

In this talk Carmen will take us through a hands-on approach to the creation of colour palettes for UI Design.

Enliven your brand with stickers

Stickers are relatively simple to design and develop. And due to their playful nature, Sticker Mule custom stickers are easy to share and encourage individuals to engage with your brand.

Practical creation and application of a UI colour palette

The goal of this webinar is to offer a hands-on approach to the creation of colour palettes for UI Design. In this webinar we apply concepts to create and successfully apply a UI-focused colour palette to an app interface.

How do you ensure that the website or app you are building is intuitive?

To create an intuitive and user-friendly website or app, there are a few parts to it...

Interview with our MD Mariana Morris on the value of UX

In this interview, our Managing Director Mariana Morris talks about why businesses should consider investing in UX and UI design, what makes a product intuitive to use and the best way to get users' feedback.

Running remote stakeholder workshops

In this webinar, we’ll show you how to get buy-in from key stakeholders, what pre-workshop activities we run to make sure it all goes smoothly, and tips on how to facilitate these sessions.

Miro templates (Miro experts)

We're happy to be featured on Miroverse with our Miro templates.

What is user experience (UX) design?

User experience (UX) design is a process that design teams use to create intuitive and user-friendly products...

What is user interface (UI) design?

A user interface is the point of interaction between the user and a digital product or service...

What’s the difference between UX and UI?

Both terms are related and there is overlap between them but they are not interchangeable...

The UX design fundamentals canvas

This canvas helps you follow a fundamental UX Design process.

Mental model mapping

A mental model mapping is a visual summary of the mental states that a user goes through to achieve a goal.

Running remote user research

In this webinar, we'll show how to run remote user interviews and usability tests. We'll show how we've been doing here at Fruto and talk about the best tools, practices and potential pitfalls.

Fundamentals of UX Design: Useful resources

Photo of Mariana Morris
10 Jul 2020

A list of books, articles and tools to get you started in UX Design.

How to prepare and run user interviews

Photo of Mariana Morris
03 Jul 2020

User interviews can help you get in-depth insights on users' needs, behaviours and motivations. This guide is to help you prepare and run user interviews.

A guide to colour in UI design

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
24 Jun 2020

Colour has a great impact in the world around us and this is no different in User Interfaces (UI). However, it’s not always given the importance it deserves. Sometimes colour is understood as a purely aesthetic element that is completely relative and subjective. Nonetheless, colour plays a key role (on multiple levels) in the user experience of a product, and therefore it is worth our attention as designers.

How to run remote design projects

Photo of Mariana Morris
27 Mar 2020

We are a fully remote UX design team. For the past 3 years, we’ve been testing design and communication tools that can make our work efficient and very collaborative. We think we have a pretty good set up now.

UI design systems

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
06 Mar 2020

In this blog post I will define these terms and outline how a design system might be beneficial, as well as some of the drawbacks. I will also talk about how important it is to create a system that is customised to your project.

How remote working has made me a better designer

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
14 Jan 2020

As designers, and more specifically, digital designers, remote working might not only be feasible but beneficial. Remote working is a growing trend and as a full time designer that works from home, I can see why.

From UX to UI to development

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
13 Dec 2019

In this post I will run through what it takes to go from UX to UI, and finally to development, and I will give some tips that have helped me (as a designer) with these different hand-offs.

Things to keep in mind while doing user interviews

Photo of Gargee Thakkur
Gargee Thakkur
24 Sep 2019

As a UX designer, you will likely be involved in conducting user research as it forms a critical part of the UX process. For any upcoming researcher, engaging with people in real-life contexts and settings may seem like a daunting task. This post is aimed to alleviate some of those very concerns.

Multifaceted designers: The overlooked key skills and attitudes of a good designer

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
24 Sep 2019

There are many qualities that play a key role in becoming a good designer. These qualities are far from being only technical. A designer must be an innovator, a researcher, a communicator a connoisseur, a mediator, a problem solver and a business thinker.

How to improve the user interface (UI) of your product

Photo of Carmen M. Freile
16 Aug 2019

UI design plays a fundamental role in the overall quality of your end product. The UI not only supports the UX work, it enriches it and expands on it by bringing together concepts from interaction design, visual design, and information architecture.

How UX can help your business grow

Photo of Gargee Thakkur
Gargee Thakkur
13 Aug 2019

This article tries to address the fundamental question for the business owners and demonstrates how UX and Business growth go hand in hand.

How to improve the UX of your product

Photo of Mariana Morris
13 Feb 2018

Whichever way you look at it, User Experience (UX) has a direct impact on your business. By improving customers’ experience of your product, you improve conversion rates. By increasing customer satisfaction, you keep them coming back for more.

UX for patient referral system

This talk by our MD Mariana Morris and Nick de Pennington, neurosurgeon and medical director of the Oxford Biodesign Programme, was given at the joint DHOx and UX Oxford event on UX in Healthcare at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, in October 2016, talking about how NHS Beta is digitally connecting patients to health services.