30. September 2010

10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies

We hear plenty usability tips and techniques from an incalculable number of sources. Many of the ones we take seriously have sound logic, but it’s even more validating when we find actual data and reports to back up their theories and conjectures. This article discusses usability findings of research results such as eye-tracking studies, reports, analytics, and usability surveys pertaining to website usability and improvements. You’ll discover that many of these usability tips will be common sense but are further supported with numbers; however, some might surprise you and change your outlook on your current design processes.

29. September 2010

Usability Study Shows Kids Don’t Search: Tech News

While adult Internet users are increasingly “search dominant,” kids navigate the web using bookmarks, remembering their favorite sites, and accessing paid subscription content and games. That’s one of the findings from a new qualitative usability study on how children use the web by human-computer interaction researcher Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group. His report makes it seem as if kids have more of an app mentality than a search mentality when compared to adults.

28. September 2010

iPad News

Ah, jetzt weiß ich wozu diese iPads sind. Man kann sie sich in Vitrinen stellen und Sachen drauf zeigen. Eigentlich würde sich so was auch gut in meinem Büro machen.

Übrigens, kennt Ihr schon den iPad Beitrag auf Will it blend?

Grauenhaft aber man kann irgendwie doch nicht wegschauen.

27. September 2010

Munich Verticals

LOL, das habe ich auch noch nie gesehen. Checkt mal die URL aus... Jazzkonzerte in München.

Da steht doch tatsächlich verticals. Da hat irgend so ein Schlaule wohl gerade ein neues Wort gelernt gehabt...

19. September 2010

3 Golden Business Rules for Social Media Engagement: Techipedia | Tamar Weinberg

If you’re doing social media for your business, there’s nothing better than to do it right. Many companies partake in this “shiny toy syndrome” and do it all without a plan or strategy in place. Worse, many don’t really understand what to do once they start. They hear about tools, put forth a miserable effort, and are either too busy or just lazy.

18. September 2010

Top 5 Ways Big Brands are Using Foursquare

Unlike other more mainstream social networks, the business potential of Foursquare may not be immediately apparent. At present, the location-based network is less about conversations and resource sharing, and more about tying your social activities to physical places.

17. September 2010

Unusual Settings: Applying UX design to a public garden entry | UX Magazine

We all have visited cultural attractions, whether it's the Louvre in Paris or a botanical garden down the road. But you may not be aware that cultural attractions and public venues have been evaluating the experiences they provide for visitors. The unique approach to experience design these attractions are taking can enrich your thinking about UX design.

16. September 2010

How Limitations Improve Design | Webdesigner Depot

From browsers, to screen resolutions, to user interactions, we seem to constantly be struggling to find some way of thinking outside the tiny little box of “best practice” which we’re constrained by. Limitations are abundant but are they really such a bad thing? Is it possible, even, that they actually produce far better results than if we did not have them?

15. September 2010

Copycat Design - 52 Weeks of UX

Many years ago I was working on a design project with an e-commerce company who was selling electronics on the Web. The design team was working on a large redesign of their web site in response to their latest thinking on what works best for selling their products. At one point I noticed they were making several changes to their web site that reminded me of something I had seen before. So I asked, “Why are you making that change?

14. September 2010

Designing for a Responsive Web with Heuristic Methods | Design Reviver

As the web has developed so has the technology and range of platforms we can use to engage with it. As the range of screens increases, higher resolution displays are becoming the norm whilst at the same time both larger and smaller screens are becoming more widespread than ever before. As designers we have a choice. Do we continue designing for the ’safe’ standard of 960px or do we expand our horizons and begin to think about flexible or even responsive web design. Sites that look different for different users depending upon their screen size are not a new thing, mobile sites have been around for years, but responsive design proposes something else entirely, designs which scale to anything from a iPhone right up to a 52″ high definition television screen.

13. September 2010

Free Wireframing Kits, UI Design Kits, PDFs and Resources - Smashing Magazine

To mock-up the user interface of a website, software or any other product, you’ll need some basic UI elements. And this is where wireframing kits and UI design kits come in handy. When you want to create a low-fidelity prototype for your projects, you can use these kits to give your idea a certain shape, keeping it abstract and not losing yourself in details. In this post, we’ve prepared an overview of useful web and mobile user interface kits, handy PDFs and resources that you can use in your projects. We’ve carefully selected the most useful kits and resources to get you going in the early stages of a project.

12. September 2010

Andres Max — Why you should be doing Product Discovery

If you’ve worked with startups before like me, whether on a startup itself or consulting for new startups this situation will sound familiar to you: Customer (Fred Flintstone) comes up to you with an idea for the next big thing. Sweet! Let’s get things going, get some engineers in the house and start hacking away with a two sheet word document and a few doodles as a spec sheet. Sounds familiar eh? Well, you’re doing it wrong.

11. September 2010

Craftsmanship in Designing Websites

With high pressure from clients and crazy development schedules for web designers, it is easy to forget to spend the proper amount of time crafting a design. In the interest of speeding things up, it’s tempting to skip over small details. This is an easy pitfall to which to succumb, but in the end, it can hurt your overall career. This article will share methods and simple tools for building better portfolio pieces, having happier clients, and imbuing your work with more value.

10. September 2010

Components Versus Patterns

Invariably at the outset of planning a component library, stakeholders will query “Ah, yes, so we are building a pattern library?” Actually, no. Although the two concepts are strongly related, their differences warrant consideration to ensure you are building the type of library that’s right for you.

Berlin IA Cocktail Hour

Liebe cocktail-trinkende networking-affine Informationsarchitekten, User Experience Engeneers, Konzepter und Interaction Designer... die nächste Berlin IA Cocktail Hour steht vor der Tür.

Ich hoffe, dass wir uns zahlreich treffen und gemeinsam anstoßen werden.

9. September 2010

CCC Express

Der aktuelle Chaosradio Express Podcast ist mal wieder sehr hörenswert: Der CCC und die Öffentlichkeit.

Diese Ausgabe von Chaosradio Express ist eine Aufzeichnung eines Live-Gesprächs, was im Rahmen der Ars Electronica 2010 im "Teleinternet" Space auf der Bühne stattfand. Anlässlich der Verleihung der "Golden Nica" in der Kategorie "Digital Communities" an den Chaos Computer Club erzählen Peter "Vic" Franck und Andreas Lehner im Gespräch mit Tim Pritlove aus der Geschichte des Clubs, seinem Verhältnis zur Öffentlichkeit und der Gesellschaft, der Möglichkeit, andere zu erreichen und was Selbstverständnis des Hackers ist.

How to Make an Internet Web Page | Webdesigner Depot

Do you browse the internet often? Are you amazed at how many internet web pages there are in the world today? Don’t you wish you could get a piece of that action? You’re probably thinking that in order to build an internet web page, you have to be some kind of computer genius. You probably think you have to go to college for at least one year to learn to make internet web pages.

8. September 2010

Why Users Fill Out Forms Faster With Top Aligned Labels | UXMovement.com

Imagine a user who is really excited about your product or service. They’re ready to sign up, so they go to your form page and start filling out their information. The way you align your labels with your form fields can affect how easy it is for users to fill out the form. Do you want to give users a quick, easy and painless experience or do you want to give them a hassle? If you want to make their experience quick, easy and painless, consider using top aligned labels for your form fields.

7. September 2010

The Leader's Guide to Radical Management: Leadership: How to say “no” while also inspiring people

Leadership is all about focusing energy on achieving an important goal. In achieving focus, leadership is implicitly saying “no” to all the other less-important things that might be attempted at this time. In this sense, “saying no” to trivia and distractions is the essence of leadership.

6. September 2010

No more vacation: How technology is stealing our lives - Internet Culture - Salon.com

Earlier this month, on my honeymoon in California, I found myself checking my computer compulsively for days, not for fun, but because I was afraid of being professionally remiss. It was simultaneously an irrational and a perfectly sane concern: Every day did bring some new professional demand or question that supposedly could not wait, though I also answered the ones that obviously could. Halfway through the trip, my brain began to ease into vacation mode and my typing fingers stopped twitching. As soon as I recovered myself a bit, I also recovered some perspective on the vortex into which I'd been pulled. I'd catch sight of my innocent white Mac sitting on a hotel room desk, suddenly less a seraphic emissary of important information than a sinister conveyor of work stress. What will you want from me today? I’d wonder as I stared it down. What anxieties lie waiting within you?

5. September 2010

Three Questions You Shouldn't Ask During User Research

When asked about a future scenario, many people will try to answer honestly. They'll answer about what they'd like as their ideal behavior. They want to think they'll behave in the most logical, effective manner. In short, they want to think they'll do the right thing. Yet, in the thick of the situation, people aren't always so logical. They don't do what's ideal. We want to predict future behaviors, so we can make designs that service them. Yet just asking participants may not get the actual answer.

4. September 2010

Designing Microsites: Factors To Consider | Webdesigner Depot

When creating a website, so many things need to be planned and considered before even beginning the design — content, audience, goals, usability, color schemes, and so much more. The design of a microsite, on the other hand, would seem to be an easier task to execute. But this isn’t always the case. A microsite will sometimes have more sensitive issues to deal with, and could see just as many design iterations — possibly due to branding issues, or a host of other factors that arise due to company politics.

3. September 2010

Balancing Inspiration and Individuality - Smashing Magazine

When I look out on the hillside of design, all I see are copies of what great designers have done before us. The landscape has become so congested with cookie-cutter homes that seeing the real people living inside has become hard. It’s like watching that movie Pleasantville, in which everything is black and white and no one knows any better, and yet there are those pursuing something different, something original. My hope is to inspire you to step away from the computer and open your eyes to the world around you. Expand your mind; think beyond the limits of the liquid crystals staring back at you.

2. September 2010

5 Common SEO Mistakes with Web Page Titles

Page titles are one of the most powerful on-site search engine ranking factors that you have control over but website owners often neglect them. Whether your intention is to improve your search engine visibility or make your website more meaningful and interoperable, you should avoid these five common pitfalls when coming up with page titles.

1. September 2010

Best Standards and Guidelines for Graphic Designers | Design Reviver

The basis for this weeks Answers reader discussion is essentially a chance to share what you feel are the best graphic design standards for an inhouse design agency. What do you think? Is there set standards and guidelines for graphic designers in inhouse agencies? You can leave your comment below, or you can leave your answer on the original question on here: What are the best standards and guidelines for graphic designers who work for inhouse design agencies?