Up All Night to Get Lucky? Why Having Sex with a Freelance Client is a Good Idea… (Speider Schneider)

I hate to admit it, but I’ve had sex with a lot of my clients (female). Maybe it was just being young, in New York City where dating is strange, or it was the looser morals in the design and advertising world. I wasn’t alone, either. My peers seem to be having a shtupfest, also. We did question the possible problems sex with a freelance client might cause, just as someone would think twice about an affair with an office coworker. The thing is that it WAS a good idea! (noupe.com)

This Year’s 8 Smartest UI Design Ideas (Kyle Vanhemert)

When your family gathered for the holidays this year, did you take note of the technology everyone was using? There’s a decent chance you could’ve observed someone from every generation present ably navigating some sort of touchscreen. (wired.com)

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Leading Designers Share Their New Year’s Resolutions for 2015 (Lior Frenkel)

The holidays offer us the chance to relax and rethink what we wish for ourselves for the next year. But starting with a blank page is hard, so we thought you might want to hear what other designers wish for themselves. (thenuschool.com)

A 6-Hour Usability Test In An Agile Environment (Jeff Sauro)

In the fast-paced world of Agile development, where it's difficult to find time to get data from users, unmoderated remote testing gives us a way to quickly collect feedback on interface design. (measuringu.com)

Rational and Irrational Thought: The Thinking that IQ Tests Miss (Keith E. Stanovich)

No doubt you know several folks with perfectly respectable IQs who repeatedly make poor decisions. The behavior of such people tells us that we are missing something important by treating intelligence as if it encompassed all cognitive abilities. I coined the term “dysrationalia” (analogous to “dyslexia”), meaning the inability to think and behave rationally despite having adequate intelligence, to draw attention to a large domain of cognitive life that intelligence tests fail to assess. Although most people recognize that IQ tests do not measure every important mental faculty, we behave as if they do. We have an implicit assumption that intelligence and rationality go together—or else why would we be so surprised when smart people do foolish things? (scientificamerican.com)

It's Time For Industrial Design To Grow Up (Gadi Amit)

I am an industrial designer by training, but it’s been a while since I called myself one. Industrial design has changed, and what I do has changed, too. The kinds of projects I work on require skills beyond those taught in any conventional industrial design curriculum, and the people I hire are typically proficient in areas that borrow from technical fields rather than classical design disciplines. (fastcodesign.com)

2014 Retrospective (Luke Wroblewski)

As the year comes to a close, it's time for my annual round-up of the most read articles I published this year. In order of popularity, the top five articles from 2014 are... (lukew.com)

A Designer’s Guide to Gift Giving (Steve Selzer)

The best gift I’ve ever given was a 1940s Parker 51 fountain pen. It was a birthday present to my best friend Taylor, a PhD student with a professorial look — round tortoise shell spectacles, elbow-patched blazer, a leather briefcase and loafers. The pen not only rounds out his look, but it's one of his favorite gifts of all time. (frogdesign.com)

40 Settings Page Interfaces for Mobile App UI Design (Jake Rocheleau)

This gallery includes a handful of brilliant settings page interfaces for mobile designers. Both Android and iOS applications are featured in the gallery including some older styles like iOS 6. You’ll find a hodgepodge of ideas from profile settings to notifications and account details. Most applications will require a settings page and this gallery is perfect for generating new ideas. (dzineblog.com)

UX Lessons Learned from Santa Claus (Mario Sakata)

This is a Christmas story recreated from the actual experiences I had spending most of my childhood living in the US. While mostly just a guess, thinking back on it now, I realize that Santa Claus himself may be one the best User Experience Designers there is. (medium.com)

Slow is Fast: Why Startups Should Make Time to Design for Customer Goals (Ryan Bloom)

If there is one word to describe a startup, it would be “busy.” At a growing company, there are always more things to do than people to do them, and often times those who are most successful are the ones who can be decisive and execute on a given objective efficiently. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, after all the old saying “time is money” has never been truer in the fast paced world of internet startups. However, this approach can lead to trouble when employees begin to jump to solutions before truly understanding their customer’s problems. Often, companies will line up a slew of customer interviews and soon after, product teams will have a list of features and screen-shots ready to go into production. Thoroughly defining your user’s goals can feel like a step backwards; why think about the problem when you’ve already got the solution? (cooper.com)

Has flat design gone too far? (Marc Schenker)

These days, it seems, you can’t turn anywhere on the web without hearing about or directly encountering flat design in some way, shape or form. What started out as a mere design trend just a couple of years ago is now clearly a mainstream design aesthetic that’s a force to be reckoned with. (webdesignerdepot.com)

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Treating Users Like Adults: Incorporating Six Principles of Andragogy into UX Design (Victor Yocco)

Most digital experiences require users to learn something new. Sometimes the purpose of an app is to learn, such as in an e-class. More often, the user needs to learn how to use the app itself, be it an updated word processing program or a redesigned online banking experience. We call it the onboarding process, and done poorly it can turn users away, which makes it critical that design teams incorporate sound learning principles into their designs. These principles, or “laws of learning” ensure that the experience will be smooth and intuitive. (uxbooth.com)

How Bad UX Makes Users Blame Themselves (Ivana McConnell)

We don’t do well with uncertainty. When things go wrong, we want to know why as quickly and easily (but maybe not truthfully) as possible. But when technology is thrown into the mix, the problems are more complex. Our perceptions change. When something goes wrong with a user interface, the questions don’t always have easy answers. It’s the designer’s job to connect and empathize with the user, to teach them the language of design, to put MVPs in their hand, test, talk, and arrive at a solution. (uxpin.com)

Working Agreements for Huge Meetings (Alex Pukinskis)

Have you been in a meeting lately where people were focused on their laptops, interrupting each other, distracted, or otherwise behaving badly? In Jean Tabaka’s “Leading Collaborative Meetings” class, Jean talks about the importance of working agreements to create the safety that makes productive dialogue possible. (rallydev.com)

How Button Color Contrast Guides Users to Action (anthony)

Have you ever clicked a wrong button by accident? Users make wrong decisions on modal windows when they’re not guided in the right direction. Many modals prompt users to act without making the different actions clear. Clear color contrast between different buttons is what guides users to choose the right one. Not seeing a clear action to take causes uncertainty in users and slows down their task. It may even cause them to choose the wrong action that derails their task. (uxmovement.com)

Information architecture for lean and agile projects (Austin Govella)

Thinking back, I can't recall a single development team where everyone didn't agree on documenting the interface in some fashion. Maybe it was a sketch or a wireframe or some prototypes, but whatever it was, everyone agrees you need something where everyone can agree: yes, this is what we're building. (agux.co)

This Tool is Going To Completely Change Web Design (Trevor Dayley)

About every five years a company comes along and really shakes things up. Rather than try to make slight improvements over their competition they completely redesign the concept and reform the way we do things. Over the last decade many of us have experienced the painful, time-consuming task of making ourselves a website. We've probably all wished their was a better way. Fortunately in 2015, The Grid is about to change all that. (fstoppers.com)

Sketching Your Way to a Mobile UX Design (Will Hacker)

These days, it’s easy to design mobile user experiences using powerful tools such as Axure RP, Blueprint, or Protot.io. But when creating early mobile designs, we should still start with the same simple sketching techniques that we’ve traditionally used for desktop designs. Now, there are apps that let us get our sketches on real mobile devices for demos and usability testing. In this article, I’ll share some of my favorite tools for sketching mobile user experiences. (uxmatters.com)

Designing a UI to Generate Real Business Value (Pavel Kostychev)

In the IT world, today’s organizations are looking to evolve their company’s IT department from a cost center to an employee-centric strategic partner capable of generating ROI. That’s a mouthful. Where do we designers come into play? One way we can help organizations accomplish this goal is by giving their IT help desk an easy-to-use IT service management solution (ITSM). (uxmag.com)

Becoming a More Thoughtful User Experience Designer (Jake Lee Haugen)

A simple experience that opened my eyes to new possibilities took the form of a 170px smiley face. After a stressful day, I attempted to clear my inbox as a last-ditch effort to ease my mind. I had just downloaded the Gmail app and decided to use it instead of the standard Apple Mail app I had been using for years. I sifted through my emails and when the last one was archived, a little smiley face sun appeared with the text, “You’re all done! Please enjoy your day.” It was so unexpected, I couldn’t help but smile. (medium.com)

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The Point Of Creativity In Business (Mitch Joel)

For some reason, the statement above is seen (by many) as some kind of defamation of creativity. A bastardization of the what art is. The proverbial selling of the soul. That's stupid. And, it's wrong. Let's set the table first: creativity for the sake of being creative is fine. It's a right. Anyone can do oil painting in their garage, or pluck away at their guitar in their basement for the pure love of the activity. The arts are marvellous at curing what ails you. On the other hand, great creativity does inspire on other levels. Great creativity makes human beings curious, it makes them yearn to hear more, and it makes them take action. Creativity isn't just something for the pre-Internet era, either. It's profoundly linked to what makes one business more successful than another. Creativity drives our economy like never before. (twistimage.com)

7 Things I Wish Everyone Knew About Interaction Design (Chris Noessel)

When you’ve been doing interaction design for 2 decades you become familiar with the most common gaping holes in the knowledge of the interaction design practice. If I could wave a solstice holiday wand this year, I’d implant the following ideas into people’s heads so we could plug those holes and move the practice forward. (uxmas.com)

UX Leadership, Part 1: The Nature of Great Leaders (Jim Nieters, Pabini Gabriel-Petit)

This column is the second in our series that highlights our insights on what it would take for companies to go from producing dreary, overly complex user experiences to producing truly great user experiences that differentiate their products from those of competitors in their marketplace. In our first column, we stated that producing great, highly differentiated user experiences should be the goal of every UX leader. But in many companies, UX leaders face challenges that force them to approach leading User Experience in a less than optimal way. If, as a UX leader, you find yourself stuck in a situation where you and your team cannot do great work—that is, you are unable to produce user experiences that solve people’s problems, inspire, and delight—you’re working for the wrong organization and should find a better job. In that column, we also discussed how to position User Experience for optimal impact. (uxmatters.com)

Implementing Customer Experience as an Organizational Value (Pete Kinser)

Bringing customer-centered thinking into an organization is about more than just proclaiming that you’re focused on customer experience. It’s about changing your process, sure, but it goes even deeper: It’s about changing attitudes. It’s about making your customers a central organizational value that guides behaviors and decision making. Valuing customer experience is no longer a secret to success. A focus on CX is quickly becoming the way to do business. A common problem I hear from CX (and UX) practitioners is that they’re being asked to “do CX” within an organization that isn’t changing their processes or thinking. Many companies are maintaining the same processes and strategic approaches while trying to “staple on” this CX thing. (uxmag.com)

How To Measure Customer Loyalty (Jeff Sauro)

Customer loyalty is often a better predictor of future company growth than customer satisfaction alone. While customer satisfaction is an important measure of customers' expectation, customers can be satisfied but not loyal. To measure customer loyalty, you need to use a mix of behavioral and attitudinal metrics. Here's a synopsis of this mix of metrics as described in the chapter on measuring loyalty in my upcoming book, Customer Analytics for Dummies. (measuringu.com)

Don’t blame the designer (Justin Jackson)

“When is the design for the new site going to be done?” As managers, it’s easy for us to blame our design team for missing deadlines. But are your designers really slowing down the project? What’s really slowing down your team If it’s not your designers, why didn’t your project launch on time? Not giving enough time for exploration Design isn’t a simple A → B process. It looks more like this... (medium.com)

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How to plan and run the perfect UX workshop (Neil Turner)

Want to get some ideas to for a particular design challenge? Run a workshop. Want to evaluate designs with stakeholders? Run a workshop. Want to gather insights from domain experts? Run a workshop. Want to prioritise a set of features? Run a workshop. Want to… OK, you get the idea! (uxforthemasses.com)

Testing The Hamburger Icon for More Revenue (Peep Laja)

Mobile traffic is a significant part of most websites, and smooth navigation for mobile users is critical. Most websites use the hamburger navigation icon to display the menu as it’s become a default option for this. Is that a good idea? There’s a good chance that it’s not. Lots of designers have made a compelling case against the hamburger. It’s unintuitive, it’s confusing, it’s not noticeable. But not everyone hates it. (conversionxl.com)

How to Plan Site Architecture, The Right Way (Ryan Gittings)

If making a website is like building a house, then planning the content is like laying the foundations. You may end up with a beautiful, desirable house in the short term, but if you've cut corners, or failed to plan your foundations properly, your building is at risk of falling down. And so it is with your website. If you don't spend time planning how your audience will interact with your content in the most intuitive possible way, you're not going to benefit from the best possible sales or conversions. Worse still, if you get it really wrong, you could alienate a large portion of your audience. (onextrapixel.com)

10 ways to make the design process smoother (Paul Boag)

If you want your projects to run smoother then you need to attract the kind of client that works the way you do and thinks the way you do to some degree, right. So I think, for example, that Headscape attracts a certain type of client because of the podcast and the writing and the blogging and the speaking at conferences and the books and stuff, that they have been exposed to our way of thinking, our way of working, our kind of approach to stuff. And so by the time they reach us and ask us if they – if we want to work with them, we’re already in a fairly favorable position. (boagworld.com)

Chinese Mobile App UI Trends (Dan Grover)

This summer, I packed up all my things and moved from San Francisco to Guangzhou, China for work. Through an unlikely chain of coincidences that I don’t entirely recall, I’ve become a product manager on WeChat, a popular messaging app in China. Moving to a new country has meant learning how to do lots of things differently: speaking a new language, eating, shopping, getting around. In a few months, I’m surprised at how acclimated I’ve become to what, at first, seemed such an overwhelmingly alien place. (dangrover.com)

Jack of All Trades? Or Master of One? (Rudolph Musngi)

In his lifetime, Leonardo Da Vinci was a painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. Basically, Da Vinci was a one-man wrecking machine. A Jack of All Trades. (1stwebdesigner.com)

The continued decline of the homepage (Gerry McGovern)

Google is your new homepage. Every page you have is a homepage for someone. We must think beyond the traditional homepage. (gerrymcgovern.com)

Bill Gates’ five favorite books of 2014 (Max Nisen)

In addition to running one of the world’s largest charitable foundations, and taking on a dramatically expanded role at Microsoft, Bill Gates is a voracious reader and produces an annual list of his favorite reads. (qz.com)

The Utopian UI Architect (John Pavlus)

When Bret Victor came in for his first day of work as a “Human Interface Inventor” at Apple, he found an iPad sitting on his desk. It was August of 2007. The original iPhone was only a couple months old. iPods still generated a third of the company’s revenue. The App Store didn’t exist. (medium.com)

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Google Can Now Tell You’re Not a Robot With Just One Click (Andy Greenberg)

When Alan Turing first conceived of the Turing Test in 1947, he suggested that a computer program’s resemblance to a human mind could be gauged by making it answer a series of questions written by an interrogator in another room. Jump forward about seven decades, and Google says it’s now developed a Turing Test that can spot a bot by requiring it to do something far simpler: Click on a checkbox. (wired.com)

The 5 Most Common Design Mistakes (Julie Zhuo)

There’s no learning without mistakes. And I’ve done the following (as well as seen the following done) too many times to count. Luckily, there’s this thing called the “Internet” and this medium called an “article” that lets us point at and talk about these mistakes behind their backs, in the hopes that by bullying them into the spotlight, it’ll be harder for them to slink around, wasting our time and steering us towards no-good solutions. (medium.com)

Fractal Coevolution (Scott Jenson)

In doing product design for nearly 30 years, I’ve witnessed several waves of innovation. Some were obviously successful like personal computers and the internet. But others were much less so, such as MultiMedia CDROMs, and open document formats. What people don’t appreciate is that great ideas, before they are great, tend to look remarkably similar to stupid ones. Few are willing to take a chance on a new, seemingly crazy product idea. This is why the technology industry tends to be so incremental. Most companies, truth be told, wait for others to make the mistakes. (jenson.org)

The 7 Deadly Sins of User Research (David Travis)

Most companies would claim to design products and services that are simple to use. But when you ask customers to actually use these products and services, they often find them far from simple. Why is there a disconnect between what organisations think of as "simple" and what users actually experience? (userfocus.co.uk)

UX vs. Marketing: Can These Opposites Attract? (Anthony Franco)

The first volume of The SoDA Report revealed a disturbing survey result earlier this year. When asked about talent gaps, and 77%of agency respondents identified user experience (UX) as the biggest shortfall on the client side. One possible explanation is that the UX discipline is still a “field in evolution." While the report suggests UX infancy might be the cause for this glaring talent gap, another could be that UX and marketing have fundamental core values that are in direct opposition to one another. (hubspot.com)

There is no such thing as UX Design (Peter Merholz)

Product management’s responsibility is to identify opportunities in the market, specify new offerings, and see these through development and distribution. Originally, product management was seen as a business function, and MBA’s were placed in that role. As such, it was about sweating the market, assessing opportunities, crafting business plans, establishing requirements, and the like. (peterme.com)

The 80/20 Hybrid Approach to Designing in the Browser (Tom Kenny)

Designing in the browser has been a point of discussion for a few years now and still is. With the web design world switching to flat design, designing in the browser has been seen as the future, but it is really that effective? (inspectelement.com)

A 6-Hour Usability Test In An Agile Environment (Jeff Sauro)

In the fast-paced world of Agile development, where it's difficult to find time to get data from users, unmoderated remote testing gives us a way to quickly collect feedback on interface design. For example, I recently worked with a web-app product team to determine whether users find their new file manager easier to use than the previous one. (measuringu.com)

The Real World Guide to Responsive Design (Kenny Van Sittert)

Responsive design has been one of the cornerstones of 2014 digital strategies. Getting ‘it’ right across all devices is now critical to success with as much as 60% of traffic now coming from mobile. The question is how to do you ensure you create the right ‘experience’ for your customers and visitors? With an ever-evolving rule book it’s important you truly understand the basics and, critically, how to test? Let’s dive into that in a little more detail now. (zazzlemedia.co.uk)

The Only Constant is Change: A Q&A with Ethan Marcotte (Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Ethan Marcotte)

It’s here: a new edition of Responsive Web Design is now available from A Book Apart! Our editor-in-chief, Sara Wachter-Boettcher, sat down with Ethan Marcotte—who first introduced the world to RWD right here in A List Apart back in 2010—to talk about what’s new in the second edition, what he’s been working on lately, and where our industry is going next. The first edition of Responsive Web Design came out in the summer of 2011. What projects have you been working on for the past three years? (alistapart.com)

Wire wants to be Skype for the modern age, launches with the backing of Skype cofounder Janus Friis (Paul Sawers)

Wire is promising to bring “simple, beautiful conversations” to your mobile, tablet, and desktop. While it may sound like yet another messaging app, a deeper dig behind the scenes of the Swiss startup reveals some impressive hires among the 50-strong team, who hail from 23 countries between them. (venturebeat.com)

3 reasons why usability testing is not part of your workflow (Stefan Rössler)

While that's great, usability testing is not part of most designers' or developers' workflows. Let me give you 3 quick reasons why that's the case, before I tell you, how Userbrain wants to change this. (userbrain.net)

The Big Design Renaissance is Over (Jan Jursa)

Google books Ngram Viewer: the big design renaissance is over. http://t.co/Sds4Mb4GM2 (http://t.co/pRykNAbzuv) What do you think? #design

— Jan Jursa (@IATV) 30. November 2014

Are You Ready to Become a Product Designer? (Ghaida Zahran)

Five years ago, it was all about UX, but we saw through that. At the time, we were pretty stoked about figuring out the best way to get to answers in product design (still are!). However, we realized that there aren't a lot of designers out there that understand what it actually means to be a product designer. UX is one part of it, but what are the rest of the pieces? This is the story of how you too can become a product designer. So stop being a UX/UI guru or prophet or whatever and start solving problems. (zurb.com)

Emotion As A Framework For Design (Matthew Deal)

The beginning of any web design project is the hardest part. As a web designer, I sometimes get lucky and have some really solid inspiration that feels like it’ll be enough; it’s the kind of inspiration that’s strong enough to help you get started on a new project and enough to sustain you through all the mistakes, self-doubt, and second guessing that comes with the territory. (despreneur.com)

Can Split Testing Wreck Your Google Ranking? (Sherice Jacob)

Put down your pitchforks and torches… I’m not saying you should stop split testing. But I am saying that there are a few “red flags” that a split test can inadvertently throw up if you’re not managing or monitoring it correctly. It’s a fine line you have to walk if you do both conversion optimization and search engine optimization. Most people think the two can’t co-exist peacefully, since you’re either writing for people, or you’re writing for robots. But you have to ask yourself – what’s more important? Convincing customers to order or appeasing an algorithm? (kissmetrics.com)

Where Brand Journalism and Native Advertising Can Fit Within Content Marketing (Lee Odden)

Over the past year the discussions about what content marketing is and isn’t as well as the role of content within marketing and PR functions of a business have been interesting to watch. Especially the discussions around whether brand journalism and native advertising fits in the content marketing mix. Here’s my take on it. (toprankblog.com)

Web apps deserve sexy transitions too! (Cemre Güngör)

Our design process was a little different this time. We wanted to change the core interaction of Potluck, without relying on intrusive overlays or pop-outs to explain new behavior to our users. Instead, we wanted to use motion to infer how the site worked, inspired by the physicality of iOS’s user interface. We had been meaning to add motion to Potluck for a while, unfortunately without much success. (medium.com)

6 Simple Landing Pages That Perform Like Charm (Simon Horton)

Like mac and cheese. Or gin and tonic. Or crisp white shirts with classic blue jeans. Some things are beautiful in their simplicity. What ups their fab quotient a notch higher is that these are things that combine their undisputable beauty with great functionality. Landing pages have their version of the PB&Js as well. Here’s a look at some landing pages that take care of all the key principles of a good landing page and yet manage to pack a punch aesthetically and functionally. (usabilitygeek.com)

What an Actual Product Design Process Looks Like (Jomi Cubol)

Cap Watkins, Design Manager at Etsy shared his and his team’s design process a while ago and I consider it to be one of the most invaluable posts on the topic by far. I came across his 3-part series before reading Etsy Creative Director Randy J. Hunt’s seminal book Product Design for the Web, but revisiting it afterwards really clarified so much for me. I hope to apply these principles towards my own process and make it work for myself and our team. (thebadprince)

When to Use Toggle Buttons (anthony)

Users can get frustrated if they can’t find a specific action on your website. They experience this when you hide actions in dropdown menus. One context where this often happens is sorting content. (uxmovement.com)

Usability vs. Conversion Optimization (Lyena Solomon)

If you have been practicing SEO, you would have encountered a disconnect between what you were hired to do and what the client actually wanted you to do when they hired you. You thought your goal is to bring traffic. They thought you will bring them more conversions and revenue. They thought they will fix matters by changing your title to include "Lead Generation." You thought, you need to explore a completely new angle of your job. (searchenginepeople.com)

Creating Animations and Interactions with Physical Models (Ralph Thomas)

Physics-based animations and interactions are becoming more common in UI. This page goes through some basic physical models and the kinds of interactions and animations that can be constructed from them. Scrolling on iOS is an excellent example of a physics-based interaction. When you drag your finger across the screen, the content tracks along with it, thereby scrolling, but when you lift your finger all of the physics magic happens: the content continues tracking with the same momentum and slows down under the influence of (virtual) friction. If you hit the end of the content, then the momentum goes into an overdamped spring which absorbs the momentum and returns you to the end of the content. (iamralpht)

Digital Tools for Design Research. 16 new ways to improve human-centered design. (Dan Perkel)

Design research is about understanding real people in the context of their everyday lives and then using what we learn to inspire our work. This loose definition may conjure up a narrow set of methods, but at IDEO, we’re broad in our approach: Design research here is not any one thing, and it’s informed by the passion and skills of our teams as much as any organizational process. (ideo.com)

Making Sense of IA Messes (UX Booth)

The number one challenge of teaching information architecture, is getting people over fear. People don’t need to be taught how to group things together or label them. They need to be taught to get over the fear of doing so. The fear that they will make bad or useless groups or labels. The fear that trying to sort something out will actually make it worse. The fear that they won’t be able to make sense of it. The fear that they will get things wrong and have to do it again. The fear that it will take a really long time to sort it all out. (uxbooth.com)

An Agile-Lean Transformation: How Getty Images Transitioned to Scrum and Evolved to Kanban (Maritza van den Heuvel, Joanne Ho, Jim Benson)

In 2005, Getty Images was building their software using traditional waterfall practices. At the time, they were generating over US$500 million in annual revenue, most of which flowed directly through their e-commerce website. The site was seeing 11 million unique visitors per month, delivering over 10 million images, and handling 6 million searches per day. This hugely popular site was a 24-7 global cash register for Getty Images and any site downtime affected revenue instantly. (leankit.com)

The ultimate guide to design meetings (Cameron Chapman)

The basic idea of a meeting is simple: it’s when two or more people get together to discuss one or multiple topics. It can be in a formal or informal setting. It can be among people within an organization or between people in more than one organization. The concept of the meeting is ancient. At their most basic level, meetings are held to bring people together to talk about things. There can be good reasons to have meetings and bad reasons to have meetings, both of which we’ll discuss. (webdesignerdepot.com)

The Making of a UX Designer (Traci Lepore)

My background is in graphic design, and I’m an artist by nature. I learned the basics of user experience on the ground, in the early days. While those experiences gave me the fundamental skills that I needed to do my work, they didn’t make me the empathetic and insightful designer I am today. I firmly believe that it is my training in acting and theater that has given me the ability to be, not just a good UX designer, but also a successful one. (uxmatters.com)

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5-Steps For Getting Started Measuring The Customer Experience (Jeff Sauro)

Most companies have more bug lists and requests for product features than they can realistically address. In an earlier post, I present ways to help you prioritize those features; now let's figure out where to start. This post describes an approach that works in many situations, beginning with a survey of your customers or prospects, or a representative set thereof, with the following objectives... (measuringu.com)

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How Link Blocking Can Increase Your Click-through Rate (anthony)

User research has proven that the larger a target is, the faster and easier it is to click. That means if you turn a link into a button, you can increase your click-through rate. But if you turn your button into a link block, you can increase it even more. (uxmovement.com)

Fundamental Principles of Great UX Design | How to Deliver Great UX Design (Janet M. Six)

In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our expert panel looks at the importance of considering the fundamental principles of great design—not just UX design principles, but design principles in general. Our panel also discusses how great UX design takes place within organizations, looking at this topic on many different levels. How can you create great designs when working with a variety of designers with different backgrounds and while working within the constraints of project-defined goals? How can the presence of User Experience at the C-level and, in general, garnering support from the C-level affect our ability to implement great designs. How can we produce great designs in a repeatable manner? Keep reading for the answers to all of these important questions. (uxmatters.com)

7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI (Part 2). A guide to visual aesthetics, written by a nerd (Erik D. Kennedy)

If you want to be a good UI designer, you’ll have to learn how to put text over images in an appealing way. This is something that every good UI designer does well and something every bad UI designer does piss-poorly— or just doesn’t do, in which case you’ll have a huge leg up after reading this section! (medium)

Does Research Make Design Better? (Victoria Young)

Design creates a significant competitive advantage in the market. In fact, research has shown that design-led firms yield a 228% greater ROI than the S&P 500. When design is used strategically, a company can achieve both higher growth rates and margins than competitors. Design research plays a pivotal role in discovering design solutions that meet business objectives. The evolution of technology, openness of the Internet, and advancement of analytics has led to greater access to visual resources online, platforms that enable user testing, and more advanced tools for design research. How does design research simultaneously minimize production costs and amplify results to provide value? (dtelepathy.com)

Are Web Design Schools Losing Their Magic? (Rudolph Musngi)

Now that online education is becoming more and more popular, is it still relevant to go to web design schools these days? This question is perfectly normal to ask. With the advent of web design blogs that teach beginners and experts alike, some people may feel that going to a web design school might no longer be relevant at all. (1stwebdesigner.com)

Destroying Your Enemies Through the Magic of Design (Jenny Lam, Hillel Cooperman)

Hierarchical organizations large and small are rife with politics. In fact, the smaller the stakes, the more vicious they can be. Political organizations are ones where what things look like are just as, or more, important as what you actually do. Dealing with perceptions as well as ego and insecurity is part of dealing with human beings. This is who we are. And as soon as we create situations where there are winners and losers we create politics. And fighting. In some organizations, regardless of how brilliant your design may be, the politics will kill your plans before they have a chance to really blossom. And that’s a shame. (alistapart.com)

Facebook takes another step backwards with a new Groups apps (Cynthia Boris)

About seven years ago, Facebook convinced the denizens of the internet that it was not only safe to come out of the IRC chat rooms, it was actually a good thing. No more hiding behind fake names while you discuss a singular topic with a room full of people, half of whom are there just to annoy you. Facebook was a social network – a place to be yourself, show off your photos, reconnect with old friends and make new ones. (marketingpilgrim.com)

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10 Responsive Design Problems and Fixes (Kirill Strelchenko)

The Internet is changing, with responsive websites quickly adapting to any device and screen size to bring the user the most dynamic experience possible. From multinational corporations like Sony, Microsoft, and Nokia to global tech stars like Salesforce to online travel giants like Expedia, serious players are turning to responsive web design to march in step with the current trends in and reach an even wider audience of customers. (uxmag.com)

Creating a Good Design Brief for Your Mobile App (Egle Karalyte)

Understanding well what a client has in mind for his/her mobile app can be a slippery process. As a designer, you surely want to deliver to the best of your abilities and make the client happy. But when it comes to ensuring the success of a mobile app design project (or any other design project to that matter) just having good design skills is not sufficient. (speckyboy.com)

Why Japanese Web Design is NOT so different (Mario Sakata)

As a UX (User Experience) Designer, many times I found myself caught between improving the value of customer experience and contributing to business profits. As someone who extols the user-centeredness, when I saw the web design at the time—which does not differ greatly from the way it looks now, I didn’t think it delivered a user-centered experience at all. (medium.com)

The Interface Layer: Where Design Commoditizes Tech (Scott Belsky)

A new cohort of design-driven companies are adding a layer of convenience between us and the underlying services and utilities that improve our lives. This could change everything. (medium.com)

Designing Products from Scratch: An Interview with UX Leader Josh Porter (Jay Acunzo)

NextView Ventures: Let’s start at the beginning. Once you identified that What to Wear Daily was worth building, what worked in acquiring your first 100 users — especially since it was focused on just Boston to start? Josh Porter: In the very, very beginning I started with just 10 people, all friends from HubSpot. I woke up each morning at 5 a.m. and created the report manually in Sketch (similar to Photoshop), and hand-delivered individual emails through my Gmail account to those initial users. My goal at this very early stage wasn’t to figure out how to unlock growth but to create a product people loved. (nextviewventures.com)

The UX of Mobile Settings (Luis F. Mena)

We love to analyze and write/read about good UX. It's common practice to pick an app, redesign a few screens without any constrains and then share the result in Dribbble. However, more often than not, business requirements in real projects and client's platform-constrains tend to be so complex that you end up struggling to come up with an intuitive interface. (setentaydos.com)

9 basic principles of responsive web design (Sandijs Ruluks)

Responsive web design is a great solution to our multi-screen problem, but getting into it from the print perspective is difficult. No fixed page size, no millimetres or inches, no physical constraints to fight against. Designing in pixels for Desktop and Mobile only is also the past, as more and more gadgets can open up a website. Therefore, let's clarify some basic principles of responsive web design here to embrace the fluid web, instead of fighting it. To keep it simple we'll focus on layouts (yes, responsive goes way deeper than that and if you want to learn more this is a good start). (froont.com)

"User Experience Salaries & Calculator (Jeff Sauro)

You can more accurately determine the worth of your skills and personal characteristics if you take into account the variables that most affect salaries. I conducted a multiple-regression analysis to see which variables statistically predict salaries. (measuringu.com)

Progressive Reduction: Evolving the Experience for Your Most Frequent Users (Dan Birman)

I’m a big fan of minimalist design, so whenever I have the opportunity to reduce the information presented on a screen to just the bare essentials, I’m happy. With that in mind, I realize that certain patterns that we (designers) want users to execute require learned behaviors. For this, we often use labels, tooltips, etc. so that users know where to go and what to do. However, this can often lead to visual clutter, especially when we start looking at mobile screens or applications with a shit ton of icons. (dtelepathy.com)

Frankendesign – When Re-Using Old Designs Makes Sense (Addison Duvall)

Do you all know the story of Frankenstein’s monster? A mad scientist attempts to create a living creature using parts from a myriad of individuals. Designers often have a lot in common with this classic tale, using elements from their old designs to create new ones for completely different clients. (hongkiat.com)

Master the Core: Web Design Code of Ethics (Rudolph Musngi)

Web design, like any other profession, should always be ethical. It should always adhere to a set ­­­of norms set by the whole community. These codes guide designers to perform their tasks in the most honest and professional way possible. (1stwebdesigner.com)

Billions of interaction designers (Eli Blevis, Kenny Chow, Ilpo Koskinen, Sharon Poggenpohl, Christine Tsin )

In this article we focus on interaction design education and share a vision for its future based on our combined years of teaching in design schools, in HCI-oriented programs, and in hybrids of the two [1]. Our larger goal is to overcome the guild-like thinking in much of design pedagogy in order to make design learning a foundational form of learning education and mode of being for everyone, in the interest of broader society. Our more modest goal is to present our ideas on curriculum, with the intention of creating a shared understanding of how best to teach interaction design. (acm.org)

The Must-Have Mobile App Metrics Your Business Cannot Do Without (Natasha Starkell)

The way people interact with an app is different from the way they use websites. Mobile app analytics is about converting ad budgets to installs, and installs to repeated app usage and in-app purchases. Ultimately, the objective of a mobile app developer is to evaluate user lifetime value, retention, and the frequency of usage. (kissmetrics.com)

How Your Brand Should Tell A Beautiful Story (Mitch Joel)

The stuff that true case studies are made of. People who know me, know how much I laothe case studies and white papers. Most of them (if not all) are just trumped up stories about how great a brand performed on some kind of platform or campaign. Sure, it's nice to get a peek behind the curtain, but it doesn't add much value if everything written (or being produced) is just another way to trump up the brand. Where are the mistakes, the foibles, the struggles... and the true challenges? (twistimage.com)

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Google’s Quest to Write the Rulebook for Interactive Design (Kyle Vanhemert)

Google’s new design language, material design, makes its debut this week in Lollipop, the latest version of Android. It brings a bright new look to phones and tablets. But to hear Google’s designers explain it, material design is something far more ambitious than a new coat of pixels. By combining relevant rules from the world of graphic design with new ideas about interfaces and input, Google is aiming to establish some best practices for the fledgling field of interactive design at large. (wired.com)

Check Out The Earliest Work Of Apple's Design God, Jony Ive (Jay Yarow)

Jony Ive wasn't always Jony Ive, Apple design God. At one point, he was just a young British designer trying to get by. However, Ive was a precocious design talent, and from a young age, he was racking up awards for his design work. (businessinsider.com)

How Google’s Material Design is changing things (Daniel de la Cruz)

During Apple’s recent conference we were introduced to Yosemite and their decision to move further forward in their flat design 2.0 direction. Having caught ear of the trend earlier on and seeing Microsoft’s success with it over multiple platforms, Apple took it and made it very much their own, introducing opaque windows, clever little transitions among a plethora of other things. (cl23.com)

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Ex-Googler Builds A Github For Designers (Mark Wilson)

For the past two years, Pixelapse—backed by venture capital from Y Combinator and Designer Fund—has been evolving into what you might call a Dropbox for designers. Through a free or premium paid account, it will automatically sync Photoshop files (along with more than 40 other file types) with a team of your choosing online, allowing you to juggle complicated design projects more easily. (fastcodesign.com)

A Brief History of the Hamburger Icon (Karla Urbina)

We have all seen the hamburger icon. As a matter of fact most of us probably use it on a daily basis. It has become a staple in website and app design. I’m even looking at it now on the top right corner of Google Chrome. (placeit.net)

Design Is Eating The World (Greg Satell)

Henry Ford famously said that his customers could a car painted in any color so long as it was black. Many people misunderstand that quote. It wasn’t that he didn’t care about his customers needs, but that manufacturing efficiency trumped style. (creativitypost.com)

Good Design is About Process, not Product (Jared Sinclair)

A designer’s process determines the difference between mediocre and great work. Natural talent and training aren’t substitutes for good design habits. The right process can cover many shortcomings of talent and skill — but the opposite is never true. A good process will bring out your best and most unique work. A bad process will leave you with tired, unsurprising clichés. (jaredsinclair.com)

Best Practices for Medical App Development Go Beyond Standard UX (Mithun Sridharan)

Mobile healthcare app development poses a set of challenges very different from mainstream apps. Not only is security an area that requires a considerable attention, compliance with regulatory standards is also absolutely crucial. Here are things app developers should pay close attention to during the development process. (uxmag.com)

Effective Techniques For Rapid Prototyping (Ekta Srivastava)

The “Aardvark Theory” of product – “Fake it till you make it” could be well followed as a design guideline for organizations. To develop a successful product or an app, we first create a prototype and keep improving on it till the time we get what we expect. An idea has no value unless it can be communicated and the value of a prototype is the vision of what the final outcome would be. Eventually, the goal of effective rapid prototyping is to convince oneself and others of an idea. (usabilitygeek.com)

Finding New Solutions in Old Philosophy (David Helman)

Since completing my doctorate in philosophy, I have been a professional programmer for more than twenty years, and I have learned a lot about applying philosophical thinking to design and development. Philosophy offers deep and profound insights about subjects like knowledge, meaning and justice. Insofar as computer programs concern these subjects, philosophy can be a fantastic source of ideas – and often is. Reading philosophy books has given me ideas for writing useful computer programs that span multiple industries, from healthcare to business, which contradicts Wittgenstein’s belief. After all, if philosophy can guide the design of profitable products, it must be meaningful. (uxbooth.com)

Show Your Work: Demonstrating Progress on Your Projects (Eileen Webb)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how actual progress on a project doesn’t always match the impression of progress—sometimes a lot of code has changed but nothing looks very different, while other times a small change in code gives the sense that the whole project has moved leaps and bounds. (alistapart.com)

Apple Doesn’t Design for Yesterday (Eric Karjaluoto)

Last night, I installed OS X Yosemite. After the marathon-length download, I finally saw it in action. My initial reaction wasn’t unlike that of many others. I’ll sum it up with the phrase, “This got hit by the ugly stick.” Now, before you go all fanboi on me, please allow me a moment to explain my reaction. First off, It’s OK if I’m not immediately wowed by the updated GUI. Change works this way. Within a few days I’ll likely grow accustomed to this very flat, very Helvetica, environment. This was my experience when iOS was flattened. Although primitive seeming at first, after a few weeks, it felt fine—and its predecessors looked clumsy. (erickarjaluoto.com)

Designing for Large Screen Smartphones (Luke Wroblewski)

Designing for Thumbs: 
In his analysis of 1,333 observations of smartphones in use, Steven Hoober found about 75% of people rely on their thumb and 49% rely on a one-handed grip to get things done on their phones. On large screens (over four inches) those kinds of behaviors can stretch people’s thumbs well past their comfort zone as they try to reach controls positioned at the top of their device. (lukew.com)

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Google Chrome DevTools Tutorials (Jacob Gube)

Chrome Developer Tools (also known as DevTools) is an essential component of any front-end developer’s toolkit. Mastering this useful in-browser tool will substantially enhance your coding workflow. DevTools has a great deal of features, and to take advantage of them, it’s wise to invest some time learning the ins-and-outs of the tool in order to unlock its true potential. (sixrevisions.com)

Becoming a UX Unicorn in 5 Easy Steps (Jared M. Spool)

We call them unicorns because they are supposed to be mythical creatures-something that doesn’t exist in the real world. That’s how the nickname came about. Yet, over the past couple of years, we’ve started meeting people who fit the description of a UX unicorn. They are very real and they are amongst us. We know because we’ve met and studied several dozen of these multi-skilled designers over the past two years. (uie.com)

Resources for Mapping the Experience with Alignment Diagrams (James Kalbach)

All too often companies are focused on their own processes, wrapped up in a type of organizational navel gazing. They simply don’t know what their customers actually go through. And, even if they can identify root causes of problems, logical solutions can cross departmental lines. Fixes may require crossing those boundaries. An organization’s rigid decision-making makes that difficult. (experiencinginformation)

Going Pro – What it takes to be a lead designer at a top startup (designerfund)

Over the past couple years at Designer Fund we’ve worked closely with many top startups to grow and develop their design teams. These startups build world-class products, value design, and invest heavily in their designers. (designerfund.com)

The Robot in the Cloud: A Conversation With Ken Goldberg (Quentin Hardy)

Ken Goldberg has been thinking hard about robots for almost three decades. His work ranges from over 170 peer-reviewed papers on things like robot algorithms and social information filtering to art projects about the interaction of people and machines. A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he is establishing a research center to develop medical robots to assist in surgery. That is just the latest development in what he thinks will be one of the great technology breakthroughs of our age: the fusing of robotics and cloud computing. He talks about it in this edited and condensed conversation. (nytimes.com)

Brilliant Design Thinking: Boyan Slat's Solution for Ridding the Ocean of Plastic Waste (Rain Noe)

We all know the oceans are filled with plastic waste, and we've seen the horrific photos of dead animals that have ingested the stuff. It is up to activists, responsible corporate citizens and lawmakers to stop these plastic garbage patches from growing. But that won't solve the problem of how to get rid of the stuff that's already floating around in there. (core77.com)

Strategy as a Creative Act – Making Space for Radical Ideas (Timothy Morey)

Sometimes I envision this scenario: a meeting room at Google a few years back and someone raising their hand during a brainstorming session to say “I think we should take photographs of every street in the world.” I can imagine the initial reactions of others in the room, particularly smart, rational, MBA-trained strategists who would instantly see the problems with this idea. How on earth does that fit with search? We would need a fleet of cars with cameras and a large labor force to drive them! How would this create value anyway? Won’t the public freak out? (frogdesign.com)

Best Resources For Creating and Prototyping a Mobile App (Julian)

As web designers and web developers, we spend our days wireframing and making prototypes for websites, web apps, and mobile apps. What are the tools you normally work with to deliver your projects on time? Are you curious about what else is out there? If you generally like to keep an eye on the rapidly evolving industry standards, then you have come to the right place. Read on, because here you will find an updated list containing the best creative resources for app building and prototyping. (dzineblog.com)

The Fine Art of Creating Experience Maps (Kathryn Kitchen)

At Blink we create experience maps as an instrument to articulate user engagement with a product. Experience maps are a visual representation of the users’ journey over time, and they provide a handy communication tool for teams to inform product direction. The benefit is that it tells a visual story in one-page that can be easily shared to communicate a product’s current state and opportunities. Many types of research can be used to inform the experience map including longitudinal studies, retrospective interviews, ethnographic research, and observational studies. (blinkux.com)

Usability: "What Does Statistically Significant Mean?" (Jeff Sauro)

Statistically significant. It's a phrase that's packed with both meaning, and syllables. It's hard to say and harder to understand. Yet it's one of the most common phrases heard when dealing with quantitative methods. While the phrase statistically significant represents the result of a rational exercise with numbers, it has a way of evoking as much emotion. (measuringu.com)

Social Proof in the User Experience (Jennifer Cardello)

Social proof is a psychological phenomenon where people reference the behavior of others to guide their own behavior. This tendency is driven by our natural desire to behave “correctly” under most circumstances—whether making a purchase, deciding where to dine, determining where we should go, what we say, who we say it to, and so on. One of the best examples of social proof, in real life, is the long line in front of an Apple Store on the day a new iPhone is released. The fact that a group of people find the new phone so desirable as to invest considerable time standing (or sleeping!) in line impacts our perception of the phone value (and makes us covet one, too). (nngroup.com)

Form Usability: The Pitfalls of Inline Accordion and Tab Designs (Jamie Appleseed)

During our e-commerce research studies, particularly on checkout usability, we’ve found that tab-style and inline accordion form layouts can inadvertently confuse users, or even flat out violate their expectations. The issue arises when users can’t figure out which form fields will be submitted – whether it is only the fields in the currently active inline accordion or tab “sheet”, or whether the collapsed “sheets” will be submitted as well. (baymard.com)

Usability Testing Is Undermining UX Design (Peter Hornsby)

... although I’ve never before considered usability testing as something that falls into the large—and growing—list of things that undermine effective UX design work, I’ve recently had a number of conversations with designers that suggest their perception of usability testing is fundamentally wrong. I’ve heard both junior and senior designers express their perception of usability testing in different ways, but the core message is the same: They believe that nothing can be known about a design that a team is going to implement unless that design has been tested with the target audience. That no knowledge is possible and nothing can be said about a design with any degree of confidence, unless its usability has been validated for specific use cases, in specific circumstances, with a specific set of users, and for a specific combination of browser and device. (uxmatters.com)

Five Movements in Design That We Should Pay Attention To (Amy Cueva)

Design is helping governments, organizations, and businesses improve the quality of interactions with the people they serve, leading to experiences that are more meaningful and effective. Business leaders understand now more than ever that continued focus on improving the customer journey is an imperative to designing products that win, satisfy their customers, and empower their employees. Savvy planners will consider these emerging movements as they look to the future. (uxmag.com)

A Hands-On Guide To Data-Driven Design (Andrew Smith)

In world where analytics rules, design is becoming evermore data-driven. Is it something worth paying attention to and are the bonuses of it worth the effort? (usabilla.com)

The complete guide to Apple Pay (Dan Frommer)

Apple launched its mobile payments service, Apple Pay, today in the US. It has the chance—if successful—to become the first mainstream mobile payments service in many markets. We’ve assembled what we think will be common questions (with answers) about Apple Pay—and its potential implications for Apple, its users, and the world of payments. (qz.com)

Brandshare: Is The Value Exchange Between Brands and Consumers a Myth? (David Armano)

Imagine taking a trip to New York city. As always, it's crowded and bustling but it's also a nice day. You want to get around and see the sights but the idea of waiting on a corner to land a taxi or spending a portion of your day underground don't appeal to you. You're active and enjoy finding ways to incorporate e exercise in your day. You come across a bike sharing station with blue bikes and an interactive kiosk that helps you decide where you should go next. You use your credit card to obtain a bike and you're off and running, feeling a sense of empowerment that you've taken matters into your own hands and maybe even a little satisfaction that you're not contributing to the noise or other pollution as you pedal through the streets. Your needs get met, but you're also meeting the needs of the brand (*Citi) who helped put the bikes there in the first place. You've entered a value exchange with that brand whether you know it or not. (darmano)

How to transform design limitations into design success (Speider Schneider)

Think of design as a road map for consumers, taking them where you want them to go. Design makes an efficient way to get across the message and still make it pretty. That last part is where things start getting sort of weird. (webdesignerdepot.com)

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How to design for thumbs in the era of huge screens (Scott Hurff)

After years of resistance, Apple’s iPhone 6 announcement last week officially signaled the dawn of the Era of Huge Screens. And it’s going to crash into existence in a big way. Just this Monday, Apple announced that they’d sold over four million pre-orders for the phones the opening night of pre-orders. In only one night, they sold almost half of what they sold the entire opening weekend last year for iPhone 5s and 5c. (qz.com)

The Most Hated Design Trend Is Back (John Brownlee)

Whatever the Apple Watch is, it's not a watch. Not really. Nor is any smartwatch: the Moto 360, the Pebble, or the Samsung Gear Live. It's an entirely new class of device. But it doesn't look like a new device. It mostly resembles a watch. That's because Apple (and other gadget makers) are turning to an old frenemy to help wrap their heads around these things: skeuomorphic design. (fastcodesign.com)

How to build websites fast, with the rapid prototyping workflow (Dustin Cartwright )

Startups are notorious for bringing an idea from a concept to a finalized product fast. While there’s certainly something to be said for taking our time and doing in depth research at every milestone, sometimes we just need to get an idea up and running as soon as possible. Rapid prototyping in a startup culture slims the typical design and development process to hit the high points and retouch the lows after the fact. We can learn a lot from this methodology and apply it directly to our own work, even if that work isn’t for a startup. (webdesignerdepot.com)

‘Six Mile Pencil’ Illustrates How Far You Have Drawn, Encouraging Creation (Ross Brooks)

Anyone with established drawing skills will tell you that it took hours and hours of practice to get where they are today. To help encourage more people to draw, and give them a way to track their progress, design agency Lyon&Lyon; has created the Six Mile Pencil. Not only does it have enough graphite to draw for six miles, it’s also got a ruler on the body that tells you how many miles you’ve drawn so far. (psfk.com)

How the Shinkansen bullet train made Tokyo into the monster it is today (Philip Brasor and Masako Tsubuku)

Fifty years ago on Wednesday two Shinkansen bullet trains completed their first journeys, kickstarting a high-speed rail network that would transform Japan. (theguardian.com)

8 Ways To Identify Unmet Customer Needs (Jeff Sauro)

Innovation can't be legislated. It can't be bought. Where does it come from? Innovation comes from identifying customers' needs and meeting them. Easy to understand. Hard to do. Companies like Uber, Airbnb, and Intuit understand this--and they're doing it. Uber's success, for example, has come not from building new, better taxis but from seeing--and then solving--people's transportation problems. (measuringusability.com)

Google UX design with heart (Eman El-Koshairy)

Ever since I started getting into User Experience Design, Google has always been a great inspiration. Simply because as a user, Google has always been able to know what I need, buckle it up in a simple nifty feature that makes you go “Of course, how could I’ve lived without that?” while I had never really thought I was missing that feature. Does this ring a bell? Let me share with you afew examples, that left me with “Aww” at first experience. (medium.com)

8 Major Design Festivals You Should Hear About (Anamaria)

Being a web designer implies staying in front of a computer almost the entire day. The Internet, this modern tool of trade, keeps all web designers connected to the latest devices, design news, inspirational info and other designers. With the Internet, sharing your projects, thoughts and new ideas is only a few clicks away. But it’s even more exciting when you can share your projects and ideas with your peers within a festival specially tailor for this purpose. International design festivals are no longer a new thing. They gather thousands of people who share common interests and enable them to communicate, exchange thoughts on their work and further develop partnerships. (topdesignmag.com)

Building Minimum Viable Products at Spotify (Chris Bank)

Many companies face the paradox of wanting to build a delightful product without knowing if people actually want the product until it’s released. Spotify’s vision was to give people the right music at the right time while incentivizing artists by paying them based on number of shares their music received. A tall order, no doubt, when you consider how hard it is to build out such a platform, let alone make it profitable. Yet Spotify defied the odds and grew from zero to over 1 million paying subscribers in the US — a market foreign to Spotify’s native Swedish team and one already teeming with competitors. (speckyboy.com)

Balancing Product UX and Lean Execution (Chris Bank)

What matters more: killer UX that makes people want to use your product, or shipping the things people want quickly and staking down a huge share of the market? If the UX is bad, people won't want to use it. On the other hand, if someone else gets it there first, people are happy to use what is available and help to improve it with feedback as it grows. People have been struggling with these opposing interests long enough that we thought it important to outline a better way to think about the problem, depending on what stage your company is in. (uxmag.com)

What people DON'T GET about MVP (Jan Jursa)

What people DON'T GET about MVP. I want a car, not a bloody scooter! (img via http://bit.ly/Yq0fI1) #mvp https://twitter.com/IATV/status/515873729063436288

Environmental Communications: How Understanding Experiences in Virtual Space Can Influence the Design of Experiences in Physical Space (Laura Keller)

UX professionals are accustomed to thinking about how people interact with digital user interfaces. Whether we’re designing a mobile application or a marketing Web site, it’s in our DNA to consider what would be the optimal experience for people. But digital user interfaces are not the only elements of an experience with which people interact. In services, people may also interact with each other, with processes, with communications, and with physical spaces, and it’s the responsibility of the service designer to understand their needs and create an optimal experience that considers all of these diverse elements. Plus, while the goal of a service designer is to think holistically about how these elements work together in a service experience, each element has its own discreet set of design considerations. (uxmatters.com)

"CUBI: A User Experience Model for Project Success" (Corey Stern)

We all want to be a part of compelling creative projects—projects that solve business problems and engage users through meaningful and valuable experiences. However, given tight budgets and timelines it's challenging to create genuinely innovative design, identify gaps in the process, and consider the variety of factors for effective user experience. To solve these common challenges, I researched existing user experience models or frameworks and found that most UX diagrams are confusing, unorganized, complex, or antiquated, making them useless for designers and clients. That’s why I decided to create my own model. (uxmag.com)

The Culinary Model of Web Design (Antoine Lefeuvre)

We call ourselves information architects, web designers or content strategists, among other job titles in the industry, including the occasional PHP ninja or SEO rockstar. The web does owe a lot to fields like architecture, industrial design, or marketing. I still haven’t met an interaction cook or maitre d’optimization, though. No web makers turn to chefs for inspiration, one might say. (alistapart.com)

UI, UX: Who Does What? A Designer's Guide To The Tech Industry (Lo Min Ming)

Design is a rather broad and vague term. When someone says "I'm a designer," it is not immediately clear what they actually do day to day. There are a number of different responsibilities encompassed by the umbrella term designer. (fastcodesign.com)

How To Give Back To The Design Community (Addison Duvall)

We’ve all seen example after example of perfectly rendered designs that tickle our imaginations, and sometimes even make us a bit jealous. It seems as though some designers are divinely talented, able to create amazing work with almost no visible struggle at all. To some designers, this is an inspiration. To others, however (probably most of us), it can be a little frustrating. (hongkiat.com)

Form Usability: Validations vs Warnings (Jamie Appleseed)

There’s a major difference between form validations and warnings. Form validations enforce a set of rules and won’t allow the user to proceed, while warnings alert the user about possible problems but will allow them to proceed. While e-commerce sites would do well in adopting both strategies, it’s unfortunately few that make use of warnings (our checkout benchmark study found that 64% don’t have ‘address warnings’), and similarly regrettable we often observe sites enforcing overly restrictive form validations that completely block a (small) sub-group from completing their purchase. (baymard.com)

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Freelance Vs. In-House: Which Produces The Best Designers? (Addison Duvall)

One of my favorite things, besides design, food, and writing about design and food, is perturbing my fellow designers with strange questions. You guys should try it sometime; it’s really fun. Anyway, today I was thinking about the dynamic of an in-house work environment, and how it compares to freelancing. I’ve done both, and I definitely have some thoughts on the matter. (hongkiat.com)

Does Originality Matter in Web Design? (Ezequiel Bruni)

My memory isn’t perfect, but I can say with some certainty that I’ve never actually copied a design. Not pixel-for-pixel, at any rate. I’ve stolen ideas, to be sure. (Don’t look at me like that. Everyone does it.) I’ve replicated cool concepts just to see if I could. (medium.com)

The Perils and Perks of Designing with Parallax (Diana MacDonald)

How many times has a client, manager, or colleague from a different department asked you to deliver something because it’s trendy? They’ve seen it, they want it. Relevance, be damned. How often has this trend been completely unsuitable for your website project? Saying “no” and explaining why a trend makes no sense for your website can be a challenge, so it’s helpful to understand what value a trend can add, and how to apply it effectively in your circumstances. (sitepoint.com)

User Interface 18 giveaway: "Last Year’s Featured Talks. No Strings Attached" (uie.com)

"Axe Requirements-driven Product Design" by Jeff Gothelf, "It’s a Great Time To Be a UX Designer" by Jared Spool, "Get More from User Research" by Kim Goodwin... and many more. (uie.com)

Why Banks Need to Revamp their User Experience (Rich Berkman)

The most interesting things happening in financial services are not happening in financial services. Thanks to a slew of new and older digital apps and websites, such as Apple Pay, Venmo, Square, Mint, and PayPal, kids can borrow money from their parents via text message or sign for a pizza delivery (including tip) on their phones. Families can use analytic tools to drill down through their own financial data to see where their money goes and how to cut spending. These tools have made every aspect of financial management—including transfers, payments—incredibly intuitive and easy. (uxmag.com)

3 Old and Outdated UX Patterns (And How to Fix Them) (Annarita Tranfici)

In one of my recent articles, The Evolution of the Hamburger icon we talked about the history of this commonly-used pattern, and about who’s using it and why. In fact, there have been many recent discussions in UX circles that have raised the unintuitive nature of the hamburger icon and issues in several cases. In this article, I thought we’d focus on three other very common 2014 UX patterns. Each one is so prevalent and humdrum that we may not even think twice when we employ them. (sitepoint.com)

Don't let team politics get in the way of shipping great design (Daniel Burka)

Shipping great design work is a struggle. You can have expert-level knowledge of Photoshop, color theory, copywriting, grid systems, and branding — and still consistently ship crap products. Things happen: colleagues meddle with your work, interfaces get implemented poorly, compromises cut to the bone, and great ideas fall to the cutting room floor. (gv.com)

How Flat Design Increases Conversion Rates (Giles Thomas)

There are many arguments for and against flat design, so in this article I wanted to take a quick look at how flat design can actually affect your bottom line. When it comes to arguments, nothing speaks louder than actual dollars. (speckyboy.com)

The Role of Iterative Usability Evaluation in Agile Development: A Case Study (Yanfei Ma, Yunhui Lu, and Dinara Saparova)

The agile approach to software development has significant impacts on the practice of user-centered design (UCD), including usability evaluation. To better understand the role of iterative usability evaluation during agile development, we recently conducted a study whose focus was the usability evaluation of a personal health–management system. The complexities of healthcare systems require thoughtful and well-structured usability evaluations—especially when the design process occurs within the context of an agile development process. (uxmatters.com)

4 User Experience Fails That Impact The Conversion Of E-Commerce Sites (Stan Roach)

There are plenty of reasons why some e-commerce sites rake in the big bucks, while others do not. The reasons could be anything ranging from bad quality products to an unbearably long registration process and from lack of responsiveness to an inability of the web property to exude trust and credibility. (usabilitygeek.com)

15 Must-Read Guides for UX Professionals: Written or Praised by Industry Leaders (Chris Bank)

The field of UX is daunting without the right guidance. So many subjective questions pop up on a daily basis. How do we provide access to secondary navigation without cluttering the interface? What UI patterns are the most intuitive? How do we fulfill the logical and emotional needs of users? Answer one of them, and five more will inevitably pop up to take their place. (onextrapixel.com)

A to Z of example UX docs and deliverables (Neil Turner)

Following on from my article about how to create great UX documents, I thought that it would be useful to collate some example UX documents and deliverables together. This should hopefully provide a bit of inspiration and assist when it comes to choosing the type of document(s) to produce. For each document / deliverable I’ve included examples, together with a quick outline and links to more information. (uxforthemasses.com)

A history of iOS design from iOS 1 to iOS 8 (marie)

With Apple releasing the iPhone 6 tomorrow. We thought it would be great to go through the history of the iOS design, from iOS 1 to the most recent iOS 8. Throughout the years Apple has brought us everything from Copy Paste, to Siri and the App Store. (designreviver.com)

4 Web Design Elements That Help You Sell the Products on Your Online Store (alexbu)

All eCommerce store owners know sales are the key to business growth. The best way to increase sales for your store is to have the right marketing strategies. There are basically two key elements of online marketing. The first is to drive traffic to your website and the second is converting this traffic into customers. (designfloat.com)

Improving Mobile Interfaces with Rich-Touch Interactions (Chris Harrison)

Today’s mobile devices are incredibly sophisticated computers with multi-gigahertz, multi-core, hardware accelerated graphics, network connectivity, and many gigabytes of high-speed memory. Indeed, the smartphones we carry in our pockets today would have been deemed supercomputers just twenty years ago. (uxmag.com)

How to create great UX documents (Neil Turner)

Like it or not the UX profession is very much in the documents game. From personas to wireframes and from user journeys to sitemaps, UX is knee deep in documentation. Even with the Agile UX drive to keep documentation to a minimum (which I whole heartedly agree with), in the same way that a football team can’t score goals without a bit of passing (unless you have Maradona on your team); a design team can’t create great designs without a bit of documentation. Sure it’s scoring goals that everyone is working towards but the passing is a necessary step on the way (even if it often gets forgotten about). (uxforthemasses.com)

UX vs. Product? (Christian Reiter)

There are many apps out there with either a great user experience and are fun to use or on the other hand solve a real problem with so much value in it but with a really bad design. But what we need is more stuff which does both great. Every product needs to solve a real problem, or more generally, be of value for the user, and to communicate the solution to that problem in a clear and concise way. (mobxcon.com)

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The Ethics of UX Research ( Nicholas Bowman)

As a UX researcher for a social media operation, Ute considers different interface designs that might allow users to make more social contacts. Ute gets a radical idea to test her hunches: What if we manipulated some of our current users’ profile pictures and measured the impact of those changes on their friends list? If successful, her research would provide valuable insight into the social media design elements most likely to result in sociability online. Of course, a successful study would also diminish the experiences of thousands already using her company’s service. In Ute’s mind, this is a simple A/B test, yet in the wake of recent controversy surrounding social media research, she’s starting to wonder if she should be concerned about the ethics of her work. (uxbooth.com)

6 Tips for Creating an Effective Survey (Erin Hogg)

There’s a good time, and a not-so-good time, for everything. This rule of life applies to surveys as well. In surveys, situations may exist for you that make it a good idea to field a survey, Diana explained. This could include scenarios of when you want to understand your customers’ motivations or characteristics. Maybe you’re looking to expand your product lines and want to know what your customers would like to see offered. (marketingsherpa.com)

In praise of beautiful advertising (John Collins)

News – both the written word and video – has never been more widely consumed but the traditional business model that has supported its production is busted. (insideintercom.io)

Designing the new Foursquare (Sam Brown)

Earlier this year we sat down as a company and looked at all the amazing pieces of technology we had built. Foursquare then had two distinct use-cases — keeping up and meeting up with friends, and finding places to go — and we’d tried just about every way possible to have them live together in a complementary way. We came to the conclusion that there were millions of people that want a better and more personalized search experience than currently exists, but are averse to check-ins and location sharing. (medium.com)

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Designing an Effective Donate Form (Brad Frost)

I reached out to the Pittsburgh Food Bank last year about helping them redesign their website largely because I was having a hard time figuring out how to give them money. So as part of our redesign of the Pittsburgh Food Bank’s website, we want to make the donate experience more visible and usable. (bradfrostweb.com)

The Look Of Funny: How The Onion's Art Department Works (Dan Nosowitz)

An Onion article titled “New Law Enforcement Robot Can Wield Excessive Force Of 5 Human Officers” includes a remarkable bit of artwork, which you can see above: a muscled, armored tank-like robot armed with guns and probes and sprays and hammers, using all its weaponry to attack the business-casual-clad attendees of a beige-carpet trade show. To create it, The Onion’s art department built a digital robot, staged the scene with real people, then combined original photography and digital art with pre-existing stock photography to achieve a perfectly surreal, violent scene. All to illustrate a joke that can be told in a 12-word headline. http://bit.ly/1lnhJQ6 (fastcodesign.com)

A guide to multi-DPI and platform design (Sebastien Gabriel)

DPI or Dots Per Inch is a measure of spatial dot density initially used in print. It's the number of ink drops your printer can put in an inch . A smaller DPI yields a less-detailed image. This concept is applied to computer screens under the name PPI for Pixels Per Inch. Same principle: It counts the number of pixels your screen can display per inch. The name DPI is also used in screens." http://bit.ly/XGLVeh (sebastien-gabriel.com)

The Peter Principle Explained (Rolf D.)

I was not a great laboratory technician. Some days I was so bored doing exactly the same thing that I would experiment with different ways of doing it. Good thing that I worked in a research laboratory and my playing around was useful. For most jobs, the traits necessary to be an outstanding entry-level worker are not the traits necessary to become an outstanding manager. This is the Peter Principle: Do a great job, and you will eventually be promoted until you reach your level of incompetence. (linkedin.com)

Why you must master mobile ecommerce (Caleb Mellas)

Since 2011, many in the design community have been pushing responsive design to our clients as a “nice-to-have” feature. But in 2014, reality has set in: a responsive website has become an essential part of any company’s online presence. One area of the Web that is way behind in terms of providing a modern, easy-to-use interface for customers is online retail. Many retailers, even large ones, have not invested the resources to build a responsive estore that works across all device sizes and forms. (webdesignerdepot.com)