How, and Why, Apple Overtook Microsoft (James B. Stewart)

When Microsoft stock was at a record high in 1999, and its market capitalization was nearly $620 billion, the notion that Apple Computer would ever be bigger — let alone twice as big — was laughable. Apple was teetering on bankruptcy. And Microsoft’s operating system was so dominant in personal computers, then the center of the technology universe, that the government deemed the company an unlawful monopoly. (nytimes.com)

How Big is Big Enough to Pick On? (Laura Kalbag)

Being able to criticize someone’s work without heaping scorn on them constitutes professionalism. I’ve occasionally been guilty of forgetting that: pumped up by my own sense of self-worth and a compulsion to give good drama to my followers on social networks, I’ve blurted unconstructive criticism into a text field and hit “send. ” (alistapart.com)

Replacing The User Story With The Job Story (Alan Klement)

I’ve written about the problem with user stories before. At the time, I found it better to just have the team talk over proposed changes to the product. This worked great when the team had gelled and the product is very mature; however, now I’m working with a new team and building a product from scratch. In this case, because our canvas is blank, we are having trouble getting on the same page when it comes to customer motivations, events and expectations. But today, things have turned around. I’ve come across a great way to use the jobs to be done philosophy to help define features. I call them Job Stories. (medium.com)

Are Mobile Websites Truly Less Usable Than Desktop Websites? (Jeff Sauro)

The typical mobile website experience is horrible. Everyone knows that, right? Sure, it's easy to find some terrible mobile website experiences, but are mobile websites systematically worse that their desktop counterparts? (measuringu.com)

A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design (Bret Victor)

As it happens, designing Future Interfaces For The Future used to be my line of work. I had the opportunity to design with real working prototypes, not green screens and After Effects, so there certainly are some interactions in the video which I'm a little skeptical of, given that I've actually tried them and the animators presumably haven't. But that's not my problem with the video. (worrydream.com)

When to Override Native UI Components (Jamie Appleseed)

In a few rare instances, we find that it is acceptable to override the standard UI components provided natively by browsers and instead implement custom UI components.(baymard.com)

20 things you can do this year to improve your user’s experience (David Travis)

The new year is as good a time as any to review and improve the way you work. With a good user experience now widely seen as the key attribute of many high-tech products, it makes sense to review your own products to see how you can give them that user experience edge. Here are 20 quick, simple and virtually free ideas you can apply in this new year. (userfocus.co.uk)

The agency is dead. Long live the agency. (Tobias van Schneider)

We’ve been watching it since a couple years now. Design studios or agencies such as 8020, Sofa, Smart Design, Adaptive Path, Hot Studio, Gecko Design and most recently Teehan+Lax joining the ranks of larger product organizations such as Facebook, Google or Microsoft. The same happens on an individual talent level everyday. (medium.com)

Variable Fonts for Responsive Design (Nick Sherman)

Choosing typefaces for use on the web today is a practice of specifying static fonts with fixed designs. But what if the design of a typeface could be as flexible and responsive as the layout it exists within? (alistapart.com)

Good Design is Long-Lasting, Part 7 (Jordan Koschei)

Digital design is still too new for us to understand its longevity. So far, styles have come and gone as necessitated by the technical limitations of our medium. 8-bit games had a particular style because there was no other choice. The Windows 95 aesthetic was a way to acclimate new users to the digital landscape through visual cues they’d recognize. And the heavy skeuomorphism of the Web 2.0 era was a result of plunging headlong into a newly-unlimited canvas. We had so much freedom, so suddenly, that we didn’t know what to do with it. (theindustry.cc)

Top 5 tips to improve mobile UX (Marie)

As all motorists understand: it’s easier to get around a city in a compact ‘smart’ car, and motorway cruising is more comfortable in a premium estate model. Those looking to improve online website access for smartphones and tablets must likewise appreciate the mobile-user experience (mobile UX) must be customized for this environment. Any attempt to merely recycle material from the desktop domain will be doomed to failure. Here are some key factors to take into consideration. (designreviver.com)

This is the difference between Microsoft and Apple (Dan Frommer)

Apple wants to sell you a watch, available with an elegant Milanese loop band or cast in luxurious 18-karat gold. Microsoft wants to sell you… a dorky looking pair of 3D “hologram” goggles? The companies have played a technology cat-and-mouse game over the decades, including “borrowing” several features and designs from each other, from Windows to the Zune. But the differences in taste and fashion between Apple and Microsoft couldn’t be more clear after today’s Windows 10 event. (qz.com)

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Has Visual Design Fallen Flat? (Emmet Connolly)

It was a time of great change in the world of visual design: foreshadowed by Microsoft’s aggressively modernist Metro style, popularized and polarized by the release of iOS 7, and perhaps most fully realized in the form of Google’s Material Design. Flat design (a reductive but useful shorthand) didn’t just kill skeuomorphism (ditto), it danced on its grave and then erased every last trace of beveling, shadow, and granite texture from the headstone. (intercom.io)

User Experience for Product Designers (Paul Hershey)

On small teams where time resources are limited user experience can often be overlooked. Over the past few months I’ve tried to develop a low impact UX cycle that designers and project managers can use to improve the quality of web apps without adding a lot of bloat to a project. This article will be written from the viewpoint of an app that is currently in-use. The UX process will vary slightly for a new product but the same basic principles exist. Below is a five-step process going through a development cycle that defines a detailed look at best practices in the UI/UX discipline. (medium.com)

E-Commerce KPI Study: There's (Finally) a Benchmark for That (Alan Coleman)

Being a digital marketer, I spend my day knee-deep in data. The time I don't spend analysing it, I spend explaining its significance to a client or junior colleague or arguing its significance with a client or senior colleague. But after many debates over the importance of bounce rate, time on site, mobile conversion rate and the colour grey for buttons (our designer partook in that last one), we're never much closer to an agreement on significance. (moz.com)

6 Opposing UX Concepts That Are Really Complementary (Jeff Sauro)

As you approach a research project, you are often faced with choices about different methods and concepts. While you consider your options among methods, it may be that opposing methods actually offer a complementary rather than contradictory view of the user experience. (measuringu.com)

Hypothesis driven UX design (Maximilian Wambach)

The value of design changes when you enable whole teams to learn instead of just looking at pretty mockups. (medium.com)

UI Animation in Photoshop (Taylor Ling)

I have been using Photoshop to make UI animations for my work and it works surprisingly well (at least for me). Of course, Adobe After Effect is still the best tool to create complex and awesome animations, but with Photoshop, you can still create some simple and high quality UI animations to preview the animation idea to others. With some combination of animation properties, you can definitely create some rich animations that is sufficient for discussion. There are certain limitations in Photoshop compared to After Effects (of course!), but for someone who wanted to just use one tool for UI Design + simple UI Animations, Photoshop is one of the best tool that you can get (even if it’s not really designed for UI design). (androiduiux.com)

MTV's Responsive Design Boosts Metrics on Mobile & Beyond (Luke Wroblewski)

The Web team at MTV recently redesigned several of their properties using responsive Web design techniques. They were kind enough to share the impact their work had on mobile visits, time spent and more. (lukew.com)

How to Fit User Experience Design into the Development Cycle (Justin Hunter)

Even the most agile of companies struggle with having the time to incorporate changes to their product that are not explicitly bugs or enhancements previously listed on a product roadmap. That being said, the power of user experience design is becoming increasingly obvious. For every $1 spent on user experience, a company can expect to return at least $2 or more. But UX enhancements still get bumped from releases and prioritized far lower than they should. (despreneur.com)

4 Inspirational Sidebar Designs that Invite Viral Traffic (Marie)

A sidebar is one of the most important aspects of your website layout. Visitors get an idea about your blog or website through the sidebar, before they make up their minds to stay or quit. So, making sure your website has a great sidebar is of significant importance; your sidebar must encourage visitors to take a closer look at your website. It should act as a trigger for better user engagement and increase the probability of conversions. (designreviver.com)

8 UX Requirements for Designing a User-Friendly Homepage Carousel (Jamie Appleseed)

Carousels are hugely popular on e-commerce sites. Especially on the homepage. In fact, 52% of the top US e-commerce sites have a carousel on the homepage (of their “desktop” site). While we have yet to finish our benchmark of mobile e-commerce sites, initial benchmarking shows that carousels are popular on mobile sites too. (baymard.com)

Designing the connected everyday (Elisa Giaccardi)

How often have you found yourself interacting online at the dinner table? Our daily routines often incorporate tweeting, facebooking, and the use of other online platforms while in the company of friends. Yet from Silicon Valley to Amsterdam, friends sometimes stack their phones on the table to stop this behavior while dining out. This example of “social norming” speaks of the gap between interactions online and interactions in everyday life. It also speaks of our inability as designers to imagine less intrusive ways in which digital technologies can be integrated into our lives. (acm.org)

5 Ecommerce Stats That Will Make You Change Your Entire Marketing Approach (Neil Patel)

The best information is usually the most straightforward: Cold hard statistics. Even though stats aren’t exactly emotionally scintillating or suspenseful, they are nonetheless very powerful. In this article, I’ve collected some of the most surprising ecommerce stats that I believe have profound implications for the way that we do marketing. These statistics come from the recent report by Visual Website Optimizer in their eCommerce Survey 2014. (kissmetrics.com)

What Is The Future Of Content Marketing And How Can You Prepare? (Arnie Kuenn)

Over the past few years, content marketing has come a long way. The term “content marketing” is becoming a part of the vernacular in marketing departments across the world. It’s no longer thought of as a trend, but as a verifiable opportunity to drive revenue. In fact, businesses spent more than $118 billion on content marketing last year alone. But what is the future of content marketing in 2015 and beyond? (marketingland.com)

How to Become a "Best Place to Work": Lessons From Recent Winners (Melissa Obleada)

Have you ever walked into an office -- your own, a friend’s, or somewhere you were visiting -- and immediately felt like that was precisely where you wanted to be? People are working, going about their business, and they’re happy ... at their day jobs. That, my friends, is an example of excellent company culture. (hubspot.com)

Go Responsive HTML Email! 65% of Email Gets Opened on Mobile Gadgets

65% of all email gets opened first on a mobile device writes Venturebeat. And they continue: Of the 65 percent of email that gets opened on mobile gadgets, smartphones take home the lion’s share of messages. Around 16 percent of messages get opened on tablets — up one percent quarter over quarter.. Marketing Land adds in its own report smartphone email opens peak in the “early morning,” (before working hours) whereas tablet email usage is concentrated in the evening, between 8 pm and 11 pm. However smartphone usage is dominant throughout the day..

Creating a Responsive HTML Email becomes more and more important.

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And while A List Apart asks Can Email Be Responsive? the author Jason Rodriguez provides the answer himself: Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the popularity of HTML emails. And, like the web before it, the inbox has officially gone mobile

How To Navigate Usability Evaluation (Anamaria Andrei)

Usability Evaluation aims to asses how well users are able to learn and use a product in order to achieve their goals. It also encompasses the level of satisfaction that the user amasses from the entire process. The primary source of information for usability evaluation comes from user feedback about an existing product or about plans for a future product. (topdesignmag.com)

Making and Breaking UX Best Practices (Brendon Cornwell)

With so many best practices available to UX designers, why isn't every design a slam dunk? This week, author Brendon Cornwell explains the nuances of following best practices - including knowing when not to follow them. (uxbooth.com)

Phones Aren’t Flat: Designing for Real People in Diverse Contexts (Steven Hoober)

People use their phone in real environments and interact with them just as they do with anything else, so we must set aside the assumption that they’re interacting just with a flat, glass screen. The way people hold and tap their phone changes according to their grip—and that changes frequently because they may be carrying items, holding onto children, talking to others, or opening doors. (uxmatters.com)

The Big Future: What does the future of interaction look like? (Sean O'Kane)

The rise of smartphones has left us tapping away at touchscreens. In this week's Big Future, we look at what comes after the glass. Will we all be speaking to our devices? Are augmented reality glasses and contacts going to feed us information all day? Or does touch interaction work so well that we'll never really replace it? (theverge.com)

The need for design history in HCI (Carl DiSalvo )

Last summer I had the opportunity to visit the Triennalle di Milano, an Italian design museum. One of the exhibitions was “Italian Design Beyond the Crisis: Autarky, Austerity, Autonomy,” which proposed and examined the idea that economic crisis might generate creative designs. It included work from three decades: the 1930s, the 1970s, and the 2000s. The show was amazing, with an abundance of objects and material that helped make sense of the items individually and connected them in a stream of historical design practice inextricable from social and political context. It’s cliché to say, but I left the exhibition inspired. (acm.org)

How To Start A Great New Year (Singyin Lee)

2014 may not have been the best year for many people. The year was laden with heart-breaking tragedies, disasters and losses. Unless you have been hiding underneath a rock for the past 12 months, or have a heart made of rocks, there were probably times when you wanted to just stay in bed and not deal with anything. (hongkiat.com)

30 Favorite Quotes From Content Marketing Influencers in 2014 (James Anderson)

As a newer member of the TopRank Agency blog team, I spent a good part of my first couple weeks here digging through the past year’s blog posts and getting up to speed with TopRank content and best practices. As I did, I found that I was jotting down quotes and notes that stood out to me — some from industry leaders, and others from up-and-comers I haven’t yet met. In sharing this list with you, I hope that you’ll find the same insight and utility that have discovered. (toprankblog.com)