24. Februar 2015

Best Practices for Accordion Interfaces in Web Design (Jake Rocheleau)

The word “accordion” typically conjures a mental image of your favorite polka band. Although polka music can offer a rip-snorting good time, the term is associated with something different in the realm of web design. User interface accordions might refer to menus, widgets, or content areas which expand like the musical instrument. These interfaces have grown a lot more popular in recent years with the expansion of JavaScript and more prominently jQuery. (webdesignledger.com)

The Art of Questioning as a UX Skill (Jason Grant)

When starting any design project, you’re going to need to ask a lot of questions. The perceived problem and the actual problem may not be the same. So how can you get better at asking the right questions? I decided to brush up on my questioning skills by reading A More Beautiful Question by Warren Berger. Berger illustrates how questioning is an inherent skill we’re quite adept at during childhood. He notes that children haven’t developed a “mental model” of the world, so they question everything. But as we go through standardized education, we begin to suppress our curiosity. (uxmovement.com)

Responsive Web Design for eCommerce Web Sites (Janet M. Six)

Imagine that your company has chosen you to be part of a team that is going to design and build or update an ecommerce Web site. The budget and deadline are tight, and the boss wants to know what is the minimum that you can do to create a strong, profit-building machine. What would you tell him? Would you stay focused only on your existing desktop Web site—or if you’re creating a new site, build for the desktop first—and let your mobile customers deal with it as best they can? Would you build a Web site that is somewhat different on and adapts to each type and size of device? Would you insist on developing a mobile app? And how would you plan to maintain the solution? (uxmatters.com)

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23. Februar 2015

Personas Make Users Memorable for Product Team Members (Aurora Bedford)

The field of user experience centers on the idea that we must design products around people, rather than teaching people how to use products: user-centered design (UCD), not technology-centered design. In order to do so, we must understand people—their behaviors, attitudes, needs, and goals. Whether the final product is a website, software application, mobile app, or interactive kiosk, a user-centered design can only be achieved if we know who is going to use it and if that knowledge informs our design. An entire arsenal of user-research methods can be employed to achieve a user-centered design. Personas are yet another tool that can be used to encourage decisions based on a real person’s needs, and not on those of a generic and undefined “user.” (nngroup.com)

Embracing Uncertainty in UX Research (Matt Gallivan)

When you spend your days studying how people use products, your intuition around such things gets pretty well-honed. You start to see patterns and themes. You get to a point where you can point to an observed behavior, ask “What might this mean?” and generate some great high-level and philosophical discussions with your stakeholders. People start to seek you out for answers to their questions about users, even when you haven’t done research that could answer those questions. (medium.com)

How To Weight Data To Make More Balanced Decisions (Jeff Sauro)

Rarely is a customer population made up of a homogenous group of customers who share the same attributes. Consequently, our samples contain a mix of customers who may or may not reflect the composition of the customer population. (measuringu.com)

18. Februar 2015

Back Pocket Apps: Let’s Reconsider the Wireframe (Golden Krishna)

Charles feels like he has mobile apps for everything in his life. He’s tired of having to launch apps to do mundane things. He’d like to talk to people face-to-face instead of looking at his smartphone’s screen. He’d like to take advantage of the latest technology without needing to hunch over his mobile device. He wonders: can this powerful computer in my pocket make my life easier, instead of giving me more to do? (uxbooth.com)

How To Prevent ‘Sudden Client Designer Syndrome’ (Addison Duvall)

We’ve all been there: a client really, really wants to make a change to your design that, as a designer, you can immediately tell will result in disaster. It happens to every designer, and, as far as I can tell, there’s no real way to avoid it. However, there is a method you can use to mitigate the problems caused by what I like to call “Sudden Client Designer Syndrome.” It has to do with User Experience (UX). Contrary to popular belief, UX is useful not only to web developers, but to any designer who designs any kind of product, information, or experience with a “user,” “consumer,” or “customer” in mind. (speckyboy.com)

Design Strategies for Information Dashboards (Sreeram Sreenivasan)

An information dashboard is a single-page display that presents key performance indicators in real-time. To make its content easier to read, a modern dashboard will often utilize information graphics such as charts and tables. When designed well, a dashboard should help you quickly see critical information and discover data patterns. (sixrevisions.com)

15. Februar 2015

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)

Why coding is not the new literacy (Chris Granger )

Despite the good intentions behind the movement to get people to code, both the basic premise and approach are flawed. The movement sits on the idea that “coding is the new literacy,” but that takes a narrow view of what literacy really is. (qz.com)

Soft skills advice from design leaders (Andy Pratt)

Why do your colleagues want to work with you? And why do clients come back? Maybe it’s because of your talent, or your bullet-proof process. Or maybe it’s because of the brilliantly simple user interfaces and interactions you design. (medium.com)

Redesigning Or Creating A Website? Here’s Why Information Architecture Should Be Priority #1 (Shari Thurow)

The goal of effective information architecture (IA) is to make the products, services and information on your website easy to find. The main goal of site navigation is to enable task completion. Both information architecture and site navigation are critical for a positive user experience. They also affect your website’s bottom line. (marketingland.com)

3. Februar 2015

Iterative Sketching (Roxy Koranda)

Photoshop is a pretty sophisticated piece of software, but let’s face it — it’s not super speedy and presents a handful of limitations when it comes to getting your ideas out. I don’t even want to mention how the general tidiness of my layers suffers when I’m in serious idea-barf mode. Luckily, there’s another, less complicated option: sketching. (atendesigngroup.com)

Enterprise Productivity Apps for Remote Teams (Megan Gallagher)

It’s an exciting time to be a designer. With almost unlimited connectivity, designers and firms can work together without needing to inhabit the same space. Many designers and web professionals love the ability to be mobile, and luckily for them, more and more companies, particularly startups, are starting to embrace a remote workforce. (speckyboy.com)

The When, Why and How of Designing in Browser (Brooke Kao)

If you’re a designer in the tech industry, you’ve probably been exposed to or read articles about a hot topic in design today: designing in browser. The concept is as simple as it sounds. Rather than spending hours, days, weeks and months designing those pixel-perfect comps in Photoshop, a mainstay in a waterfall-oriented development process, designing in browser allows you to take whatever sketches and preliminary work you’ve conducted and enables you to jump right into the text editor and emerge with shippable code. (medium.com)

How Not to Commit This Awful Landing Page Error (Neil Patel)

Landing pages are a fixture of paid search. It’s virtually impossible to go a day without seeing a paid ad. But have you clicked on any of these landing pages recently? One common error presents itself again and again. If you’re in the business of making landing pages, advising people about landing pages, optimizing landing pages, or purchasing paid search, this article is for you. (kissmetrics.com)