Designing better app icons (Michael Flarup)

After all the ruckus created by last weeks article “Let’s talk about white app icons” (which admittedly did have a bit of a preachy raised-finger vibe) I felt it necessary to follow up with a much more constructive and practical approach on what I actually think makes a great app icon. An article for everyone, newcomers and pros alike, about the magic of app icons and how we can make them better. (medium.com)

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How Reframing A Problem Unlocks Innovation (Tina Seelig)

Mastering the ability to reframe problems is an important tool for increasing your imagination because it unlocks a vast array of solutions. With experience it becomes quite natural. Taking photos is a great way to practice this skill. When Forrest Glick, an avid photographer, ran a photography workshop near Fallen Leaf Lake in California, he showed the participants how to see the scene from many different points of view, framing and reframing their shots each time. (fastcodesign.com)

Frameworks (Ethan Marcotte)

Over the past few years, we’ve been learning how to adapt our layouts to the infinite canvas of the web. Our sites can be viewed on any size screen, at any time, and responsive design is one approach that lets us accommodate the web’s variable shape. But with all of the challenges we’re facing and those yet to come, we need to begin building not just patterns, but principles for responsive design—principles that will allow us to focus not just on layout, but on the quality of our work. (alistapart.com)

Building Project Comet: Details Matter (Narciso Jaramillo)

I’m an engineer on the team at Adobe that’s developing Project Comet, a new UX design and prototyping tool. We’re building it from scratch rather than using an existing codebase, so there’s been plenty to do just getting the basics implemented. Multithreaded rendering, vector rasterization, canvas decoration drawing and interaction handling…all before you can even draw a rectangle! (medium.com)

Picking The Right Methods To Improve Navigation (Jeff Sauro)

Despite improvements in search technology, most users still take a browse-first approach to find products and information on websites. That makes navigation important, not only on websites but also in mobile apps, operating systems, and the various devices we interact with. (measuringu.com)

The Evolution of a UI Designer into a Product Designer (Nick Parker)

What is a “product”? Until recently, the term was only used in relation to something material (telephone, TV, refrigerator), but progress can’t be stopped, this term can now relate to plans from wireless providers, different types of banking services to services and applications in IT. We will now discuss the latest type of products. (awwwards.com)

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Why is Flat Design Still the Best Way forward for Websites? (Marie)

Almost everyone loves flat design because it is built to be purposeful, intuitive and minimalistic. It is function over beauty or usability over ornamentation, which is attracting people all over the world. However, there is also a breed of creative designers who are frustrated as they can’t experiment with shadow, depth, perspective or reflection and have to create variants of the same old images and icon sets. (designreviver.com)

7 things I learned working at a user-centred design agency (Luke Jones)

At the end of November, I’ll be handing my MacBook back over to cxpartners and moving on to new pastures over at Hudl. I’ve learned a huge amount during my time at cxpartners and achieved more than I ever thought I would by my mid-20s. The cxpartners approach to design is far removed from anything I’ve ever experienced, so I had to adapt quickly, learning along the way that I was a young & foolish designer who had a bunch of assumptions that were wrong. Here are a few things that I have learned in my tenure at this wonderful agency. (medium.com)

The State of Mobile E-Commerce Search and Category Navigation (Jamie Appleseed)

Mobile is still among the hottest web design topics – especially within e-commerce, where it frequently constitutes 30-50% of all traffic. Yet IBM has for the second year in a row documented that mobile conversion rates are roughly half of that of their desktop counterpart. After completing an extensive mobile e-commerce benchmark study, it’s easy to understand why some cry out for caution. (baymard.com)

The politics and aesthetics of participatory HCI (Peter Wright, John McCarthy)

Involving users in the design of systems has been a byword in HCI since its inception. The nature and depth of this involvement has varied from identifying needs and requirements to imagining solutions and evaluating outcomes. As different disciplinary perspectives and values have been brought to bear on the design of interactive systems, how user involvement has been understood and configured has also varied. Most recently we are becoming accustomed to working with terms like human-centered design, experience-centered design, participatory design, and co-design, which represent the range of different viewpoints and value systems at play in HCI design research. (acm.org)

Basic Patterns for Mobile Navigation: A Primer (Raluca Budiu)

Mobile navigation must be discoverable, accessible, and take little screen space. Exposing the navigation and hiding it in a hamburger both have pros and cons, and different types of sites have different preferred solutions to the mobile-navigation quandary.

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What I’ve Learned Designing Small Things at Facebook (Jasmine Friedl)

If you’re a Product Designer like me, you’ve probably been asked to design something “small” when you’ve got bigger things you want to attack. This thing might be an A/B test, or it might just be a small design request: polishing or adding something to an existing experience. (medium.com)

Using Surveys To Measure The User Experience (Jeff Sauro)

The best way to measure the user experience is by observing real users attempting realistic tasks. This is best done through a usability test or direct observation of users. You may not always be able to do so though because of limitations in time, costs, availability of products, or difficulty in finding qualified users. (measuringu.com)

Why Workspace Design Matters And How To Hack It (Ralitsa Golemanova)

For some, workspace design might be just another passing fad, but here at Swipes, we’d love to prove that wrong. You know, you can even use your office space as a strategic tool for growth. Aesthetics easily translates into functionality when it comes to office design. This ultimately leads to a bunch of awesome benefits for your team, including improved productivity and boosted creativity. (despreneur.com)

RECONSIDER (David Heinemeier Hansson)

About 12 years ago, I co-founded a startup called Basecamp: A simple project collaboration tool that helps people make progress together, sold on a monthly subscription. It took a part of some people’s work life and made it a little better. A little nicer than trying to manage a project over email or by stringing together a bunch of separate chat, file sharing, and task systems. Along the way it made for a comfortable business to own for my partner and me, and a great place to work for our employees. (medium.com)

The Importance Of Evaluating UX (Jeff Sauro)

Maybe you've seen the ketchup bottles. It's been a popular meme on LinkedIn. The bottles are intended to be a clever way to explain the difference between UI (user interface) and UX (user experience). The classic bottle of ketchup is the user interface. The ketchup bottle introduced in 2002 with its characteristic inverted bottle and lid is supposed to be the user experience. (measuringu.com)

List vs. Grid View: When to Use Which on Mobile (anthony)

Figuring out your content layout is a tricky task on a mobile device. Desktop devices give you all the screen space to work with. But on mobile, you have limited screen space. Users can only view a small amount of content at a time before they need to scroll to view more. You end up wondering what the most efficient layout for viewing is. Should you use a list view or grid view? Your decision could affect how quick and easy it is for users to find what they’re looking for. (uxmovement.com)

Integrating feature requests without destroying your product (InVision)

After being in the UX industry for years, I’ve discovered 2 important things: When a client asks for a feature, rather than responding, “Sure! Let me just toss that in here!”, an experienced product designer says, “That’s great feedback! Can you explain how you’d apply that feature and how it’d improve your experience?” (medium.com)

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