The REAL Reason Facebook Got Rid Of Its Beautiful Redesign: Its Users Have Old Computers With Tiny Screens (Nicholas Carlson)

A year ago, Facebook announced it would redesign its News Feed. The new design would feature bigger pictures. It looked like this... (businessinsider.com)

10 of the best sources for web design inspiration (Barin Cristian Doru)

Are you a web designer looking for the right place to get your creative juices flowing? Look no further — the following list is the perfect remedy for someone stuck-in-a-rut, bored of seeing the same designs over and over. Here are the most inspired, curated, and constantly updated websites around to help your creativity (99designs.com)

Calling to Action: 3 key principles (Oliver McGough)

With so much money being flung around the web, everyone is fighting for their share. As the internet opens up to more and more people, the money flooding onto the online marketplace continues to grow. Amazon’s $74 billion annual revenue is on par with the value of the entire countries of Cuba or Oman. (usabilla.com)

Matt Cutts on How Google Tests Its Algorithms (Jennifer Slegg)

Have you ever been curious about how Google decides which algorithm is better than another, when they're pushing out one of the many tweaks they do weekly? How do they judge which tweak actually produces better results and which produces lots of good results? Or does the spam team just wave a nerf bat over the server before hitting a big red button and hope for the best? (searchenginewatch.com)

Beware of Feature Overload: A Case Study (Bartosz Olchówka)

Many popular applications from the 90s are not available on the market anymore. New Internet users will never hear about RealPlayer or ICQ—products that millions were using just ten years ago. One reason they’re gone is that a plethora of new features turned those simple, usable applications into hulking space stations, resulting in a bad user experience. - See more at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/03/beware-of-feature-overload-a-case-study.php#sthash.VP1GUTwS.dpuf (uxmatters.com)

Floating Wind Turbines Hover Above Areas In Need Of Power (Ross Brooks)

A new helium-filled wind turbine that floats 1,000 feet in the air has been proven to generate twice as much power as a conventional turbine tower. Designed and built by the startup Altaeros Energies, the floating wind turbine can also provide data coverage, cell service and local weather data to remote communities. (psfk.com)

DISCOUNT 63% How To Develop & Document Personas & Scenarios (Udemy)

DISCOUNT 63% (YOU SAVE $41): How To Develop & Document Personas & Scenarios

Design products that fit your audience. Design better products by learning how to create better UX personas. (udemy.com)

The instructor is Susan Weinschenk. Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology, and 30 years of experience applying psychology to the design of software, websites, apps, and technology products. She's the author of How to Get People to Do Stuff, and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.

Storymapping: A MacGyver Approach to Content Strategy (Lis Hubert and Donna Lichaw)

In Part I of this series on using a storymapping approach to content strategy, we told you about how a local nonprofit, Urban Arts Partnership, brought us a frequent client problem: their need to better understand, organize, and maintain the content for their EASE Program. We explained that, even though there are tried-and-true methods that we could have used to solve this problem—specifically, conducting stakeholder and user interviews during a typical discovery phase, leading to the creation of personas and a content inventory—they wouldn’t have worked for this project. We had realized that, given the short amount of time they had allotted for the project and the small budget that was available for our time, we needed to figure out a new way to help our clients get their heads around their content. So, we introduced our idea of adapting an old approach, storymapping, to solve Urban Arts’ problem on time and on budget. (uxmatters.com)

Samsung, Selfies, and Sponsored Content: How Marketers Might Ruin a Good Thing (Ginny Soskey)

On the surface level, there seems nothing harmful about selfies. At their worst, they're an annoying pop culture trend based on intentionally choreographed photos that speak to the self-indulgent nature of the person taking them. At their best, they boost your self esteem as more and more people like a near-flawless photo of you. All harmless fun, right? (hubspot.com)

Who Owns David Ortiz' Selfie? (Josh Bernoff)

David Ortiz took this selfie when the Red Sox visited the White House to celebrate their win in the 2013 World Series. First there was a huge hue and cry because of the question of whether Samsung put him up to it (David says it was spontaneous, but he does have a contract with Samsung.) (forrester.com)

Proactive Experiences and the Future of UX (Tony Costa)

My sympathies go out to the thousands of passengers who had their flights cancelled because of this past winter’s polar vortex. For most of them, the disruptions subjected them to waiting in a seemingly endless line at the airport ticket counter or listening to smooth jazz while they waited to talk to someone on an airline’s 1-800 number. Their experience didn’t have to be this way, and for many passengers on Delta Air Lines, it wasn’t. (uxmag.com)

Mozilla Chief, a Gay-Marriage Foe, Steps Down (Nick Bilton)

A little over a week after becoming chief executive of Mozilla, Brendan Eich is stepping down after an intense debate over his belief that gays should not be allowed to marry. After his appointment as the company’s new chief, Mr. Eich came under heavy fire from employees and the public for making a $1,000 contribution in 2008 to support a ban on gay marriage in California under Proposition 8. (nytimes.com)

Users Overlook Store Pickup When Not Presented as a Shipping Option (Christian Holst)

With 33% of abandoned carts being due to extra costs added during checkout, shipping is clearly still a weak point of e-commerce (Baymard 2013). It should therefore come as little surprise that Store Pickup is becoming an increasingly important feature in e-commerce, with as many as 50% of all customers expecting omni-channel retailers to offer this option (Forrester 2014). (baymard.com)

The Fatal Mistake Content Marketers Are Making With Nofollow (Danielle Wiley)

RIP, content marketing. Thanks to Google’s algorithm updates and quality guidelines that require paid links to include a nofollow tag, there’s simply no value any more in online promotions for brands and agencies. After all, if a sponsored link can no longer provide a direct PageRank boost, what’s the point? Everyone knows the only reason to bother promoting a brand online is for the improved search engine rankings. (marketingland.com)

Don’t Put All of Your Content Eggs in One Basket (Yuyu Chen)

It's universally acknowledged that a diversified portfolio will protect you from financial risk. Well, the philosophy of diversification in finance applies to content marketing as well - to build content authority, content marketing strategists need to expand their content across multiple formats and channels, as different B2B content buyers use, share, and rely on a broad range of content formats and sources, The Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council suggests in its most recent research. (clickz.com)

Job destruction by robots could outweigh creation (The Economist)

“OUR ROBOTS PUT people to work,” says the rejected slogan still on the whiteboard in Rodney Brooks’s office. It was meant to convey the belief that led Mr Brooks to start Rethink Robotics: that robots in small manufacturing businesses can create new jobs, or at least bring old ones back from China, thus helping to launch an American manufacturing renaissance. But the message could also be read another way: robot overlords forcing human helots into back-breaking labour. Better left unsaid. (economist.com)

DISCOUNT 63% How To Develop & Document Personas & Scenarios (Udemy)

DISCOUNT 63% (YOU SAVE $41): How To Develop & Document Personas & Scenarios

Design products that fit your audience. Design better products by learning how to create better UX personas. (udemy.com)

The instructor is Susan Weinschenk. Susan has a Ph.D. in Psychology, and 30 years of experience applying psychology to the design of software, websites, apps, and technology products. She's the author of How to Get People to Do Stuff, and 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People.

Resources on UX Strategy (James Kalbach)

Below is a list of resources I reference in my workshop on UX strategy. Because UX strategy must ultimately align with business strategy, understanding the business side of things is imperative. Consequently many items below represent some of my favorite sources on business strategy and strategy in general. (experiencinginformation)

Responsive Strategy (Brad Frost)

Right now around 11 or 12% of the top 100,000 sites are responsive, and no doubt that number is slated to rise over the next few years. As the people in the depraved cat-skinning business say, “there’s more than one way to skin a cat.” The sick bastards. As more organizations roll up their sleeves to tackle the realities of our multi-device Web, it’s worth taking a look at the various strategies employed to reach that squishy nirvana: (bradfrostweb.com)

Most People Won’t Actually Read Your Landing Page – How to Get Your Message Across Anyway (Shane Jones)

The world today is cluttered and busy. With millions of pages online, people have been forced to filter their content intake. They consume only the content that is relevant to them. The unfortunate bottom line is no one will read your great offer on your stunning landing page if it isn’t relevant. And, it can’t convert if people don’t read it. That’s why you need to write your landing page with all three types of viewers in mind – readers, scanners, and bottom feeders. (kissmetrics.com)