User Interface

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  • iOS7: They're Doing It Right

    ZURB
    12 Jun 2013 | 3:00 pm
    Apple's new iOS7 is a great step forward full of useful innovations and a great visual refresh, but their work has been marred by the design details that people simply can't look past. Tim Cook unveiling iOS7 to the WWDC audience. (Image from Apple) The other day Apple unveiled a series of updates to their products and operating system to a room full of designers and developers, as well as to those clever enough pull up apple.com on Safari. While the updates to OSX, Mac Pro and Apple Air were met with open arms, the highly anticipated iOS7 wasn't. Some people welcomed the change. However,…
  • Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority

    Putting people first
    Experientia
    18 Jun 2013 | 10:23 pm
    The physical environment in which a service plays out has a significant influence on the experience of a service. So it’s not uncommon for service design projects to take the physical environment into account. In a recent project focused on the physical environment of the train station, the Dutch service design consultancy 31 Volts, specifically looked at the “extreme users“; that small group of people which cause a rather big impact on the experience of the larger group of “normal users”. So instead of analyzing and optimizing the existing customer journey they took the lateral…
  • The future of human-centered design

    InfoDesign: Understanding by Design
    PJB
    19 Jun 2013 | 6:39 am
    Copernicus and his heliocentrism are getting a lot of traction these days with outside-in thinking. "HCD has been a breakthrough for our industry - it's repositioned design as a tool to help transform product development by ensuring customer's needs are met and also by helping to uncover people's latent needs (those not surfaced by traditional focus groups for instance). We are taught to think about the world in three lenses as designers: desirability - what people want, feasibility - the capabilities of a firm, and viability - its financial health." (Nathan Waterhouse a.k.a.
  • Thumbs-only UI? How people hold phones

    Small Surfaces
    Gabriel White
    5 Jun 2013 | 4:08 am
    “The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways: one handed – 49%, cradled – 36%, two handed – 15%. In the following sections, I’ll describe and show a diagram of each of these methods of holding a mobile phone, along with providing some more detailed data and general observations about why I believe people hold a mobile phone in a particular way.” Link: How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? (uxmatters.com, via. See also Microsoft Research Paper for a pre-iPhone study) Small Surfaces…
  • re:log: Tracking the Movements of Conference Attendees via WiFi

    information aesthetics
    18 Jun 2013 | 1:44 pm
    re:log [opendatacity.de] by German data designers OpenDataCity reveals the movements of about 6,700 different electronic devices during re:publica 2013, a prestigious European conference on the topic of Digital Society. A dynamic map of the conference location shows the approximate locations of the devices when they were connected to the local WiFi hotspots. An interactive timeline underneath allows to explore the dynamic changes over time, while a rectangular area can be drawn to more specifically highlight and follow a smaller amount of dots. The visualization was based on tracking the MAC…
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    Signal vs. Noise

  • The Starter League launches Starter School

    Jason Fried
    18 Jun 2013 | 1:43 pm
    About two years ago, The Starter League set out to teach absolute beginners how to code. Since then, they’ve expanded their offerings to include HTML, CSS, and design. To date they’ve graduated over 600 students from all over the world. A true success story on so many levels. One thing they’ve noticed along the way is that their best students return back to take additional classes in different disciplines. They may start learning Rails, but then they want to learn advanced HTML/CSS. And then they want to learn visual design. Further, these students seem to want more than…
  • Building Know Your Company

    Jason Fried
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:10 pm
    Today our first five customers started using Know Your Company, our newest product. We’re hoping to roll out around five new customers every Monday for the foreseeable future. I thought this was a great time to talk a bit about how we’re building Know Your Company. Not the tech, specifically, but the approach. From the start, I wanted to approach the development of Know Your Company as if we were starting a separate company inside 37signals, not just building another product at 37signals. So I went back to 2003. That’s when we originally built Basecamp. Basecamp was…
  • VIDEO: Steve Jobs: The Most Important Thing (via…

    Michael
    17 Jun 2013 | 12:23 pm
    Steve Jobs: The Most Important Thing (via Farnam Street). A simple reminder that each of us has the ability to shape life into whatever we can dream up.
  • INSIGHT: The first exception should be the hardest…

    Jason Fried
    14 Jun 2013 | 10:18 am
    The first exception should be the hardest one to make. Once you’ve made one, each additional exception gets exponentially easier. Beware that first exception.
  • Apple: The organizational Rorschach

    David
    13 Jun 2013 | 7:09 am
    As we watched Apple unveil iOS7, the 37signals Campfire room quickly turned to awe of what they had achieved. A redesign so shocking and deep bestowed upon a product so popular left many mouths agape. Whether you happened to like the final product wasn’t as relevant as marveling at the vision, drive, and sheer determination to pull it off. Apple has a way of making people feel like that. But what followed next is at least as interesting: We all sought to explain just how they did it. Is it all Ive’s eye? Is it that they explore more ideas than anyone else? Is it never accepting…
 
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    456 Berea Street

  • How to proportionally scale images that have dimension attributes

    Roger Johansson
    13 Jun 2013 | 12:09 pm
    Allowing images to scale along with their container is an important part of responsive web design (and was so even before the term “responsive web design” existed). It’s really quite easy – all you need to do is give the image a width (or max-width) in percent: img { max-width:100%; } This will prevent any img element from getting wider than its container. If the container is narrower than the image, the image will scale down. But there is a catch.Read full postPosted in CSS.Copyright © Roger Johansson
  • Firefox and the magical text-overflow:ellipsis z-index

    Roger Johansson
    31 May 2013 | 11:09 am
    A while ago I received a strange bug report for a site I’d been working on. The report mentioned dots appearing on top of a dropdown menu when it was expanded. I had a look in Safari, could not see any dots, but then tried Firefox. And sure enough, there were sets of three dots in the dropdown menu. It didn’t take long to find the cause, fortunately. Just below the dropdown menu was a list of news items whose text-overflow value was set to ellipsis. The dots in the dropdown menu were the ellipsis characters peeking through, or being rendered on top of, the dropdown’s background.
  • Replacing images when printing

    Roger Johansson
    14 May 2013 | 12:07 pm
    It isn’t all that uncommon that, after you’ve polished your print stylesheet to make a site look well on paper as well as on screen, you realise that the logo really doesn’t look its best. It may look blurry or pixelated on paper due to having a pixel density intended for screen viewing, of course. But even worse, its edges may look ugly or it may actually be invisible because whatever is behind it when viewed on screen isn’t printed. Applying a background colour to the logo image or its containing element in the print CSS isn’t going to help either since most browsers by default do…
  • Using a transparent image as an icon fallback

    Roger Johansson
    30 Apr 2013 | 10:36 am
    Sometimes designs contain button styling that is difficult to create with CSS alone. The “official” way of dealing with this is to either use an image button (<input type="image" src="button.png" alt="Ok" />) or put the image in a button element (<button><img src="button.png" alt="Ok" /></button>). However if the graphic you want to show instead of the button is part of a sprite image, or if you want to display a different image when the button is hovered over or receives focus, that won’t work. In these cases it can be tempting to just use a background image and…
  • Conditional sibling class names for IE patching

    Roger Johansson
    11 Apr 2013 | 12:22 pm
    Traditionally, web developers have been using either CSS hacks or conditional comments to target different versions of Internet Explorer with CSS fixes. In the last few years more and more people have started using conditional class names, more or less as described by Paul Irish in Conditional Stylesheets vs CSS Hacks? Answer: Neither!. I’ve always favoured separating IE fixes from the main CSS by putting them in one or sometimes two separate files loaded via conditional comments. However, a valid argument against that is that keeping the patches in the same file as the main CSS increases…
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    ZURB

  • Polishing the Lens on Our Screen Capture Service

    18 Jun 2013 | 1:30 pm
    A few years back, we made it possible for users of our products, such as Bounce, to capture website screens with a URL. Since then, we tried several different services over the years, trying to find a solution that worked. Some were OK, but that wasn't good enough. A screen capture has to accurately represent what is actually present, and our current service has become unreliable. So we recently pushed to find something that snagged accurate screenshots. Here's what happens when a URL is entered: screenshot URLs are sent to our server, which then takes a screenshot of the site and sends it…
  • iOS7: They're Doing It Right

    12 Jun 2013 | 3:00 pm
    Apple's new iOS7 is a great step forward full of useful innovations and a great visual refresh, but their work has been marred by the design details that people simply can't look past. Tim Cook unveiling iOS7 to the WWDC audience. (Image from Apple) The other day Apple unveiled a series of updates to their products and operating system to a room full of designers and developers, as well as to those clever enough pull up apple.com on Safari. While the updates to OSX, Mac Pro and Apple Air were met with open arms, the highly anticipated iOS7 wasn't. Some people welcomed the change. However,…
  • ZURB is Looking for a Customer Advocate to Be the Voice of Our Customers

    11 Jun 2013 | 10:27 am
    We've learned a lot over the years about how we can better connect with people. We've come to realize that we reach people in many different ways. We talk with customers every day, utilizing chat to answer quick questions or hop on a call to dig deeper into a person's problem. Whether it's through email, communities such as Forrst or face-to-face, we like talking to people and finding solutions to their needs. A mosiac of our Twitter fans whom we reach every day. As our Customer Advocate, you'll be the voice of ZURB and, more importantly, the voice of our customers. You'll play a vital part…
  • The Numbers Add Up for Our Newest ZURBian

    6 Jun 2013 | 5:30 am
    We've been doing a lot of arithmetic around ZURB HQ lately. So much that we've lost count of the number of new ZURBians we've brought on board. That's why we added an accountant to the team to help us keep count and help us calculate the last digit of Pi. All kidding aside, we brought her on to make sure our numbers added up. So without further ado, please welcome … Afton Giles, A Redhead for Numbers Afton has lived most of her life in Palo Alto, but she was actually born in Tehran, Iran. She's got a knack for crunching numbers, holding a degree in Finance and spending her career in…
  • It's Never Too Late to Learn Design Thinking: Now Accepting Submissions for Our Sixth ZURBwired

    3 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pm
    Remember when our class of 5th graders stopped by the office last week? We can't stop thinking about how much they grokked design thinking, showing us how it's never too early to learn those concepts. It's also never too late to learn those concepts. That's why every year we hold a 24-hour marathon to help out one lucky nonprofit over a design hump. We're happy to announce that we've opened submissions for our sixth ZURBwired, which will take place Aug. 8, 2013. We'll help one nonprofit solve a design problem from start to finish in 24-hours. We'll work side-by-side with the members of the…
 
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    UX Magazine

  • Tectonics of UX: Drifts, shifts, and changes in the user experience landscape

    Mark Baskinger
    19 Jun 2013 | 9:59 am
    June 19, 2013As UX continues to broaden in scope and appeal, I’d like to look at certain aspects of current UX design practice to identify some emerging themes indicating that a fundamental shift in the UX landscape may be occurring.By considering its diversity, its varying roles, and its growing relevance, my intent is to provoke conversation and reflection on current practice and speculate on some future disciplinary goals beyond the screen.In this article, I’ll put forth a few dimensions of an expanded view of UX practice that ties directly to current themes in design education and…
  • Break Point Analysis: Gaining insight into customer satisfaction and reducing over investment

    James Torio, Rishabh Dayal
    18 Jun 2013 | 9:40 am
    June 18, 2013In our previous articles we’ve looked at the experience patients had when visiting the doctors office.We leveraged value stream maps to design a journey that would have maximum value for customers/patients. The goal was to transform business operations to become more efficient, resulting in reduced business costs and improved patient experience.We followed that with an article on cohort analysis to gain insight into how the changes from the value stream map improved the experience. In this article, we’re going to use break point analysis to get a snapshot of customer…
  • Determining an Hourly Rate: A (Sometimes) Necessary Evil

    Devan Goldstein
    17 Jun 2013 | 7:13 am
    June 17, 2013In a perfect world, freelance UXers would charge by project rather than working up hourly estimates and invoices.Unfortunately, this approach can’t always work. I sometimes find myself facing strong expectations about how (and what) I will charge, especially when I’m subcontracting with marketing agencies.Setting a rate for new clients isn’t easy, so I thought I’d offer a view of the pricing model I’ve arrived at after many years of freelancing, as many years of wincing at agencies’ crazy schemes, and perhaps one philosophy class too many.I’ve broken my model down…
  • Win This Book! Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience

    UX Magazine Staff
    14 Jun 2013 | 9:05 am
    June 14, 2013Yesterday we gave you a sample of Peter H. Jones' new book from Rosenfeld Media, Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience.Today, we're launching a contest to give away three digital copies.We're still in the thick of our campaign to get to the bottom of what information architects do, so to enter, all you need to do is answer a question for us:What does an IA do?Just to be clear, even though our campaign is aimed specifically at information architects, for this contest we want to hear from everyone.There are three ways to enter:Via TwitterMake sure you're...read more By…
  • Book Excerpt: Design For Care

    Peter H. Jones
    13 Jun 2013 | 9:48 am
    June 13, 2013Design Research for Healthcare ServicesService design potentially represents a significant change and challenge to experience design and technology infrastructure design orientations.A comprehensive presentation of service-oriented design methods would fill its own book.Because the health sector is vast and by necessity conservative, a selection of methods for service innovation is meaningless without establishing a specific context.The integrated service design framework in the table below identifies the contexts in which the participatory scenario design method…
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    information aesthetics

  • re:log: Tracking the Movements of Conference Attendees via WiFi

    18 Jun 2013 | 1:44 pm
    re:log [opendatacity.de] by German data designers OpenDataCity reveals the movements of about 6,700 different electronic devices during re:publica 2013, a prestigious European conference on the topic of Digital Society. A dynamic map of the conference location shows the approximate locations of the devices when they were connected to the local WiFi hotspots. An interactive timeline underneath allows to explore the dynamic changes over time, while a rectangular area can be drawn to more specifically highlight and follow a smaller amount of dots. The visualization was based on tracking the MAC…
  • Map Stack: Designing a Map in Easy and Fun Ways

    18 Jun 2013 | 1:15 pm
    Map Stack [stamen.com] by Stamen Design aims to make it radically simpler for lay people to design completely unique, personalized maps. The online visual map design service provides easy access to the color, opacity and brightness of any map background, road, label, or satellite imagery. Users can also create custom-made image overlays and layer effects, or layers that are used as cut-out masks for other layers. Currently, the default styles include minimalistic black/white, watercolor or 3D-like terrain, which can all be freely changed and fine-tuned.
  • Points: Smart Robotic Street Sign Rotates towards Direction of Content

    7 Jun 2013 | 7:31 am
    Points [breakfastny.com] by futuristic product development studio Breakfast is a new kind of street sign that dynamically rotates towards the direction of the real-time content it is showing. The directional street sign consists of 3 separate arms pointing in different directions, each containing a LED display that shows specific text or graphics about a nearby destination. Depending on the actual location of the content it displays, each arm is able to rotate endlessly around 360� degrees. The content varies depending on what passers-by select via a list of buttons, ranging from public…
  • NeuroKnitting: Knitting a Personalized Scarf from Brainwave Activity

    5 Jun 2013 | 1:01 pm
    NeuroKnitting [knitic.com] by Varvara Guljajeva, Mar Canet, and Sebastian Mealla consists of a collection of knitted garments that represent the wearer's affective and cognitive states while listening to Bach's Goldberg Variations' aria and its first 7 variations. First the EEG correlates of relaxation, engagement and cognitive load were recorded while people were listening to the musical piece. This information was then used by an open hardware knitting machine Knitic to create a bicolor pattern for knitting several scarves. The knitted garments thus visualize the listener's affective and…
  • Eurovision Tracker: the Twitter Buzz and Conversations per Country

    5 Jun 2013 | 12:51 pm
    Eurovision Tracker [brandwatch.com] by social analytics company Brandwatch provides a visual overview of the Twitter buzz during the live Eurovision final that took place on 18th May. In this streamgraph visualization, each colored stream represents a conversation about a particular country's performance, such as the artist's appearance, song, "sex factor", stagefactor or dance routine, or about specific emotions, such as love, fear or hate. Some live annotations are marked on the graph and shown in the stream on the right hand side, whereas an interactive timeline at the bottom allows for…
 
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    UXmatters

  • Tools for Mobile UX Design

    pabini@uxmatters.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:25 am
    By Steven Hoober Published: June 17, 2013 “We need many tools and should use the best tool we can for any one design or communication task.” There are several ways to approach the design of interactive systems and an ever larger number of specialized products to help UX professionals do their work. But I think there is a bit of a gap between some well-discussed practices that many of these new tools support and the way many UX professionals actually do their work. Several times a week, someone I know or follow discusses the value of designing in the browser—that is, opening a text…
  • Continuous Customer Feedback Programs, Part 1: Getting Started

    pabini@uxmatters.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:23 am
    By Marnie Andrews and April L. de Vries Published: June 17, 2013 “Take the classic focus group and turn it into a continuous customer feedback program—a program of recurring sessions that feed your product team the qualitative research it needs.” In this first part of our series of articles about customer feedback programs, we’ll describe how to take the classic focus group and turn it into a continuous customer feedback program—a program of recurring sessions that feed your product team the qualitative research it needs. We’ll draw from our own experience running such programs at…
  • Retail UX Strategy Trends

    pabini@uxmatters.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:20 am
    By Janet M. Six Published: June 17, 2013 Send your questions to Ask UXmatters and get answers from some of the top professionals in UX. In this edition of Ask UXmatters, our experts discuss some factors that are currently impacting trends in retail UX strategy. In my monthly column, Ask UXmatters, our panel of UX experts answers our readers’ questions about a variety of user experience matters. To get answers to your own questions about UX strategy, design, user research, or any other topic of interest to UX professionals in an upcoming edition of Ask UXmatters, please send your questions…
  • Measuring Customer Experience

    pabini@uxmatters.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:17 am
    By Ben Werner Published: June 17, 2013 “Since customer experience (CX) is so important, shouldn’t we all want to know how our digital products, services, and interactions compare to those of our competitors?” In the current era of business, the customer is more important than ever before. Check out analysts’ recent work on the financial performance of companies that get it versus those that don’t. It’s eye opening. Brands like Amazon who innovate their business to provide the highest-quality, easy, personalized interactions to their customers are taking their markets by storm.
  • Moving Technical Writing to the Cloud

    pabini@uxmatters.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:14 am
    By Debarshi Gupta Biswas Published: June 17, 2013 “Moving technical writing to the cloud has major appeal for compelling reasons, including lower up-front costs, the immediate availability of software tools, easier collaboration among coauthors, seamless content reviews, and varied storage options.” Cloud-based computing is arguably one of the most popular developments in the realm of computing in recent years. It has ushered in a radical shift from the pre-cloud era, when IT’s installation, configuration, and management of applications in an enterprise required a significant amount of…
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    A List Apart: The Full Feed

  • This week's sponsor: Igloo Software

    The fine folks at A List Apart
    17 Jun 2013 | 10:00 am
    Igloo is now free with up to ten people, helping you work better with your team and your clients. Get your (responsive!) Igloo, and start sharing blogs, calendars, files, forums, microblogs and wikis today. And as your Igloo grows, it’s only $12/person each month.
  • Ughck. Images.

    The fine folks at A List Apart
    17 Jun 2013 | 8:00 am
    » Ughck. Images.In a follow-up to his ALA article Mo’ Pixels, Mo’ Problems, Dave Rupert talks about all the progress we've made toward responsive image solutions — by which he means no progress has been made.
  • Google Changes Rankings of Smartphone Search Results

    The fine folks at A List Apart
    13 Jun 2013 | 9:37 am
    » Google Changes Rankings of Smartphone Search ResultsGoogle has started decreasing the ranking of sites with misconfigured mobile content redirects and errors. Highly recommended for any developer who cares about site rankings in Google (i.e. all of them).
  • Why Do We Need Responsive Images? 72% Less Image Weight.

    The fine folks at A List Apart
    11 Jun 2013 | 8:41 am
    » Why Do We Need Responsive Images? 72% Less Image Weight.We all need to step up our responsive development game and start thinking more about page weight. The most obvious place to start? Images.℅ @respimg
  • Karen McGrane on Content: The Alternative is Nothing

    The fine folks at A List Apart
    6 Jun 2013 | 4:30 am
    The history of technology innovation is the history of disruption. New technologies become available and disrupt the market for more-established, higher-end products. We’re witnessing one of the latest waves of technological disruption, as mobile devices put access to the internet in the hands of people who previously never had that power. Always-available connectivity through PCs and broadband connections has already transformed the lives of people who have it. Mobile internet will do the same for an even larger population worldwide. Despite examples from countless industries where…
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    LukeW | Digital Product Design + Strategy

  • Multi-Device Application Design

    18 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pm
    In my sixth video for Intel Software on re-imagining desktop application design, I look at how Ultrabook applications fit in to a multi-device world. Today it's not just one device that defines our computing experience, it's multiple devices and how they're used together to get things done. Consider more than half of laptop owners in the United States also own a smartphone. A third of smartphone owners have a tablet and an increasing number of people -more than one in ten- have all three. In Multi-Device Design we'll look at how we can design Ultrabook applications to live this new cross…
  • Data Monday: How Many Mobile Apps Do People Download?

    16 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pm
    The lure of high engagement on mobile devices has many people building and marketing native mobile apps. But how many of these applications actually get downloaded by mobile users each month? In the fall of 2008, there were about 10 apps downloaded for every iPhone/iPod touch. Two years later the rate was more than five times higher. (source) The average iOS device owner downloaded 83 apps in 2011 and 51 in 2010, a 61% increase year over year. (source) At the start of 2011, the average smartphone added 2.5 new apps per month. (source) In contrast, the average iOS user iOS downloaded about 5…
  • WWDC 2013: Just the Data

    9 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pm
    At the June 2013 Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple CEO Tim Cook shared recent numbers on Apple's sales. Here's just the data from his presentation: Over a million people per day visited Apple stores in 2012. (source) There are 471 Apple stores worldwide. (source) There are over 900,000 apps in the Apple App store. 375k apps have been designed for iPad.(source) 50 billion apps downloaded in less than 5 years. (source) There are 575 million credit card accounts on iTunes. (source) Apple has paid developers over 10 billion dollars, the last 5 billion happened last year. That's three times…
  • Data Monday: Who Made the iPhone Killer?

    8 Jun 2013 | 5:00 pm
    Several years ago, the tech press was infatuated with finding who would launch an "iPod killer". Ultimately it turned out that Apple did when they released the iPhone. Today the search for an "iPhone killer" has also been extensive but once again, it may be Apple that delivers the final blow. The latest professed "iPhone Killer" was Samsung's Galaxy S4 smartphone. (source) But the iPhone actually grew marketshare following the launch of Samsung's flagship Galaxy S4 phone. (source) And Samsung Galaxy S4 shipments this year are expected to be 20 to 30% lower than its previous forecast. (source)…
  • Designing for Thumb Flow

    28 May 2013 | 5:00 pm
    Lately I've become increasingly interested in the ergonomics of software design. That is, how human factors influence both the interactions and layout of an interface. In New Layouts for the Multi-Device Web I outlined the impact touch interfaces can have on layout across diverse screen sizes. This time I want to focus on interaction and designing for the flow of a thumb. The Ergonomics of Software Traditional graphical user interfaces (GUIs) are controlled by indirect manipulation through a mouse, keyboard, or joystick. So we design software for GUIs to work with digital representations of…
 
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    Church of the Customer Blog

  • Word-of-mouth marketing: control is futile

    Jackie Huba
    4 Jun 2013 | 9:22 am
    Even today, marketers are still trying to control the conversation customers have about their brand. Give it up. With social media acting as a word-of-mouth jetstream, it's impossible to make sure people are on "brand message" when they talk about you to friends and family. We can only hope to create products and brands that people want to evangelize and then join in the conversation. I love this cartoon from my friend and "marketoonist" Tom Fishburne. Click here for his post on what happened when the Kentucky Department of Tourism tried to control the message about their brand. Tweet
  • The best customer service is invisible

    Jackie Huba
    20 May 2013 | 2:47 pm
    I am huge fan of Nordstrom. They have famed customer service and that is one of the reasons why I shop there. But even I was surprised by this. Last week I was shopping at Nordstrom and bought merchadise at a few departments. The strip on my Nordstrom VISA card had apparently stopped working because each cashier had trouble swiping the card and had to resort to typing in the numbers into the register. I made an offhand comment to one of the cashieres that I would have to call in to the card customer service later and request a new card. Of course that became just one more thing on my to-do…
  • #MonsterLoyalty book tour and other speaking events

    Jackie Huba
    7 May 2013 | 10:37 pm
    Hi there!   Here's my speaking schedule including book tour events. If you live in one these cities, I looking forward to seeing you!! May 8: Austin - book tour event (private) May 10: Orlando - book tour event (private) May 21: Chicago - WOMMA WOMM-U Conference. Use my discount code WUSpeak50 to get $50 off registration. Jun 2: Orlando - book tour event (private) Jun 12: Milan, Italy - private event Jun 20: Salt Lake City - book tour event (public) sponsored by SoulSalt. Get tickets here.  Jun 27: Las Vegas - Confirmit Conference Jul 11: Chicago - book tour event…
  • The winners of the Monster Loyalty pre-order giveaway are....

    Jackie Huba
    2 May 2013 | 4:24 pm
    Thanks to all who participated in the Monster Loyalty pre-order giveaway by purchasing a book before launch. The winners are: 1st PRIZE:  Joey Coleman, Chief Experience Composer at Design Symphony 5 copies of Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers into Fanatics 2 Lady Gaga art prints by rock and roll pop artist Kii Arens, signed and numbered 2nd PRIZE: Shep Hyken, New York Times and WSJ best selling author of The Amazement Revolution: Seven Customer Service Strategies to Create an Amazing Customer Experience 5 copies of Monster Loyalty: How Lady Gaga Turns Followers…
  • Monster Loyalty is now available!

    Jackie Huba
    2 May 2013 | 8:52 am
    I am excited to announce that Monster Loyalty is now available! This is a book that I am extremely excited about because it argues that Lady Gaga didn’t become the success she is today based solely on her talent. She did so by engendering immense loyalty from her fans – not just through her music – but through the message she embodies and the community she has built around that message.  In four short years, Lady Gaga has built an army of passionate fans that numbers in the tens of millions around the globe. My book explores how she did it, uncovering seven loyalty…
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    InfoDesign: Understanding by Design

  • It's not enough to change the light bulbs: A conversation with Brenda Laurel

    PJB
    19 Jun 2013 | 12:51 pm
    Brenda presents a holistic view of technology, humans and the planet Earth. "I see us developing technologies and design practices that reduce cognitive distance for people who use them. I hope that we will continue to create alternatives to the trivial pursuits currently favored by the marketplace. (...) Technology is an extrusion of the human spirit." (Julia Moisand Egea ~ Adaptive Path)
  • The future of human-centered design

    PJB
    19 Jun 2013 | 6:39 am
    Copernicus and his heliocentrism are getting a lot of traction these days with outside-in thinking. "HCD has been a breakthrough for our industry - it's repositioned design as a tool to help transform product development by ensuring customer's needs are met and also by helping to uncover people's latent needs (those not surfaced by traditional focus groups for instance). We are taught to think about the world in three lenses as designers: desirability - what people want, feasibility - the capabilities of a firm, and viability - its financial health." (Nathan Waterhouse a.k.a.
  • Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority

    PJB
    18 Jun 2013 | 3:24 am
    Edge cases are a lot of fun. "Instead of using the default route and using bricks and mortar to solve a problem in the physical space, which is what architects are good at, this case shows that service designers offer an alternative approach. An approach that is focused on understanding the behavior of people in the space." (Marc Fonteijn ~ 31Volts)
  • In defense of floppy disks: The vocabulary of the interface

    PJB
    18 Jun 2013 | 3:00 am
    Librarians and their iconography. A perfect match. "But librarians are a naturally curious and skeptical people and one round of qualitative research would not satisfy them." (Lis Pardi a.k.a. @LisPardi ~ Boxes and Arrows)
  • Transforming our conversation of information architecture with structure

    PJB
    17 Jun 2013 | 8:29 am
    Language generates structure, said RSW. "Information architecture has been characterized as both an art and a science. Because there's more evidence of the former than the latter, the academic and research community is justified in hesitating to give the practice of information architecture more attention." (Nathaniel Davis a.k.a. @iatheory ~ ASIS&T Bulletin)
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    Jeffrey Zeldman Presents The Daily Report

  • Response to an anonymous note left on my apartment door, complaining of noise.

    Jeffrey Zeldman
    17 Jun 2013 | 1:09 pm
    Dear Neighbors: While my ex-wife is in treatment for a serious illness, I am watching her two small young dogs. They get along well with my two cats and soothe my young daughter during her mother’s absence. I am sorry that the dogs sometimes bark when I am at work. They are probably somewhat afraid. The dogs will only be with us for a few more days. God willing, my ex will complete her in-patient treatment early next week. I apologize for the noise during the day, and thank you for your patience and understanding. Your Neighbor, Jeffrey
  • Coastermatic’s Tash Wong and Tom Harman on The Big Web Show Episode No. 92

    Jeffrey Zeldman
    30 May 2013 | 6:13 pm
    AMERICAN DESIGNER Tash Wong and British designer Tom Harman are the co-founders of Coastermatic and my guests in Episode No. 92 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). Tash and Tom recently resided in Brooklyn, NY and completed their MFAs in Interaction Design at New York’s School of Visual Arts, where I was one of their admiring teachers; they are now bound for Hawaii, where they will expand their web-based product empire. Coastermatic, their first joint product, converts your Instagram photos into stone coasters, and was conceived during their time at SVA.
  • 10 Commandments of Web Design (Notes by Luke Wroblewski on a Talk by Yours Truly)

    Jeffrey Zeldman
    23 May 2013 | 10:06 am
    “ITERATION isn’t just for visual design. It also helps you uncover insights. A List Apart found people are often commenting and re-tweeting articles before they read them. They learned this by iterating on where the share and comment links exist on the page.”—LukeW | An Event Apart: 10 Commandments of Web Design.
  • Don’t Cry For Me, San Diego

    Jeffrey Zeldman
    19 May 2013 | 11:52 am
  • Ryan and Tina Essmaker of The Great Discontent

    Jeffrey Zeldman
    10 May 2013 | 11:58 am
    RYAN AND TINA Essmaker are my guests for Episode No. 91 of The Big Web Show (“everything web that matters”). Ryan is a designer and the co-founder of The Great Discontent. By day he works with Crush + Lovely as head of products, and manages No Little Plans, The Great Discontent’s parent company. Tina is an illustrator, essayist, photographer, blogger, and the co-founder of The Great Discontent, an online journal of interviews focusing on creativity and risk, and No Little Plans, The Great Discontent’s parent company. By day she manages community for Crush + Lovely and…
 
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    Max Design

  • Ideal line length in ems

    Russ
    25 May 2013 | 3:40 am
    Let’s assume that you have a chunk of body copy and you place it inside a container. Question 1: is there an optimal line length for copy? The optimal line length for your body text is considered to be 50-70 characters per line. Question 2: What type of unit should you use to control the container width? The best unit for setting the width of the container is “em” units as they scale with the font-size. Question 3: How do we convert 50-75 characters into ems? This is the hardest question as the content itself can affect how many characters appear per line. I decided to do an…
  • A simple (and very rough) responsive table solution

    Russ
    21 Mar 2013 | 7:58 am
    There are a lot of very clever responsive table solutions available now. There are solutions that flip the table on it’s side, convert it to a pie chart, gradually reduce the columns, allow users to determine columns, and even allow partial scrolling across the table. All of them are very clever. However, there are concerns about many of them some of them would be hard to implement in the real world – especially those that rely on the ::before pseudo-element selectors to generate table headers) some of them may not work for all types of table data – like the pie chart…
  • Some links for light reading (5/3/13)

    Russ
    4 Mar 2013 | 3:32 pm
    Responsive Mixing Responsive Design and Mobile Templates Responsive audio out Logical Breakpoints For Your Responsive Design There is no breakpoint Build responsive emails Prototyping Responsive Typography CSS Getting Started with Sass How to Build a Better Button in CSS3 How to shrinkwrap and center elements horizontally Reintroducing Preboot HTML5 HTML5 forms input types Browsers WebKit for Developers Browser Trends March 2013: IE Drops Below 30% Design 10 Brilliant Color Apps for Designers Speed Improve page load times UX Usability testing myths How to Conduct A Content Audit Acessibility…
  • Some links for light reading (22/2/13)

    Russ
    21 Feb 2013 | 1:24 pm
    W3C Specs CSS Animations – W3C Working Draft 19 February 2013 CSS When to Avoid the Descendant Selector CSS: a rapidly changing world Using Flexbox: Mixing Old and New for the Best Browser Support Flexbox syntax for IE 10 Setting Weights And Styles With The font-face Declaration Using White Space For Readability In HTML And CSS Dig deep into CSS linear gradients Responsive There is no breakpoint The In-Between Devising a Strategy for Responsive Design Sassaparilla – Start your next web project faster Don’t start with a page template Browsers Opera gears up at 300 million…
  • Some links for light reading (13/2/13)

    Russ
    12 Feb 2013 | 4:07 pm
    W3C specs CSS Fonts Module Level 3 – W3C Working Draft 12 February 2013 CSS Transitions – W3C Working Draft 12 February 2013 Responsive Responsive grid systems; a solution? REMux: An Experimental Approach to Responsive Web Design Ditching responsive design The real conflict behind <picture> and @srcset Retina Revolution Improving Your Responsive Workflow with Style Guides CSS When to Avoid the Descendant Selector Balancing Text for better readability HTML5 Introducing the New HTML5 <main> Element The progress element Accessibility Accessible HTML5 Media Players and…
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    Putting people first

  • Book: Trust is a Choice

    Experientia
    19 Jun 2013 | 3:27 pm
    Trust is a Choice – Prolegomena of Anthropology of Trust(s) by Stephanie A. Krawinkler 189 pages, 2013 Carl-Auer Verlag (Publisher) [Amazon link] [Extract] Trust is a universal but culture-bound phenomenon and a critical success factor in corporate life. The author provides a compilation of anthropological theoretical threads on trust. She conducted a long-time ethnography of a company and describes what trust is, how it is established and maintained in this particular organization, and addresses the question whether it can be regained when lost. This elaborated case proves that the…
  • Service design in the physical space and why it makes sense to design for a minority

    Experientia
    18 Jun 2013 | 10:23 pm
    The physical environment in which a service plays out has a significant influence on the experience of a service. So it’s not uncommon for service design projects to take the physical environment into account. In a recent project focused on the physical environment of the train station, the Dutch service design consultancy 31 Volts, specifically looked at the “extreme users“; that small group of people which cause a rather big impact on the experience of the larger group of “normal users”. So instead of analyzing and optimizing the existing customer journey they took the lateral…
  • New Ericsson report on needs of today’s smartphone and mobile internet users

    Experientia
    18 Jun 2013 | 10:15 pm
    A new Ericsson ConsumerLab report, Unlocking Consumer Value, identifies the needs of today’s smartphone and mobile internet users. “The rapid uptake of smartphones and other connected devices has transformed the mobile broadband landscape – shaping and broadening the way users work, play and communicate. When the uptake of smartphones begins to accelerate in a particular market, it is vital to differentiate between consumers based on what they prioritize in an offering, whether that’s unwavering performance or cost control and data usage. This report outlines Ericsson…
  • To get the most out of tablets, use smart curation

    Experientia
    13 Jun 2013 | 12:26 am
    In a second article in a four-part series on the use of tablets in educational settings, Justin Reich of MindShift examines the topic of curation. “As technologies have developed, the tools and objects of curation have become increasingly accessible. For decades, teachers have arranged collections on bookcases, but now we create playlists of songs, folders of bookmarks, albums of photos, wall posts of life events, and portfolios of academic work. With this abundance of platforms for curation, teachers no longer curate to distribute works, they curate to model curation. [...] In a world…
  • Online, we’re all celebrities now. So what next?

    Experientia
    12 Jun 2013 | 7:46 am
    “In reality, we’re all kind of on ‘Big Brother’ — on a reality show,” says Syracuse University’s Anthony Rotolo, a professor who runs the Starship NEXIS lab, focusing on social networking and new technologies. “Whenever I give a talk, whenever you give a talk, there’s going to be someone live-tweeting it. There’s going to be somebody posting a picture on Facebook. We are redefining celebrity in this age, and anybody at any time could be speaking publicly without realizing it.” There’s no putting the genie back in the…
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    Reaction!

  • №5 CULTURE CHANEL: The book

    19 Jun 2013 | 5:20 am
    Irma Boom's special edition book on CHANEL №5 (produced for the №5 CULTURE CHANEL exhibition in Paris) contains no ink. Like the perfume, you don't see the content, but it's there...
  • LSD ABC

    19 Jun 2013 | 4:32 am
    A weird and wonderful animated alphabet from Laura Sicouri and Kadavre Exquis:
  • Umbrella

    19 Jun 2013 | 2:57 am
    An interesting experiment from Tell No One (for Nowness):
  • VESPALOGY

    18 Jun 2013 | 8:21 am
    Nomoon's "graphic [and] groovy retrospective of Vespas from 1943 to 2013":
  • We See In Every Direction

    18 Jun 2013 | 5:36 am
    We See In Every Direction is a "massively multi-player web browser". In other words, it lets groups of people surf the web together in real-time! [via waxy.org]
 
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    Small Surfaces

  • Mobile Information Architecture: 4 different models

    Gabriel White
    19 Jun 2013 | 4:07 am
    “Mobile devices have their own set of Information Architecture patterns, too. While the structure of a responsive site may follow more “standard” patterns, native apps, for example, often employ navigational structures that are tab-based. Again, there’s no “right” way to architect a mobile site or application. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the most popular patterns: Hierarchy, Hub & spoke, Nested doll, Tabbed view, Bento box and Filtered view.” Link: Designing for Mobile, Part 1: Information Architecture (uxbooth.com) Small Surfaces…
  • Defining a language for touch

    Gabriel White
    12 Jun 2013 | 4:11 am
    Don Norman and Bahar Wadia give a nice summation of the opportunities and challenges of designing interactions for touch and gesture-based systems. “Yes, getting the technology to work is hard, but the really hard part is getting the human-system interaction right, making it easy for people to use the systems…To overcome the limitations of affordances, Norman introduced the concept of a “signifier,” a perceivable (usually visible) signal of the location and form of the possible input interaction. Signifiers are of critical importance for these new interfaces because…
  • Thumbs-only UI? How people hold phones

    Gabriel White
    5 Jun 2013 | 4:08 am
    “The users who we observed touching their phone’s screens or buttons held their phones in three basic ways: one handed – 49%, cradled – 36%, two handed – 15%. In the following sections, I’ll describe and show a diagram of each of these methods of holding a mobile phone, along with providing some more detailed data and general observations about why I believe people hold a mobile phone in a particular way.” Link: How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices? (uxmatters.com, via. See also Microsoft Research Paper for a pre-iPhone study) Small Surfaces…
  • Designing Android UX (some Google advice)

    Gabriel White
    30 May 2013 | 4:35 am
    An introduction to UX design basics for Android from Google I/O, sprinkled with insights about design decisions that the Android design team has made about the platform itself. “Want to enchant people, simplify their lives, and make them feel amazing with your app? Learn how Android’s Design Principles can help you create products that resonate with people. Find out about the meaning and research behind the principles. See real-world examples and practices from the Android Design team. Discover techniques for applying the principles in your daily work. No design experience…
  • Data graphs will power contextual computing

    Gabriel White
    29 May 2013 | 4:00 am
    “The adoption of contextual computing–combinations of hardware, software, networks, and services that use deep understanding of the user to create tailored, relevant actions that the user can take–is contingent on the spread of new platforms. Frankly, it depends on the smartphone…we’ve identified four data graphs essential to the rise of contextual computing: social, interest, behavior, and personal…The real potential of contextual computing isn’t about just one of these graphs. It’s about connections that resonate between them and which get…
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    Subtraction.com

  • New Google Maps Tour

    desk@subtraction.com
    19 Jun 2013 | 7:07 am
    The redesigned Google Maps comes with a handy virtual tour to acquaint users with what’s changed. That’s hardly revolutionary, but in a very nice bit of user experience engineering, the tour has some extra smarts built in. If, like me, upon first getting access to this new version you immediately start poking around and trying out various searches and only click on the tour option later, the tour’s messaging will cleverly acknowledge that state: Messing about with a new product unguided is a completely natural first use case for just about any product, and my guess is…
  • Michael Heilemann Takes Apart iOS 7

    desk@subtraction.com
    18 Jun 2013 | 10:48 am
    Heilemann, interface director at Squarespace, takes the new design to task in a few short, punchy and very incisive posts. The first one calls Apple on the fact that iOS 7’s lock screen is not just a usability faux pas, but a huge problem in that it is the gateway to the world’s most popular mobile computing experience. The second article cites an example of the OS’s poor attention to detail. And the third talks about the difficulty of understanding whether the OS is signalling a button or a state. Well worth reading. Update: Wait, there’s a fourth article too.
  • Payphone Graveyard

    desk@subtraction.com
    18 Jun 2013 | 10:38 am
    The photographer David Bledsoe found a graveyard of now obsolete pay phone stands underneath Manhattan’s West Side Hideway. To follow me on Twitter click here.
  • Me Discussing iOS 7 on “On the Verge”

    desk@subtraction.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 10:20 am
    Last week I stopped by The Verge for an appearance on their weekly video podcast “On The Verge.” The topic was, of course, iOS 7, focusing on what was announced last Monday and what’s been made publicly available on Apple’s Web site. Watch the video here. To follow me on Twitter click here.
  • NYT: Future of 3D Television Is Murky as ESPN Ends Its 3D Channel

    desk@subtraction.com
    17 Jun 2013 | 6:57 am
    Apparently if the jocks don’t like it, then what everyone else knew to be true is finally validated. I know 3D television and 3D movies are two different things, but I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of the end for this overrated technological excuse to inflate ticket prices at the box office. Full article here. To follow me on Twitter click here.
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    User Centered

  • Touchy-Feely road crossings

    29 May 2013 | 6:41 pm
    According to the BBC article The secret button at pedestrian crossings, many pedestrian crossings have a feature which lets you feel when the light turns green, in the form of a discreet spinning cone on the underside of the control box, so even deaf-blind people can use them! Strange that this feature isn't widely publicised, I wonder if most blind and deaf-blind people know about it or not?
  • For laughs

    28 Jan 2013 | 12:23 pm
    This probably doesn't quite fall under the category of "usability" but it is funny and does have to do with user-interface. It's not the actual purchase interface, so I guess it doesn't really matter but what made it funny from a design perspective was that the blue screen of death error references "watchdog.sys" -- which is probably designed to detect when the system locks up (like a BSOD) and restart it. So if you're watchdog is broken....While it probably doesn't interfere with purchases, it is sort of embarrassing.:lol:
  • The Number One Sucky Thing About Computers

    2 Jun 2012 | 2:56 pm
    There are a lot of things that suck about computers but I think I identified the number one this afternoon as I tried to unhibernate my computer and write a critical email to a business partner. I had the stream of consciousness in my head. The thoughts that I wanted to communicate to him and I just kept hitting a wall with my computer.First, my HP laptop was laggy. Windows seemed to be doing okay but it just couldn't stop choking. Finally, it "unhibernated" (or whatever the ridiculous term might be) and I opened Chrome, logged into Starbucks Wifi, and CRASH. Okay, Chrome…
  • Counting in Government

    17 Apr 2012 | 10:33 am
    I thought the gang would kick the same chuckle from this I did: sourceI'm trying to think of a safety advantage of having it this way but not getting anything. Ideas?
  • What day does the week start?

    18 Jan 2012 | 4:08 pm
    This post is meant to serve as a warning to web developers for United States websites.I'm really excited about the new HTML5 Form Elements. Especially the new "date" input type: <input type="date">Unfortunately, the "date picker" (the calendar popup that displays when selecting a date) is just a little too Euro-centric. Opera appears to have implemented the ISO 8601:2004 ($238.00!) standard that the "always reliable" Wikipedia claims is common in Europe**.What does that mean? The week starts on Monday.This site has an example…
 
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    Veerle's blog

  • Baltimore Beach

    Veerle Pieters
    13 Jun 2013 | 9:29 am
    Editorial and spot illustrations for Baltimore Magazine.via Jayde A. Cardinalli
  • Dark rider

    Veerle Pieters
    13 Jun 2013 | 9:17 am
    Great rays.via Jacek Ksiazek
  • Hooray for Summer

    Veerle Pieters
    13 Jun 2013 | 9:11 am
    Hooray for Summer x1000!via Lab Partners
  • 120 Avenue C

    Veerle Pieters
    13 Jun 2013 | 8:37 am
    Windows of New York. A weekly illustrative pleasure! Highly recommend weekly visit.via Jose Guizar
  • Criminal cars

    Veerle Pieters
    13 Jun 2013 | 8:20 am
    I love these brothers and their inspiring fantasy.via Brosmind
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    Usability Counts

  • Building a Product? This is the Team You Need to Build Your MVP.

    Patrick Neeman
    19 Jun 2013 | 10:00 am
    You and your friends have this great idea. Bigger than Instagram! Bigger than Twitter! Bigger than Facebook! Bigger than Google! Okay, maybe not. Still, it’s going to be huge. You’ve raised a little money (if you’re lucky), and you want to build a MVP, known as a minimum viable product. That’s the bare minimum you need to get a product out the door and so you can test your concept against customers. Sounds easy, right? Even for a MVP, it takes a village to build a product. The village has several roles, and selecting the right team early can make or break your idea. Your village will…
  • iStockPhoto: Designer Truths Infauxgraphic 2013

    Patrick Neeman
    14 Jun 2013 | 8:49 am
    Yup. That’s about right. You just finished reading iStockPhoto: Designer Truths Infauxgraphic 2013! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide
  • My History on Foursquare

    Patrick Neeman
    13 Jun 2013 | 3:18 pm
    Very cool. You just finished reading My History on Foursquare! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide
  • UX Week: UX Team of One

    Patrick Neeman
    13 Jun 2013 | 8:08 am
    A great video. Worth watching. You just finished reading UX Week: UX Team of One! Consider leaving a comment!Stuff to check out UX Drinking Game | UX Resume and Career Guide
  • Google is Missing Social and Their Culture May Be to Blame

    Patrick Neeman
    12 Jun 2013 | 11:04 am
    A couple of years ago, I was interviewed by Venture Beat for an article about Google Plus. I firmly believed that large-scale user adoption for the social network was around the corner. It seemed to have a great feature set, and with their search engine they could drive significant traffic to the social network. It hasn’t really happened. The only people I see on my feed are Chris Pirillo, Robert Scoble, and three Google employees I know. With its relaunch, I don’t know now if Plus is ever going to take off. They can’t seem to bridge the gap between using their data to optimize a tool…
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    UsabilityPost

  • Google Authorship Search Listing Blindness

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    29 May 2013 | 5:00 pm
    Here’s an interesting way a simple UI addition can backfire. Google Authorship is a service from Google that lets you link your site to your Google+ profile. The “benefit” of doing so is that you get your Google+ picture displayed next to your listing on the Google search pages, which looks like this: After using Google Authorship on his site, Alex Yumas from JitBit was shocked to discover that their traffic fell by 90%. The site in question still held the first result on Google for the relevant search query, but having a little Google+ avatar picture next to the result text…
  • When Infinite Scroll Doesn't Work

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    6 Jan 2013 | 4:00 pm
    Dan Nguyen has an interesting writeup of Dan McKinley’s talk about why the implementation of infinite scroll at Etsy didn’t work. Essentially what happened was that Etsy had spent time implementing an infinite scroll interface (i.e. a list of results that automatically keeps loading more items as you scroll to the bottom of the list) before first testing their assumptions that more search results at a faster rate would boost user engagement. They found that the new interface just didn’t perform. Although the amount of purchases stayed roughly the same, user engagement has…
  • Watching Them Struggle

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    5 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pm
    You’ve probably watched somebody who is not technically savvy trying to operate an interface new to them, likely with little success. Maybe that interface was yours. You’ve spent countless hours cutting that thing down to the basics, refining the copy and making everything crystal clear, and yet, you watch with bewilderment as the user before you struggles and stumbles across the screen, doing everything possible to go in circles around the interface element they actually need, which to you seems blindingly obvious. As I read through Robert Greene’s new book, Mastery, a…
  • Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites: Big, Responsive and Content Heavy

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    4 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pm
    There’s a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the page. So let’s see some examples. Here is The Next Web: Here’s Mashable: And here’s ReadWrite: Here are some of the shared attributes of these designs: Responsive design taking up the whole or most of the screen Wide, simplified navigation bar at the…
  • Just Don't Make It Annoying

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    26 Nov 2012 | 4:00 pm
    I find that whenever I’m designing a user interface, the one safe rule to follow is simply this: just don’t make it annoying. This might sound banal, but there are often cases where blindly following best practices and design theory slowly pulls you off the right track, so that you end up designing something for the sake of a good design — whatever that is — rather than for actual use. As an analogy, consider the organization of things on your desk. Cleaning it up, organizing things and putting them away might seem like a good idea if you want to achieve a productive…
 
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    UIE Brain Sparks

  • UIEtips: Designing Microinteractions

    Jared Spool
    19 Jun 2013 | 12:02 pm
    In this week’s UIEtips, I talk to author and interaction design guru Dan Saffer about microinteractions. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Jared: What are microinteractions? Dan: Microinteractions are the small pieces of functionality that exist around or sometimes in place of larger features. An example is turning off the ringer on your phone. Nobody is buying your phone because you can turn the ringer off, but it’s still this little important piece of functionality that if it’s not there can cause a lot of problems. Jared: It’s an interesting thing, that ringer–off…
  • Dan Saffer – Designing Microinteractions

    Sean Carmichael
    14 Jun 2013 | 11:23 am
    [ Transcript Available ] According to Jared Spool, design is best when it’s invisible. Just like air conditioning. People only notice it when it’s not working, or too hot, or too cold. No one ever mentions how great the air conditioning is when it’s working perfectly. Microinteractions work in a similar way. Do you think about the ringer on your phone and the ability to turn it off? Dan Saffer uses this example to kick off his book Microinteractions. Silencing the ringer on your phone is a common feature. If that feature is clunky or hard to find it interferes with needing to silence it…
  • UIEtips: What Makes an Experience Seem Innovative?

    Jared Spool
    12 Jun 2013 | 12:52 pm
    In this week’s UIEtips, I explain what makes an experience innovative. Here’s an excerpt from the article: Everyone assumed the old way of long lines was how you did it. They built their stores with dedicated space to accommodate the lines during busy periods, such as after the holidays. Apple’s new approach meant their architects didn’t need to build in that space, letting them put it to other uses, such as product displays. Here’s the thing: Apple didn’t invent making an appointment. Yet their approach to using it for customer service seemed completely innovative. Why…
  • Jeff Gothelf – Lean UX: Escaping Product Requirement Hell

    Sean Carmichael
    7 Jun 2013 | 11:39 am
    [ Transcript Available ] Assumptions tend to be the downfall of many research projects. Making design decisions based on generalizations of what people are likely to do leads to surprises once you finally get your product in front of actual users. The result? Rework and frustration due to an overall lack of communication within the team. Jeff Gothelf suggests starting with an attitude that you’re testing a hypothesis which leads to a more open discussion. The main thing is, hypotheses, just like design, can change. Being flexible and iterative in your design process encourages an…
  • UIEtips: Why Lean UX?

    Jared Spool
    5 Jun 2013 | 11:14 am
    In this week’s UIEtips, Jeff Gothelf lays out his rationale for why Lean UX is something new and why it’s important now. Here’s an excerpt from the article: When bringing our craft to software in the 1980s and 1990s, designers approached software in the same way we approached the earlier materials we worked with. In industrial design, print design, fashion design, and any field involving physical outputs, the manufacturing step is a critical constraint. When designing for physical materials, designers need to figure out what we’re making before we start production, because…
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    Everyone's Blog Posts - HFI Connect

  • South Africa: An Emerging Market Report by Institute of Customer Experience

    Apala Lahiri Chavan
    18 Jun 2013 | 3:30 pm
    The diversity of South Africa is on one hand a treasure that should be preserved and people still do recognize its importance and carry forward their cultural values. On the other hand, the very same diversity is a challenge for policy makers, marketers, advertisers, government and other institutions that want to reach out to greater masses and those who look for scalability.  However, the “mobile first” generation is the answer. The mobile revolution has introduced the people in South Africa to the power of social media, enabled them to open and operate bank accounts, helped them level…
  • UX Strategy: Let’s Stop Building Usable Wrong Things

    Eric Schaffer
    13 Jun 2013 | 12:30 pm
    Free poster of this animation and related white paper on UX strategy
  • 7 Pitfalls to Avoid in Defining and Measuring UX Success

    Steve Fleming
    11 Jun 2013 | 10:30 am
    Following up on the post about Defining and Measuring UX Success, this post talks about some challenges you might face as you get your UX Metrics program up and running. Establishing the processes and measuring the user experience is challenging, but rewarding.  Here are a few “pitfalls” we have to keep in mind to avoid stopping our UX Metrics program before it even gets started: 1.   Lack of knowledge about what users are doing now. We may not currently be measuring some aspects of the user experience.  That’s okay, start now!  This process can help the organization think about…
  • Social Commerce: Myths and Truths

    amber krishan
    7 Jun 2013 | 9:30 am
    This article shows that understanding your customers and the associated complexities of social media are needed to develop a UX strategy that achieves business success. Read Social Commerce: Myths and Truths from the May/June issue of HFI's UX Design Newsletter.
  • Measuring the User Experience - Part 1 – Defining and Measuring UX Success

    Steve Fleming
    5 Jun 2013 | 10:10 am
    If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. And a good User Experience (UX) is not magic; it is the result of a good process. UX Metrics are an integral part of having a customer-centric organization. They help us manage the cyclical process of user-centered design: Each of us spends our valuable company resources creating products to delight our customers and keep our business running. We need a way to measure how well the design is working for our end users. If it is working, we need to reinforce that success. If it isn’t working, we need to understand what needs to be fixed.
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    90 Percent of Everything - by Harry Brignull

  • Are you in a teflon-coated UX role?

    Harry Brignull
    26 May 2013 | 3:09 am
    Maybe you’re a UX researcher, passing choice insights into the product development machine. If what comes out the other side doesn’t seem right, you feel free to bitch and moan. “Didn’t they listen to the findings I gave them?” Maybe you’re a UX designer who works at the early stages of the design process, doing the discovery phase, running workshops, producing concepts, sketches and setting the vision. Again, it’s so easy to pass the buck and feel vindicated when the quality at the end of the process is low. Sometimes it feels like you’re a…
  • Sneaking responsive in under the radar using an mdot site.

    Harry Brignull
    22 May 2013 | 1:02 am
    Let’s face it, there’s the right way to do design, then there’s the pragmatic way to get things done within your organisation. The two are often not the quite same thing. Let’s say you want to create an elegantly minimal responsive site that focuses on the core UX and privileges the reading experience over ads, cross-links and clutter – but can you achieve it? In some organisations you’ll have to pry the above-the-fold advertising real estate out of the cold, dead hands of the senior execs. As Leisa Reichelt said a few months ago: “Politics and egos are…
  • The drunkard’s search

    Harry Brignull
    13 May 2013 | 2:36 am
    “There is the story of a drunkard, searching under a lamp for his house key, which he dropped some distance away. Asked why he didn’t look where he dropped it, he replied ‘It’s lighter here!’. Much effort [...] in behavioural science itself, is vitiated, in my opinion, by the principle of the drunkard’s search” – Abraham Kaplan (1964) It may be an old story, but it’s something we’re all doing somewhere in our work. The real challenge is finding out where and dealing with it. For example – Tinkering with the details on a single…
  • Powwowapp: for scheduling research

    Harry Brignull
    2 May 2013 | 11:56 pm
    This is neat. Powwowapp is free little app to help you schedule research appointments. If you work in a UX agency then you’re probably used to paying about £70-£100 a head finders fee for some recruiter to trawl their database and make a few calls. It’s worth it if you’ve got a tough screener spec, but the rest of the time you’ve got to wonder if your cash is being well spent. With Powwowapp you hook it up to your Google calendar, create your empty slots and you’re given a public facing URL for you to share. People can then pick a slot, book themselves in and…
  • Assumptive Personas

    Harry Brignull
    28 Apr 2013 | 1:52 am
    It seems that assumptive personas are getting fashionable again, thanks to Lean UX’s Proto-Personas and Gamestorming’s Empathy Maps. Getting stakeholders to think about their users is a good thing, but it’s dangerous when you start treating them as facts rather than hypotheses. Maybe it’s time to trot out that old argument again.
 
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    Konigi

  • SIX UX: Transition and animation gallery

    jibbajabba
    14 Jun 2013 | 5:26 pm
    SIX UX is a gallery of transitions and animations shown as 6 second videos. Andreas Popp combined Vine app videos with tumblr to showcase otherwise ephemeral movements found around the web. Low fi and awesome. Check it.
  • User Inter Faces: Avatars for mockups

    jibbajabba
    14 Jun 2013 | 1:19 pm
    UI Faces is a useful little tool by Caleb Ogden for generating a grid of avatars that you can use in your designs.
  • Starters Guide to iOS Design

    jibbajabba
    7 Jun 2013 | 9:56 am
    Ben Taylor's Starters Guide to iOS describes an exhaustive range of topics as intro to iOS design. He covers the deliverables you'll be expected to produce, outlines the constraints of the medium, and introduces fundamental iOS and UI design concepts.
  • Sketchnote Typeface by Mike Rohde

    jibbajabba
    5 Jun 2013 | 8:49 am
    Mike Rohde's Sketchnote font can be purchased on Delve for desktop and webfont use. Mike created the font for the Sketchnote handbook and writes about its design on his blog. The family has four fonts: Sketchnote Text in Reg­ular, Bold and Italic, plus Sketchnote Square. Sketchnote Text is a friendly, casual script with a bouncy baseline and a warm texture. To emulate natural hand­writing, OpenType features auto­matically switch be­tween multiple versions of each letter or number, with over 240 alter­nates in each text font. OpenType kerning classes are used with unique kerns made to…
  • FontPrep: Web Font Generator for Mac

    jibbajabba
    3 Jun 2013 | 10:25 am
    FontPrep is a web font generator for the Mac with a simple drag/drop interface for adding your TTF and OTF font files and generating all of the respective font-formats for the web: WOFF, EOT, and SVG. Each converted web-font is bundled with @font-face declarations, and a subsettings feature allows you to select which character sets to include.
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    The UX Booth

  • A Confab Recap

    Marli Mesibov
    18 Jun 2013 | 6:30 am
    Kristina Halvorson issued a strong call-to-action during her opening keynote at this year’s Confab Minneapolis event, saying: “Part of my job as a content strategist is to get people on board with content strategy. You are a salesperson.” Through the next two days of Confab, speakers provided tools to make this challenging dream a reality. A few weeks ago, I had the great pleasure of interviewing two Confab speakers, Jonathon Khan and Melanie Moran, in preparation for my attendance of Confab Minneapolis. While writing the introduction for that interview, I spent some time…
  • A User Experience Business of One

    Evgenia (Jenny) Grinblo
    11 Jun 2013 | 6:30 am
    My initial foray into UX frustrated me. Although my job title suggested that I made products easier for end-users, I actually spent a lot of time selling user experience to clients, stakeholders, and colleagues. I knew I needed to broaden my focus, but I didn’t know where to start. And that’s when I discovered The Business Model Canvas. The story behind what we today know as the Business Model Canvas is an interesting one. Originally created as a conceptual framework for Alexander Osterwalder’s PhD project, it later became the subject of an entire book called Business Model…
  • Design in Service: Crafting the Citizen Experience

    Andrew Maier
    4 Jun 2013 | 6:30 am
    Many agree that a combination of factors – a demand for better user experience, the rise of ubiquitous technologies and more readily accessible datasets – present the conditions necessary for a more enjoyable life as a citizen of our country. But necessity is just the mother of invention; it takes hard work to get there. To narrow the gap between today’s promises and tomorrow’s opportunities, designers are increasingly intent on improving what’s known as the citizen experience. The trends aren’t difficult to see. Co-authors Joseph Pine and James Gilmore…
  • The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Universal Design

    Andrew Maier
    28 May 2013 | 6:30 am
    Like countless others, I initially perceived user experience design through the lens of usability: as a “science,” devoid of the subjectivity of “users.” If a door equipped with a push bar actually required me to pull on it in order to open it, I became upset. I considered it a bad experience. And while this does describe a bad experience due to poor usability, my viewpoint was also incredibly myopic. Unusable or inaccessible, what’s the difference? As many within our community have pointed out, the things we might normally think of as well designed are often…
  • A Taste of Confab 2013

    Marli Mesibov
    21 May 2013 | 6:30 am
    “Content is king.” It’s been the prevailing trend the past few years, but at Confab – a conference of Content Strategists – attendees seek more than just trends; they seek stories. UX Booth editor and resident content strategist Marli Mesibov reached out to some of the strategists speaking at this year’s Minneapolis-based event to learn more about what’s driving their current narratives. When I first walked into Confab in 2012, I felt as though I had finally found home. During their workshops and talks, speakers discussed the “hows” and…
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    UX Passion - UX design agency

  • Post UX Apocalypse

    Vibor Cipan
    7 Jun 2013 | 4:57 am
    It is often said that the end is near and it has never been more so than during the 2012. To us every end of the world is actually a beginning of a new brave world. An opportunity to gather a bunch of our colleagues, partners, some twitter stars and a few surprise guests in one room. You know, face to face, without any screens in between. Strange concept, we know, but we are renowned for innovative thinking. To make this mingle a bit special, we organised it at newly opened modern art house Lauba. Special thanks goes to Mario Poje who captured some of the great moments. Check it out, and then…
  • Spring 2013 portfolio update

    Vibor Cipan
    13 May 2013 | 7:52 am
    We are, naturally, often asked about what we do, what kind of services do we offer and can we show our work. Due to very strict, confidential and NDA-bound rules and regulations, we are not able to show many visual elements like screens, apps and wireframes, but from time to time we are able to showcase and tell the story of our customers’ success. After all, we are here to celebrate our customers and their successes and to take pride in being a part of that entire story. So, what’s new we’ve added to our portfolio? Maybe you’ve heard about Score Alarm, world’s best mobile…
  • SXSW 2013 – one month later…

    Vibor Cipan
    24 Apr 2013 | 5:25 am
    To some people SXSW is like a religious experience, but I stumbled upon it completely unaware of the global hype, just by looking for a conference that has everything in one place, from user experience design, new and emerging technologies all the way to futurism, seasoned with quality entertainment and a great crowd. That means well over 60.000 registered attendees. Conference, if I dare call it that, is divided by several themes and covers all things interactive, music, film/video plus a trade show featuring number of up and coming startups as well as established brands. It is an overkill…
  • Implementation, Mental and Representation Models in User Experience

    Vibor Cipan
    22 Jan 2013 | 6:11 am
    So, to put it simply, all we need to do is to find what will make the product easy to use and implement it. That’s where models are useful. Models are more or less abstract representations of how things work. They are our best shots at trying to understand often complex behaviours and processes. They are our tools to help us understand them. Bad User eXperience In user experience design, interaction design and in human-computer interaction in general, three model types are especially important: Implementation models, Mental models, and Representational models. Implementation models An…
  • 1112 – An Exhibition of Croatian Design

    Antun Debak
    5 Nov 2012 | 2:22 am
    This exhibition of Croatian design is the only event on this scale so far in Croatia. It covers (almost) all areas of design, and over the last 13 years it has achieved high regard among design professionals as well as the general public. The aim of this exhibition is to affirm design as a market and a socially relevant profession. At the exhibition you can see design works by professional designers as well as student work. The Exhibition of Croatian Design 1112 – Source: dizajn.hr From my personal point of view, I believe that in Croatia there are many other designers who could have…
 
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    Project6 Design: Bay Area UI Design Firm

  • Project6 Design Awarded Best Sports Site of 2013 at DrupalCon

    Christine M.
    12 Jun 2013 | 1:01 pm
    leisure_sports_website.jpg Portland, OR – At DrupalCon Portland, Project6 Design was awarded the 2013 Blue Drop Award for Best Sports Website for the Leisure Sports Club Sports website. Blue Drop Awards are a democratic, voter-driven recognition program that celebrates innovation for sites using Drupal. Votes are cast based on the use of Drupal Best Practices, Content, Structure & Navigation, Visual Design, Functionality and Overall Experience.Leisure Sports, an active lifestyle business, designs, develops, owns and manages distinctive, high-end fitness resorts and hotels that offer…
  • Responsive Website Design and Development For Construction Management Design Firm

    Christine M.
    1 Jun 2013 | 4:58 pm
    project6_vaughn_main1.png Project6 Design, a San Francisco Bay Area graphic design firm, is excited to announce the launch of a dynamic, responsive website for Vaughn Construction. Based in Houston, TX, Vaughn offers the rare combination of a traditional general contractor plus sophisticated construction management. Their process-driven and results-focused approach allows them to deliver the best quality at the best value.During the brand discovery process, Vaughn stakeholders were drawn to edgier design elements that pushed the envelope for construction industry sites. So Project6 provided…
  • Project6 Design Wins Five Awards for Corporate Identity, Brochure, and Website Design

    Esten
    9 May 2013 | 10:26 am
    pdf_logo_colour2.gif Project6 Design, a San Francisco Bay Area design and branding firm, has been awarded five Communicator Awards for outstanding corporate identity, website, and brochure design over the past year. Their strong branding principles and clean, clear designs helped four organizations (AUL Corp, Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), Musicians Institute and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)) successfully revitalize their brands and connect more deeply with their constituents.                  …
  • Sustainable Lighting Systems Company Website Design and Development

    Esten
    2 Apr 2013 | 3:42 pm
    bay-area-design-firm.png This week, San Francisco Bay Area branding and graphic design company Project6 Design celebrated the launch of the redesigned LumaStream website, showcasing LumaStream’s game-changing, low-voltage LED lighting platform.LumaStream develops and manufactures breakthrough products for digital power conversion, control, and distribution, providing the lighting industry’s most sustainable Intelligent LED Lighting Systems for commercial, residential, hospitality and exterior lighting applications.Project6 designed the website to feature LumaStream’s outstanding product…
  • Responsive Website Design and Development for AUL

    Esten
    15 Mar 2013 | 3:35 pm
    screen_shot_2013-03-15_at_3.02.44_pm.png Project6 Design launched the website for AUL - America's premier service contract administrator based in Napa Valley, CA. AUL provides a wide range of vehicle service contract options. So you can cover as much as you need for as long as you need. A wide variety of choice is just one reason AUL is the number one service contract provider in America. Project6 redesigned the website and built it in the Sitefinity content management system. This extends our branding, print, collateral, and tradeshow booth designs. Subpage design: 
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    UX Designer | Web User Interface | Visual Designer - Nomad Chique

  • So Cal UX Camp 2013

    karen@nomadchique.com (Nomad Chique)
    5 Jun 2013 | 11:48 am
    I went to So Cal UX Camp this weekend and had an awesome time.  I sat in on some really great lectures and met some super cool people, including some I hadn’t seen in awhile in the user experience community.  All in all it was an inspiring event with a lot of extraordinary talent. Here [...]
  • Photo Hack Day 4 – my favorite hackathon yet

    karen@nomadchique.com (Nomad Chique)
    9 Apr 2013 | 8:21 pm
    This past weekend, I had the most amazing time working alongside some seriously talented folks up at Facebook HQ for Photo Hack Day 4. In just 24 hours, over 60 hacks were cooked up from scratch, all on the quest for some killer prizes. Hackers and designers were tasked with coming up with the best [...]
  • Likeonomics by Rohit Bhargava

    karen@nomadchique.com (Nomad Chique)
    4 Jun 2012 | 5:09 pm
    I attended LinkedOC to see Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Planning at Ogilvy Worldwide, present his latest book Likeonomics. I tweeted his presentation and compiled it here. Overall it was a great presentation along with a great Q&A. Thanks for showing us how to be more likable as a business Rohit! Watching Rohit from [...]
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    Symantec Connect - Inside Symantec - Blog Entries

  • Responsive Web Design

    Vicky Peterson
    28 May 2013 | 12:43 pm
    ...a design that can adapt to the constraints of the browser window or device that renders it… Ethan Marcotte   In the beginning, web design just followed traditional print design... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
  • Designs Trending Towards Flat In The Future

    Reshma Kumar
    30 Apr 2013 | 2:55 pm
    There has been a lot of discussion recently around Apple's reported push towards flatter designs. Others, such as Microsoft are already said to be bucking this trend with it's Window's... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
  • Launch of New SMB Website

    Gary_Davis
    26 Apr 2013 | 2:31 pm
    Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs) are rapidly and dynamically evolving into technological and informational savvy businesses. The technology and free flow of information creates tremendous... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
  • How We See Color

    Vicky Peterson
    18 Apr 2013 | 4:42 pm
    All the colors together make black – yes. All the colors together make white – yes. How can they both be true? First we need to understand what color is. We see a color when light... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
  • Redesign Of Symantec’s Mobile Website

    Sumi Rhee
    27 Mar 2013 | 2:05 pm
    We recently launched a redesign of our Symantec.com mobile website. With the redesign, users can now enjoy a more consistent look and feel on the mobile site as on the desktop version of... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]
 
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    Baymard Institute

  • 5 High-Level Mobile Commerce Design Considerations

    Jamie Appleseed
    17 Jun 2013 | 11:28 pm
    This is the last in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. In the seven prior articles of this series we’ve covered very specific usability findings for mobile commerce sites such as: inline labels (7), hit areas in product lists (6), drop-downs for navigation (4), single input entities (1), label positioning (2), and lists of compatible products (3). Beside the specific improvements these seven findings hopefully also offer a glimpse at the level of detail one needs to consider when designing a mobile…
  • Mobile Form Usability: Never Use Inline Labels

    Jamie Appleseed
    3 Jun 2013 | 11:38 pm
    This is the 7th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. Labels placed inside the form field (aka “inline labels”) are widespread in mobile apps and sites – almost to the point of being a best (mal)practice. Yet in every usability test we’ve conducted inline labels have suffered from major usability problems. Mobile included. Perhaps the popularity of inline labels on mobile is due to Apple’s extensive use of them, or the great simplistic look they afford, or their space efficiency –…
  • Mobile Product Lists Need Very Distinct Hit Areas

    Christian Holst
    20 May 2013 | 11:48 pm
    This is the 6th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. When displaying search results and category lists on mobile sites & apps, users often simply have no idea where to tap in order to select a given item / product. Can the entire “element” be tapped? Or is it only the product title? And what about the thumbnail? During the mobile commerce test sessions multiple issues arose as subjects were unsure of where to tap in order to select a given option in a list, what was even “tappable”,…
  • How Should Your Mobile and Desktop Sites Differ?

    Christian Holst
    6 May 2013 | 10:43 pm
    This is the 5th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. When defining, designing and structuring your mobile commerce site; should you slim down content and features, or try to stuff it all in the mobile version as well? During our mobile commerce usability study the test subjects encountered m-commerce sites adopting widely different approaches. It turned out that some approaches had dire outcomes. Here’s a glimpse into the complex dilemma of what content and features to share across the mobile and desktop…
  • Mobile: Never Use Native Drop-Downs for Navigation

    Jamie Appleseed
    22 Apr 2013 | 11:49 pm
    This is the 4th in a series of 8 articles on mobile commerce usability that draw on findings from our m-commerce usability report 2013. Many responsive mobile sites are using native drop-downs (as in: a select tag) for main navigation and many plugins have been developed for this specific purpose, yet our usability research shows that this is a poor strategy. On the tested m-commerce sites that used native drop-downs for navigation, the test subjects showed decreased control and overview of the menu items. During testing, nearly all subjects scrolled up and down category lists before…
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    Wireframes Magazine

  • MicroPersonas – 41% Off

    Jakub
    17 Jun 2013 | 6:11 am
    Hey All. Just a quick announcement that I’ve been running a discount on the MicroPersonas icon set that is about to expire today. Instead of $29, it’s $17 for another 15 hours or so. Just wanted to share in here as well. Cheers. :) Update: just realized that MightyDeals has extended the deal by another week.
  • InVisionApp: Now With Sketch Commenting

    Jakub
    11 Jun 2013 | 6:04 am
    What do you get when you merge a pretty cool web based prototyping tool with some sketching capability? You got it – InVisionApp. These guys from NY have just launched a Sketch Commenting feature in their latest build. This now allows designers to express themselves more easily as words and pictures are more powerful together. They’re already awesome so no need to write anything else … “design on my friends” as they say. :) Sign up for an account and give this tool a try (1 project always free).
  • Fries

    Jakub
    10 Jun 2013 | 5:55 am
    Fries (github) is a prototyping tool for Android devices. I think it allows you to spit out Android styled UIs just using HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Yes, it apparently plays nice with PhoneGap … Description pulled from Github: Fries is an awesome mobile development framework (yes, not just for prototyping!) for Android apps using just HTML, CSS, and Javascript and was inspired by Ratchet. We all know that you can find loads of iOS development tools out there, so this time let’s give some love to Android. Credits: Jaune Sarmiento
  • Skeu It!

    Jakub
    23 May 2013 | 5:54 am
    Skeu It! – and perhaps here is the reason why people went flat with their design styles. :) It’s a parody tumblr collection of some weird looking interfaces with coffee switches, jean pockets and lots of wooden clipboards. The site is now closed off, but definitely proved a point of how ridiculous (or skewed) a UI can get when pushed to the other extreme. Credits: Justin Maxwell (@303)
  • SIX UX

    Jakub
    13 May 2013 | 6:15 am
    SixUX.com is a collection of six second long Vine snippets of all sorts of transitions and animations (yup recorded by hand). Some inspiring short videos if you’re into moving pixel patterns. :) Overall I think transitions can be great if used wisely. Often they can lower the cognitive strain by helping people to understand what happens between two distinct UI states. Anyhow, if you’re browser starts choking from so much video running all at once, there is also a tumblr blog as well. Nice work Andreas! Credits: Andreas (@ThisisSIXUX)
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    UsabilityPost

  • Google Authorship Search Listing Blindness

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    29 May 2013 | 5:00 pm
    Here’s an interesting way a simple UI addition can backfire. Google Authorship is a service from Google that lets you link your site to your Google+ profile. The “benefit” of doing so is that you get your Google+ picture displayed next to your listing on the Google search pages, which looks like this: After using Google Authorship on his site, Alex Yumas from JitBit was shocked to discover that their traffic fell by 90%. The site in question still held the first result on Google for the relevant search query, but having a little Google+ avatar picture next to the result text…
  • When Infinite Scroll Doesn't Work

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    6 Jan 2013 | 4:00 pm
    Dan Nguyen has an interesting writeup of Dan McKinley’s talk about why the implementation of infinite scroll at Etsy didn’t work. Essentially what happened was that Etsy had spent time implementing an infinite scroll interface (i.e. a list of results that automatically keeps loading more items as you scroll to the bottom of the list) before first testing their assumptions that more search results at a faster rate would boost user engagement. They found that the new interface just didn’t perform. Although the amount of purchases stayed roughly the same, user engagement has…
  • Watching Them Struggle

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    5 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pm
    You’ve probably watched somebody who is not technically savvy trying to operate an interface new to them, likely with little success. Maybe that interface was yours. You’ve spent countless hours cutting that thing down to the basics, refining the copy and making everything crystal clear, and yet, you watch with bewilderment as the user before you struggles and stumbles across the screen, doing everything possible to go in circles around the interface element they actually need, which to you seems blindingly obvious. As I read through Robert Greene’s new book, Mastery, a…
  • Redesign Trend in Tech News Sites: Big, Responsive and Content Heavy

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    4 Dec 2012 | 4:00 pm
    There’s a new trend in the redesign of technology news sites, which has emerged with the move towards responsive designs. The new wave of redesigns sees the old blog format being transformed into a full-screen, app-like experience, with multiple columns, fixed position elements and a global navigation bar at the top of the page. So let’s see some examples. Here is The Next Web: Here’s Mashable: And here’s ReadWrite: Here are some of the shared attributes of these designs: Responsive design taking up the whole or most of the screen Wide, simplified navigation bar at the…
  • Just Don't Make It Annoying

    Dmitry Fadeyev
    26 Nov 2012 | 4:00 pm
    I find that whenever I’m designing a user interface, the one safe rule to follow is simply this: just don’t make it annoying. This might sound banal, but there are often cases where blindly following best practices and design theory slowly pulls you off the right track, so that you end up designing something for the sake of a good design — whatever that is — rather than for actual use. As an analogy, consider the organization of things on your desk. Cleaning it up, organizing things and putting them away might seem like a good idea if you want to achieve a productive…
 
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    Users Know

  • Mobile First? Not So Fast! The Importance of Flow and Context.

    Laura Klein
    19 Jun 2013 | 5:33 pm
    I recently wrote a post for the O'Reilly Programming Blog called "Mobile First? Not So Fast!Why "flow" and "context" are more important than screen size."Here's an excerpt:Are we done with the Mobile First meme, yet? Can we be? Please?Look, don’t get me wrong. I fundamentally agree with a lot of the thoughts behind the annoying catchphrase “mobile first.” For example, I agree that mobile devices are now the primary (if not only) mode of connecting for many markets. I also think that having some sort of mobile strategy is absolutely required for almost every product.The problem is that…
  • You Can't Make Good Decisions with Bad Data

    Laura Klein
    24 Apr 2013 | 11:51 am
    I think a critical lesson of the Lean Startup movement is that you have to learn quickly. The “quickly” part of that lesson can lead to a culture of “good enough.” Your features should be good enough to attract some early adopters. Your design should be good enough to be usable. Your code should be good enough to make your product functional. While this might drive a lot of perfectionists nuts, I’m all for it. Good enough means that you can spend your time perfecting and polishing only the parts of your product that people care about, and that means a much better eventual experience…
  • The Best Best Practice

    Laura Klein
    22 Apr 2013 | 4:35 pm
    I get asked for a lot of what I call "generic" advice, which I'm not really very good at giving. People will ask questions like, "Should I make a prototype?" or "Should I build a landing page?" or "Should I do more customer development?"If you've asked this in email, you've probably gotten an unreadable 5,000 word manifesto that is essentially a brain dump of everything I can think of on the topic. If you've asked me in person you've almost certainly had to listen to me blather until your eyes glazed over.Wherever you've asked, I've probably started the response with the words, "Well, it…
  • 10 Reasons Founders Should Learn to Design

    Laura Klein
    18 Apr 2013 | 1:13 pm
    I know, I know. Founders and entrepreneurs are already being told that they need to learn how to code, hire, raise money, and get customers.Screw that. What founders and entrepreneurs should really do is learn how to build a great, usable, useful product. And that means learning the fundamentals of research and design.Don't believe me? Here are 10 reasons you should learn to be your own UX designer (or at least learn enough about UX design to fake it).You can't build a great product if you don't know what problem it solves for which people. UX design and research helps you figure that out.The…
  • Design Hacks - The Talk

    Laura Klein
    19 Mar 2013 | 9:49 am
    I write a lot about user research - generally tips and tricks for people who don't have much experience with it. The reason for this should be obvious. Understanding your user, by any means necessary, is always the first step in creating a compelling product.Seriously, you can't build a product without understanding the problem you're solving and the people for whom you're solving it. Various forms of research are the best way of understanding people who aren't you. It's really as simple as that.But I've also seen another common problem. A whole lot of folks have learned how to go out and…
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    IDYeah Blog

  • Temporary IDs

    Arpit Shah
    11 Jun 2013 | 6:46 am
    Listen Usability of Temporary Email ID (Disposable Email ID) Sometime ago, I was discussing the issue of software piracy with an IT professional.  He put forth a very relevant point. Most of the software applications have a trial version which offer almost similar functionality and benefits as the paid version albeit for a temporary period. Hence, one should not download a pirated software as it is illegal and try to take benefits of the trial period. He said, there would be no harm in using trial version repeatedly. Valid point, I said. There are two issues with this, obviously, as the…
  • Medium Allows Contextual Comments

    Vishal Mehta
    3 Jun 2013 | 9:56 pm
    Listen Comments on a Blog Have you ever felt discouraged putting your comments on a blog article, because you would have to point to specific portions of the blog for your comments to make sense? Yes, it’s a lot of work and the comments are unnecessarily fatter because of the context you have to set for the author and other readers. See what Medium has done. This site allows you to “select” or “highlight” a word or phrase or paragraph and add comments specific to the highlighted text. Your comments get attached to that section, and not to the “end of the…
  • Customer or Guinea Pig?

    Vishal Mehta
    2 Jun 2013 | 11:38 pm
    Listen Do You See Your Customer as a Guinea Pig? Mike was nervous. Yet again. It was 395 days since he had started a business. A service startup to help other companies grow their business. “What if I got rejected again?” he wondered, recounting all the negative responses of several prospects for over 13 months now. He barely reached on time for the meeting. He was alone today; the second member of his 2-people startup, Thomas had called in sick. A cup of black tea and few pleasantries later, the spokesperson of the prospect asked: “So, how have you helped other companies…
  • The 16×16 Usability

    Vishal Mehta
    31 May 2013 | 9:52 pm
    Listen Usability of Favicon Favicon seems to be quite ignored from the focus of both brand owners and designers. What can you do in a small area of 16 pixels by 16 pixels? A lot actually! #1 Brand Identity If you’re serious about your brand, you have to go the whole nine yards. Attention to detail. While you don’t leave out your PowerPoint footer, Website footer, Email signature, Business card color – you should very well consider the smallest part of your real estate – the Favicon. Why allow Browsers show your website opened with their own “default”…
  • The Mac Monocle: Cartoon

    Vishal Mehta
    21 May 2013 | 8:02 pm
    Listen The Mac Monocle by Artist: lunchbreath Source: CoreToon
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    UserZoom

  • New Webinar: Formative Usability Testing in Agile – Piloting New Techniques at Autodesk

    Userzoom
    4 Jun 2013 | 10:54 am
    Join Eunice Chang, Sr. Principal User Researcher at Autodesk, and Olivia Williamson, Principal UX Designer at Autodesk, in this webinar to learn about the new techniques of formative usability testing piloted by the AutoCAD UX group in their agile user-centered design process. The webinar is on Tuesday, June 25th at 11am PT.
  • New Webinar: Formative Usability Testing in Agile – Piloting New Techniques at Autodesk

    Userzoom
    4 Jun 2013 | 10:47 am
    Join Eunice Chang, Sr. Principal User Researcher at Autodesk, and Olivia Williamson, Principal UX Designer at Autodesk, in this webinar to learn about the new techniques of formative usability testing piloted by the AutoCAD UX group in their agile user-centered design process. The webinar is on Tuesday, June 25th at 11am PT. Register today!
  • How Paypal Meets Its UX Research and Design Goals

    Userzoom
    23 May 2013 | 12:11 pm
    During one of our recent webinars, Deborah Torres, Sr. UX Research and Ops Manager at Paypal, shared how UX research is done at Paypal. With 113.2 million active accounts, every UX related decision has a significant impact. Deborah and her team, like many other UX researchers, face two main challenges: 1) Delivering quality credible results to stakeholders and decision makers; 2) Getting it all done quickly and efficiently. Using data triangulation to tell a complete story and to increase credibility Paypal’s research team uses multiple research methods to provide a complete story about…
  • Webinar On-Demand: Mobile UX Research Methods and Tools

    Userzoom
    12 Apr 2013 | 10:45 am
    Join us in this webinar to learn about different research methods and tools for testing mobile websites and apps. As a case study, our featured speaker, Nate Colker, will show a setup and results of a recent mobile benchmark study that we conducted using UserZoom’s brand new Mobile Remote Usability Testing solution.
  • Webinar On-Demand: Mobile UX Research Methods and Tools

    Userzoom
    12 Apr 2013 | 10:28 am
    Join us in this webinar to learn about different research methods and tools for testing mobile websites and apps. As a case study, our featured speaker, Nate Colker, will show a setup and results of a recent mobile benchmark study that we conducted using UserZoom’s brand new Mobile Remote Usability Testing solution. Date: April 30th at 11am Pacific.
 
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    Usability and UX Blog

  • UX Salary infograph

    usabilitygal
    7 Jun 2013 | 7:02 am
  • The Implications You Must Take Into Account When Sketching User Experiences

    usabilitygal
    4 Jun 2013 | 3:49 am
    I’m pleased to welcome Danielle Arad as my guest poster for this article about the implications you must take into account when sketching user experiences. Danielle runs her own blog over at UX Motel and is also on Twitter.     Although business process mapping, flow charting, and the related processes might already sound familiar to you, for the success of your user experience design you also have to consider which are the factors that make the entire process work and how one can take advantage of them. Undoubtedly, many UX professionals encounter the process of user…
  • 5 digital trends happening RIGHT NOW

    usabilitygal
    27 May 2013 | 11:35 am
  • Take this 1 minute psych test

    usabilitygal
    25 Mar 2013 | 1:16 pm
  • How guys will use Google Glasses (Project Glass)

    usabilitygal
    19 Mar 2013 | 4:17 am
    I just had to share with you this video on how guys might use Google Glass (or should that be glasses?) in the future. Pretty funny! Maybe we shouldn’t laugh too soon though as it may well become the future! People are distracted enough as it is, it’s just that the glasses may make the distraction harder to detect. At least right now you can see if someone’s using their mobile whilst they’re supposed to be listening to you. I find it amazing the number of people who walk down the street looking down, eyes glued to their handset, using only their peripheral vision to…
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