UX: The New Brand Leaders

Like it or not, we, the UX community, are the new brand leads. Don’t believe me? My 65-year old mother used the words “poor user experience” recently with that disdainful look in her eye that said “Never again, brand X.” Our work has become the new decider in brand preference. It’s time to take the reins and move into our new role.

FLUID TYPE

Embracing the fluid & flexible aspect of responsive web design was an easy decision, but I’ve been less sure-footed when it comes to balancing that with setting type on the web.

Win a copy of ‘Storytelling for User Experience’ or ‘Playful Design’

I’m giving away two copies of John Ferrara’s new book, Playful Design and two copies of ‘Storytelling for User Experience’ by Whitney Quesenbery & Kevin Brooks. Whether you are a UX Professional or enthusiast Usability Evangelist, you’ll surely appreciate these two books.

Why the User Experience Can or Cannot be Designed

It seems an endless discussion whether user experience can be designed or not. There is no standard definition, nor consensus among the practitioners, of what experience design really is. In this article I hope to shed some light on the issue.

10 Easy Steps to Quickly Get a Great Design Job

There’s a huge need in the market for qualified creatives who do great work. If you want to make it as a successful creative professional, but don’t know where to start or have stalled along your journey, then I’ve got you what you need. This article walks you through the 10 integral steps to quickly getting the job you crave , doing what you love and getting paid to do it. This is actionable plan for anyone with real drive, to progress in their creative career.

UXPin – The UX Design App. Put your wireframes in the context and tell your design story!

UXPin recently launched the app for UX Design. You can easily create wireframes and clickable prototypes, add personas, diagrams, forms, invite your team and tell them your design story.

Revolutionary User Interfaces

The human computer interface helps to define computing at any one time. As computers have become more mainstream the interfaces have become more intimate…

UI: Proper Indicators for Hidden Elements

Tabs, collapsed menus, accordion forms, and the ever popular hover items such as mega menu drop-downs – progressive disclosure is a great way to cut down visual clutter while still offering the user lots of content and features.

Minka

Minka from Birdling Films on Vimeo.

A film about place and memory, a farmhouse in Japan, and the lives of the people who called it home.

www.minkafilm.com

UX Killed Usability

Usability is dead (or at best on life-support and not conscious), and I’m sorry to be the one that has to tell you this, but it’s been mortally wounded by UX (aka User Experience).

Latest Examples of iPhone App UI Design

I have become an enormous fan of the iPhone App store after having used the phone for a couple year now. The quality of interface designs are light-years above what you can find on Windows Mobile and even most Android apps. It’s because of this reason I like to celebrate the best interfaces I can find and share with the design community. This encourages new developers to jump onto these trends and build up a small viral market.

UX Design as a Two-Way Conversation

Thinking about UX design as a two-way conversation can be the key to creating smart sites and apps that meet users expectations, because when you begin to think about all design as a conversation, you are able to apply the rules of basic conversation to your design process.

Startups, this is how design works.

The simplest definition. Design is so many things, executed in many different ways, but the function is always the same. Whether it’s blueprints, a clever UI, a brochure, or a chair – design can help solve a visual or physical problem. 1

Designing for Emotions – by Aarron Walter

Designing for Emotions by Aarron Walter from my point of view is one of the best written books about design process. It has great insights, well explained case studies and good sense of humor embedded in all the pages. Every piece of information in this book comes from real experiences and challenges, and immediately makes you think about ways of improving your own projects or design process.
I encourage you to purchase it, to read it because it will make you a better designer. It has already started to change some of my concepts in my design process.

Most Web Design Agencies Suck

Over the years I’ve heard plenty of designers moan about their clients. I’ve also witnessed a recent outburst of complaints against authors and speakers on Twitter. However the group that rarely comes under fire in public, but probably should, are the mass of terrible agencies out there.

The Importance of Transitions

In a recent article Mark Cossey shares his thoughts on the importance of transitions in interface design.

Bylines for Web Articles?

Should you say who wrote the content on your site? Sometimes yes (for credibility), sometimes no (for brevity). And rarely in mobile.

15 Free Ebooks about User Experience and Interface Design

I have collected 15 free ebooks about UX and interface design including some best selling books which are definitely worth reading.

The High Cost Of Task Failure On Websites

Purchasing, reserving, comparing and communicating—Internet behavior is largely a goal directed activity. If a website doesn’t help users accomplish their goals then it’s unlikely users will return and refer their friends.

Mobile Sites vs. Apps: The Coming Strategy Shift

Mobile apps currently have better usability than mobile sites, but forthcoming changes will eventually make a mobile site the superior strategy.

Crafting the Front-end

Much has been spoken and written recently about the virtues of craftsmanship in the context of web design and development. It seems that we as fabricators of the web are finally tiring of seeking out parallels between ourselves and architects, and are turning instead to the fabled specialist artisans.

There’s No Formula for Great Designs

Sometimes we’ll make decisions to improve function, other times because they make a design ‘feel’ right. You’ll know when you’ve made a right decision. You’ll feel it.

Quiz: are you good at customer experience work?

The skills of empathy, analysis, and synthesis are essential in solving customer experience problems

Salaries For UX Researchers, Designers, Managers And IAs

So for example, designers making around $105k per year are making more than are 75% of all designers. Information Architects making $50k are paid higher than 25% of all IAs.

Android Design

These design principles were developed by and for the Android User Experience Team to keep users’ best interests in mind. Consider them as you apply your own creativity and design thinking. Deviate with purpose.

12 of the Year’s Best Ideas in Interface Design

User interfaces, when done well, are the unsung hero of product design. They’re the difference between a printer whose buttons you can figure out without even reading the instructions and one you want to throw across the room.

6 Steps to Better UX Design

Everything you do, wear, drive, eat, and so forth are expressions of your character. If it is you that makes you unique, then let’s talk about the storefront that’s open 24/7 — your website — and see how it’s applicable to other designs as well.

Optimization vs innovation

You might have tried it before: as you incrementally tweak your web application with small changes, you can’t seem to convert your users any better. It seems as if you’ve hit a dead end. A large number of A/B tests and multivariate testing seem to have found the best working solution. Is the essence of my application just not good enough to convert better?

User Experience Beats Everything Else (Including Software)

So whenever I’m asked why we are focusing on hardware-based client frameworks, although we are a software company, I always tell people “because we don’t focus on software, we focus on user experience. And if hardware beats software any day of the week, user experience beats everything else (including software).

Figuring Out What Motivated Your Customers to Buy

Traditional marketing advice tells you to focus on benefits not features. I would go one further and figure out exactly what psychological motivators drove your customers to want your product, and focus your product/marketing on satisfying that.