December 25, 2014 at 10:41

Food Design Digest, December 2014

    Since 2010, I have been publishing regular reviews of recent articles on the topic of interfaces, new tools and collections of patterns, interesting cases and historical stories. From the tapes of several hundred thematic subscriptions, approximately 5% of the publications worth publishing are selected, which are interesting to share. Previous materials: April 2010-November 2014 .
    Food Design Digest, December 2014


    Patterns and Best Practices


    IBM Design Language
    IBM released their visual language, very, very, very cool described, structured and filed. A lot of interesting details, approaches to the description of guidelines. Although these are more likely principles, there are almost no specific practical applications. No specific numbers in the interface and typographic grids, only the principles of their construction. For a company of their scale — the staff of designers must reach 1000 people, and the number of products is infinite — this approach gives flexibility while respecting the general spirit of design. Recently, several more guidelines have been released:


    There is No Fold
    Welch Canavan has put together many well-known publications debunking the myth that users do not scroll pages. Recently, a resonant article was published on the blog of Huge Inc about their research on the topic . Although the myth itself that users are afraid of scrolling has been debunked many times, what they did at Huge raises a lot of questions.

    My colleague from the usability laboratory Ksenia Sternina describes the problems: “The article is completely unscientific, the respondents were chosen incomprehensibly which, the test was conducted unclear how, the incentives presented to the respondents are unclear what. Some results were obtained, maybe something like this is in reality, but the testing was conducted in an amateurish way. Below details.

    By testing with a broad cohort of users rather than specific segments, we can ground our findings in widely shared user needs and expectations
    It’s already not clear here, after all, these users, who are they? Maybe it's babies or pensioners, or miners, after all, who are they? In scientific research, they never take "some kind of broad cohort." They take very specific people who can be attributed to a certain segment, and then look at the result, if they all show the same result, then we can already say that in such segments the same result. And in order to test "everyone", then we must all-all and test.

    we can maximize the number of respondents in a short timeline - a perfect opportunity to try new and unconventional research methods and assess their pros and cons
    A very strange message. Are they trying to get results or test methods? Usually, if you test a method, then you don’t use the results especially, because in the process you experiment and the results will already be invalid.

    To find out, we conducted user testing with 48 participants over 3 days.
    Who are these people, age, gender, what devices do they use, what is the experience with different sites?

    We tested four design versions
    And the pictures on the page were the same? If so, then the person will already guess what the catch is, if not, then the content itself can affect. Typically, test objects are mixed in among other "control" objects.

    X% scrolled immediately
    What is it like? In a second, half a second? Some people did not scroll. Why, interestingly, maybe these people have something in common?

    The test procedure is not described at all. It is written that deleted tests, but how were they carried out? Contacting people and sending links? Or one link? What instructions did people give? This is very important, because all this greatly affects people's behavior. ”

    Earlier this year, the best article on the topic of pseudo-science in design from MJ Parnell was published . It is extremely sad that the study of Huge, Inc has spread all over the Internet and published by all who can. Yes, the myth that people do not scroll is false and has been refuted many times. But specifically, this article makes conclusions completely unprofessional.

    The right way to ask users to review your app
    Circa's Matt Galligan talks about an unobtrusive way to get app ratings from users. Instead of almost always inappropriate pop-up, they display a polite block in the interface with the question "did you like the application?" Continuing the topic:


    Designing Great Organizational Services
    Laura Keller describes the principles of creating good interfaces for corporate tools, which, as a rule, have a very pale appearance.

    Design Explosions Issue # 1: Mapping on iOS
    Note for mapmakers and geo-oriented service designers. Serious immersion and detailed analysis of native Google and Apple maps for iOS. Patterns, interaction areas, labeling mechanisms, marking up application areas, routes and navigation ... Very vigilantly disassembled "for parts" and described to the last detail.

    E-Commerce Checkouts Need to Mark Both Required and Optional Fields Explicitly (Only 9% Do So)
    As a result of their recent research, Baymard recommends explicitly marking both required and optional form fields.

    Empty States
    The Empty States collection has moved to a separate domain.

    Stars and Stripes and ISO Codes
    Antoine Lefeuvre on design subtleties when switching ulcers on multilingual sites and applications. Continuing the topic:


    Can designers steal the best pricing techniques from restaurants?
    Interesting calculations from a pair of pricing studies in restaurants and the web. If no currency is indicated next to the amount, people are more likely to pay.

    Android vs iOS Start Experience
    Luke Wroblewski compares the initial setup processes for iPad and Android tablets. Continuing the topic:


    The Highlight 2014 - UI Animations
    A selection of the best interface animations by Beautiful Pixels. Many examples are highly controversial, but the patterns themselves are interesting.

    User understanding


    Design Features in Asia


    Spark Innovation Through Empathic Design
    Dorothy Leonard and Jeffrey F. Rayport talk about field research. The process is described on duty, but the article has a huge number of cool stories from large companies, how they found insights and changed products.

    The Uncanny Valley is Uncanny
    Professor Nicholas Bowman on the “sinister valley” effect in the UX: in games, for Siri, in NUI.

    Facebook Science Has Another Problem - It's Not Exactly Science
    Continuing the story of Facebook's acclaimed emotion management research. They say that such studies are completely unscientific.

    Information architecture, conceptual design, content strategy


    The Customer Journey to Online Purchase The
    new Think with Google service collected anonymous (yeah, of course) web analytics data from 42,000 sites (everyone swallowed here for whom Google Analytics doesn’t allow privacy) and made an excellent tool for studying them user paths to purchase in different segments, markets and countries. Quick Start Guide as PDF .

    How to Use Customer Experience Maps to Develop a Winning Content Marketing Strategy
    Demian Farnsworth memo on creating experience maps.

    Design and design of interface screens


    Resonator
    A new extension for Photoshop, which helps to collect, store and "cut" for developers icons and any other graphics. The extension supports iOS, Android, Windows Phone and retina. Now it is distributed by invitation, but, from personal experience, it is invited quite quickly. It will be useful to all mobile, some web and generally all those designers who are tired of the constant manual cutting of graphics for transmission to developers. A little more about transferring design to developers:


    PaperProto
    A new approach to templates for paper design. In addition to conveniently breaking standard sheets on screens, it comes with a phone model for a 3D printer, into which you can drive sketches drawn on paper.

    New to Sketch


    New About Material Design


    New for Android Wear


    New about Apple Watch


    New about mailing letters


    Tizen UX Guide
    Seriously updated guidelines for the Tizen mobile OS, which Samsung and Intel are developing on the basis of MeeGo, which was closed a couple of years ago. Samsung is constantly threatening to invest in it the main forces, but so far only a few devices have come out.

    7 tips for designing awesome animated GIFs
    7 tips from InVision for creating GIFs with front-end animations. And then - instructions for creating animated illustrations in a bunch of Illustrator and Photoshop .

    New for iPhone


    New for iPad


    Android Templates


    New for Marvel App


    New for Adobe Fireworks


    Duet Display
    Another option for quickly displaying the Mac screen on iPhone and iPad. The application will be useful for quickly viewing layouts on the device via cable.

    User research and testing, analytics


    UX Check A
    cheap and fast way to conduct peer reviews of key Nielsen heuristics. This is a plugin for Chrome that opens a panel with a list of heuristics, allows you to make notes on a page and export it all to a Word document.

    3 Ways to Select the Perfect Method for your Research Goal
    Indi Young has developed her own methodology for selecting research methods. It all depends primarily on the purpose of the research: whether we are looking for new ideas for our product or are we evaluating existing functionality. Research can also be directed either to the product itself, or to users, their behavior and feelings.

    Lean research


    How Speeders Affect Online Research
    Jeff Sauro is trying to understand how effective ways to cut off unscrupulous survey respondents, especially by checking the fill rate. Everything is not so clear - with the exception of very obvious fake cases, the speed does not affect the quality very clearly and it is simply impossible to cut off such respondents.

    Revisiting the Pile-Sort Method of User Research
    Hang Guo, Khasfariyati Razikin and Muhammad Hatib on variations of the card sorting method.

    Why Do We Conduct Qualitative User Research?
    A good analogy is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research on the Mozilla blog.

    The 7 Deadly Sins of User Research
    David Travis on the 7 Deadly Sins of User Research .

    Redesigning Your Website? Don't Ditch Your Old Design So Soon
    Hoa Loranger from NN / g on the competitive usability testing methodology, when in addition to your own product, several products of the closest competitors are tested.

    Visual programming and design in the browser


    Fuse
    A new tool for creating interactive prototypes and translating them into code for Android and iOS. Unlike most recently appeared tools, Fuse Tools was initially focused on a close connection of a designer-programmer. The interactive prototype that you make with the tool is, in fact, a well-written application using native code for the platform.

    Plexi
    Another new tool for designers, this time in a browser. It is made by Colm Tuite and it is still in alpha state, but you can already try it. Demo function of the state of the object .

    Prototyping with Form for the first time
    A fairly detailed instruction for working with Form, an Origami-like tool for interactive prototyping, which was recently purchased by Google.

    New visual content editors


    New scripts


    Work with SVG


    Typecast is Now Free
    Relatively recently updated Typecast - a tool for creating a visually attractive and semantically built design, checking for readability, correct rendering in browsers and overall harmony - it has become free for designers working alone. This announcement opens a branch about web typography: techniques, scripts, tools, manuals and much more:


    How to Implement Color Search
    Elif Ceren Dik talks about the experience of creating a good color picker for users of the JotForm service according to color theory. Many are faced with similar tasks, so in this thread materials will be collected on algorithmic solutions for color matching. Continuing the topic:


    Creating Animations and Interactions with Physical Models
    Ralph Thomas parses the physical animation model in detail and with clear interactive examples. The project is available on GitHub for its own experiments. Continuing the topic:


    Tumult Hype Pro 3 (Beta)
    A beta tool has appeared for designers of Tumult Hype Pro 3. They promise interactive reusable animated objects with a physical model and adaptability for websites, iBooks, and ads.

    Noodl Beta
    The beta of Noodl, a recently announced tool for the entire prototyping cycle: animations, interactive interactions and the entire process of working with the prototype, has appeared. It can be installed as an extension for Chrome.

    Some thoughts on “designing in the browser” by
    Stephen Hay that both sides of the popular discourse in recent years on the discourse “should a designer be able to typeset” should not go to extremes.

    New for Framer


    New for Quartz Composer


    New to Bootstrap and Foundation


    Tool Reviews


    JavaScript for designers
    Educational articles for designers on working with JavaScript by Dmitry Poyarkov. For designers, however, conditionally - it's just a simple training manual for beginners. Other guides for beginner non-developers:


    Touchstone.js A
    framework for building hybrid apps for the iPhone.

    Management of front-end projects, processes and teams


    UX Leadership, Part 1: The Nature of Great Leaders
    Jim Nieters and Pabini Gabriel-Petit open a series of articles about UX managers and leadership. Very sensible, although the preliminary article was less systematic. Continuing the topic:


    The 5 Most Common Design Mistakes
    Julie Zhuo of Facebook on major product design mistakes. Too tight restrictions in the initial study of the space of problems and solutions, too early detailing of one of the solutions, accepting good execution as a good product, skewing towards style instead of meaning, focusing on the wrong details.

    How to collaborate with your product manager
    Ondřej Válka describes the formats of interaction between a product designer and a product manager. This is one of the tightest ligaments in the team.

    Wonderful Client Feedback A
    memo for clients on the topic of design criticism.

    Making User Experience Part of Business Strategy
    UXMatters column on integrating UX with a business strategy.

    Product Management and Analytics


    Defining Data
    Pamela Pavliscak continues a series of publications on working with analytics data in interface design. The second part is devoted to the definition of terminology.

    Pendo
    Beta product analytics tool Pendo is now available. It helps to assess the relevance of the functions of the web product and communicate with users who use the service right now.

    Segment Analytics Data Using Personas
    Aurora Bedford of the Nielsen / Norman Group writes about using characters to segment analytics data.

    Cases


    Designing for Harmony
    One of the coolest cases of restructuring design in large companies. As Intuit, a leading manufacturer of personal and corporate financial accounting software, rethought itself, built a design culture, and created the Harmony ecosystem.

    Data Driven Products Now!
    A very interesting presentation by Dan McKinley from Etsy about how the company came to pro-active data analysis when launching new features and services. In the second part, detailed ROI calculations are made for the pair of features that they planned to launch.

    https://speakerdeck.com/mcfunley/data-driven-products-now"> Data Driven Products Now!

    93% of users satisfied with the redesign: how we developed Septima
    My colleague Andrei Sumin talks about the process of launching a new version of Mail.Ru Mail, which became available to all users this year. In detail on all steps of gradual rolling out to an increasing number of users with a bunch of numbers and statistics. It is useful for everyone who deals with products with a large established audience - how not to lose it.

    How to Design for Everybody
    Another smart case for redesigning state websites. Rachel Haot talks about the new NY.gov and the features of working on it. In  her blog to Medium , there are other stories about this launch.

    Our GDS user research lab is 6 months old
    About the first 6 months of the usability laboratory GOV.uk. Many interesting conclusions, recommendations and feedback from managers.

    The Numbers Game - Behind the Scenes at Microsoft's Xbox Playtesting Labs
    How players are tested in the Microsoft Xbox usability lab.

    The designers of Yandex.Browser on how not to disturb people
    Konstantin Gorsky and Gennady Lakhtin talk about working on the experimental interface of Yandex.Browser, which was introduced in late November. A few more of their answers to questions about the product .

    How Lumosity Spiked Active Users 10% with Complexity, Not Simplicity
    An interesting case study of the Luminosity training service team, in which they talk about experiments with the first user login process. They added a few questions like a test to onboarding and it turned out that this not only doesn’t drop conversion, but increases engagement. It seems that Evgenia Zhadyaeva talked about a similar experience of LinguaLeo.ru on the  UX-Environment .

    How we automated the work of the editorial office and what it led to (presentation by Alexei Ametov and Roman Khudonogov)
    Presentation by Roman Khudonogov and Alexei Ametov on internal editing processes in LAM. Slides . They are thinking about making Arcticle a publicly available product, and if everything grows together, then the announcement will be in the spring.




    New redesign cases


    Unsolicited Redesigns


    Designing a mobile interface for older people
    Tomáš Slavíček on the principles of designing mobile interfaces for the elderly using the KoalaPhone application as an example. Other design stories for people with disabilities:


    Story


    UX Maturity: Intuition
    Dirk Knemeyer writes a brief history of the emergence of UX in 6 parts. Part One: “80s: Design Based on Intuition.” Continuation:


    New Web History


    A brief history of web design for designers
    Another GIF article from Froont with a clear history of web design approaches.

    Trends


    Fjord Trends 2015
    The publication of forecasts for 2015 trends has begun. Fjord describes its nine regarding design and innovation. Other predictions:




    Work with phablets


    Banks Are Vying To Out-Nerd Each Other For Your Attention
    About the experiments of large American banks with new formats of interaction. Continuing the topic:


    Car interfaces


    Indie Interfaces
    Interesting interface concepts and indie products on  Kickstarter and  Indiegogo are now also gathering in a group. Unlike the internal research laboratories of Microsoft, Google, PARC, IBM, Disney, AT&T, MIT Media Lab and other companies, these things can be sponsored and after six months to a year touch your hands.


    Enhancing User Experience With The Web Speech API
    An overview of the capabilities of the new voice API, which is starting to appear in browsers. It allows you to recognize speech and voice texts on the pages and is at an early stage of development of the W3C.

    Designing For the Slow Web
    Ben Rowe on the concept of Slow Web / Fast Web, an analogy of the concepts of Fast Food / Slow Food. In Slow Web, the user manages his time and attention. No need to rush anywhere, no one distracts without a reason. Basic principles of Slow Web:
    1. It’s better to have less functionality, but with better interaction.
    2. No notifications unnecessarily.
    3. No sense of urgency unnecessarily, let users relax.
    4. Do not delay users online unnecessarily. Send them to the real world.
    5. Respect for the user, finally.


    Wearable electronics


    Interfaces in the movie


    An End to User-Based Thinking - Biological Perspective
    Alena Lugina suggests that the concept of "user" be considered obsolete. It forms the process of working on the design in such a way that it is a kind of object for which scientists in white coats create solutions in the laboratory. While it is better to create interfaces with people in co-design format.

    DesignX - A Future Path for Design
    Don Norman offers the concept of DesignX, which describes methods, approaches and specialties for solving complex social problems. His answers to questions .

    Для общего и профессионального развития


    Design's (Dis) Orders & Transition Design
    Cameron Tonkinwise on design philosophy and its levels, as well as Transition Design. Understands many design models.

    Discover Design - Study design trends on your phone
    An interesting tutorial on mobile design that works only on the phone. Based on materials from renowned industry experts like Luke Wroblewski, Khoi Vinh, Paul Adams and others.

    Designers: Watch
    Website-collection of key design films with links to online viewing services. People, historical processes, directions. Russian version .

    UXMas 2014
    The creators of the UX Mastery resource launched the UXMas mini-site for the third time on Christmas Eve. 24 articles will be published this year. Continuing the topic:


    Great Digital Products Don't Happen By Accident
    An article by David Gillis from Teehan + Lax based on his presentation on product design.

    32 myths to be dispelled
    32 UX myth posters.

    What's a Pixel?
    In continuation of the famous article by Sebastien Gabriel, another simple reminder on the basic concepts of display on the screens.

    The Urban Dictionary Of Design Slang
    Fast CoDesign has compiled a design vocabulary from serious and caustic working terms, talking to specialists from renowned studios and grocery companies. Continuing the topic:


    Abstract of “Smart Design” by Jeff Johnson
    Dmitry Safronov prepared an abstract of Jeff Johnson’s book “Smart Design” (Amazon’s bestseller, in the original “Designing with the mind in mind”). The book itself is on sale .

    Screeny - Let's find those space consuming screenshots
    Screeny application for iPhone allows you to isolate a collection of screenshots from the general photo stream, which usually grows quite randomly, and there is not enough time to disassemble it. True, they can only be removed, but even in this form it is a useful tool for those who are actively exploring existing applications.

    People and companies in the industry


    Shopping for design studios by large companies


    The Utopian UI Architect
    BMW's special project on Medium has released an article about what Bret Victor is doing now.

    AMA: I'm Nicholas Felton (aka Feltron), an information designer in NYC
    Q & A session with Nicholas Feltron on Designer News.

    Design education is “tragic” says Jonathan Ive
    A detailed summary of Jony Ive's performance at the London Design Museum.

    Conference proceedings


    Upcoming Web Design Events (Dec. 2014 - June 2015)
    The main European and American UX and web design events for the first half of 2015.

    Warm Gun 2014
    Video of speeches from the Warm Gun 2014 conference, which was held on December 4 in San Francisco, USA. Speakers worth paying attention to: Kim Goodwin, Dey Traynor, Christina Wodtke, PJ McCormick, Leah Buley, Samuel Hilick.

    Gain - AIGA Design and Business Conference 2014
    At the end of October in New York, the Gain 2014 conference from AIGA was held on the topic of business redesign. Video of performances .

    Recent links can also be tracked in the same Facebook group. Thanks to everyone who also publishes links in it, especially Gennady Dragun, Pavel Skripkin, Dmitry Podluzhny, Anton Artemov, Denis Efremov and Evgeny Sokolov. More and more materials appear in reviews thanks to them.
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