April 18, 2013 at 12:08Review of fresh materials, January-March 2013
For three years now 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-December 2012 .
DesignCamp2012: Yuri Vetrov - Metro design at Mail.Ru
My presentation about the experience of Metro design at Mail.Ru. We already have 9 applications for Windows Phone and Windows 8, so a lot of interesting nuances and details of the work of the designer and the designer with these platforms have gathered.
The M-Commerce Usability Report
Baymard Institute has published the continuation of its last year’s study of forms in e-commerce - the usability of mobile forms. The report is available for $ 250. Excerpts from it:
Common Misconceptions About Touch
Steven Hoober conducted a useful study of clickable areas in modern smartphones and tablets. It describes four key features - the visual and actual size of a clickable element, the danger of a miss on adjacent elements and the prevention of related problems.
Tapotype - A reference library of transitions A library of transition
animation patterns in mobile applications, for each of which there is a visual animated demo. It connects to the TAP add-in for Fireworks and allows you to use these animations in prototypes of mobile applications. The TAP add-in itself for Fireworks .
The top responsive web design problems ... and how to avoid them
James Young provided an excellent overview of modern techniques and responsive design issues with tons of useful links. Translation into Russian . And a detailed description of modern approaches to adaptability with a listing of the pros and cons of each.
Trello uses an icon font and so can you!
FogCreek's Bobby Grace has prepared a detailed guide for implementing icon fonts. Great reminder for designers and developers. Implementation experience from my Mail.Ru colleagues
Designing For The Empty States
An excellent review article by Craig Dennis on the importance of the “zero state” of mobile application screens. He distinguishes between three situations - the first launch, the content is deleted or moved, an access error. Also availablea collection of examples of "zero state" in mobile applications .
UX Process, Models & Other Diagrams
Transferred his collection of design process illustrations, concept models, and other interface diagrams to Pinterest. It has many famous and rare schemes of good and conditional quality. There are many other collections of characters, prototypes, patterns, and a host of other things related to the design and design of things.
OneNote for Interaction Designers
Chris Noessel talks about how Cooper uses MS Office OneNote to work on projects. This is a powerful note-taking tool, much more functional and flexible than Evernote. Part 2 and 3 .
Boost Your Mobile E-Commerce Sales With Mobile Design Patterns
Will Hacker has put together a collection of patterns for mobile online stores for Smashing Magazine. He also describes the tasks of each of them and comments on implementation options. Another collection of mobile patterns, this time the checkout phase .
Designing For The Reading Experience The
most gorgeous article by Marko Dugonjić about modern web typography. It examines the issues of device features, adaptability, localization, support for older browsers.
Breaking down amazon's mega dropdown
Ben Kamens describes the mechanics of the new Amazon drop-down menu that solves the problem of unpredictability of nesting behavior. The developers take into account the trajectory of the mouse cursor and if its final point is in the area corresponding to the path to the submenu, it stays on the screen longer. Translation into Russian .
Design Inspiration (Windows Store Apps)
The official guidelines for Windows 8 were supplemented by a series of articles on how to make a good interface for different types of popular applications. Some of them were already available earlier, the full list includes games, entertainment, news, sports and educational applications, e-commerce, travel and professional tools.
Discover Beautiful Android Homescreens and Customizations
A great collection of application start-up screens for Android smartphones and tablets. It has already collected about 700 examples and the gallery is constantly updated.
How To Design For Android Devices
A small but useful overview of the pitfalls of Android app design from Meng To. It describes the nuances of permissions, slicing, using controls, and the overall layout of the application. A tool for previewing layouts on the device and a style generator for application panels .
Android Carousel Design Pattern - The Definitive Guide
Greg Nudelman is preparing a book on the design and design of applications for Android, which will be released this year. Smashing Magazine has published a piece of material for her on the use of the carousel control.
Mad Libs madness
A few years ago there was a wave of interest in non-standard forms presented in a narrative form. Formulate conducted a series of studies on this approach and identified its main problems. It has limited applicability and is mainly suitable for optional, involving forms. Study in terms of accessibility .
All Dashboards Should be Feeds
Anil Dash criticizes modern dashboards with a lot of infographics, which shows a stream of not always necessary data instead of providing the user with conclusions from them. In his view, the ideal control panel is a notification tape about trends and important changes in the monitored process or object.
Social Usability Workshop @ LIFT13
Davide Casali's presentation on social interfaces. It has an excellent selection of patterns used in modern products.
Infinite Scrolling: Fab or Fad?
Danielle Arad describes the specifics of using infinite scrolling in interfaces. She lists his problems and benefits, accompanying them with examples of real products.
Designing a Practical UI for a Gesture-Based Interface
An interesting case for creating a tablet application from Omek. When creating it, it turned out that the menus located along the arc are convenient for the natural movement of the hand.
Improving User Experience in Manuals
Anastasios Karafillis review article on how to create reference guides. He divides them into several categories according to structure, content and general approach.
Avoid the Pains of Pagination
Useful page navigation guide from Anthony T. A checklist of everything you need to remember when using it.
Listrak - Email Marketing Whitepapers
Listrak publishes useful research on the effectiveness of front-end solutions in online stores. A lot of materials have accumulated over several years, they are available for download on request.
Which Site Seal do People Trust the Most? (2013 Survey Results)
Baymard Institute conducted a study of user trust in site security badges. Most trust certificates from antivirus companies - Norton and McAfee.
Navigation, not the same old story
Autodesk's Kursat Ozenc talks about trends in the navigation of complex desktop applications. These are fairly fresh and unusual approaches, especially for the industry, about which fresh consumer products are more and more forgotten.
Stop Misusing Select Menus A
useful overview article about the basic nuances of using drop-down lists. Nothing new is said here, but in one place everything is collected that needs to be taken into account.
Data Monday: The Six Inch Gap
Luke Wroblewski has prepared a line of screen sizes for modern devices, comparing it with the control methods and the place of usual placement.
A few words about application internationalization
A useful overview of the main nuances of application localization from Pavel Doronin. Although they are written from the point of view of the developer, the described problems are also important for designers.
Designing Tablet Apps
A series of tips for designing and designing tablet apps from UXMatters, including my comments. They describe the features of the form factor and specific platforms, the relationship with applications for smartphones and the ecosystem as a whole. Tips for quickly adapting sites for tablets will also be helpful .
The Power of Faces in User Experience
James Coston describes in sufficient detail how the use of images of people's faces in design affects the user's perception of information and, in general, work with the product. He gives many practical examples, in particular the success of charitable services depending on the photos posted.
UX Archive
An interesting gallery of patterns of mobile applications that shows usage scenarios and processes as a whole. There are few examples so far, but as usual, they promise to replenish the collection.
Responsive Web Design With Physical Units
Radu Chelariu says that focusing on pixels when creating responsive design is not the most effective approach. In modern smartphones and tablets, the resolution of the screens is significantly different and the physical pixel size can vary significantly. He suggests working with PPI (dots per inch) so that clickable areas and readability do not deteriorate.
Car UX
The Car UX website collects examples of the dashboards of modern cars, as well as their individual indicators and controls. There is also a selection of complimentary mobile applications for interacting with machines.
Mobile Design Details: Just in Time Actions
An interesting pattern for working with forms in mobile applications from Luke Wroblewski. He suggests replacing interface elements that are not needed at the time of input with a screen keyboard hiding mechanism. Translation into Russian .
Skeu it!
A collection of skeomorphic interfaces in mobile and tablet applications, the web. Part of the images, unfortunately, is not available. The correct definition of skeomorphism (as it turned out, Wikipedia gives incomplete).
UXmas - Wishing you a great experience through the festive season!
The creators of the UX Mastery resource launched on the eve of Christmas the UXMas mini-site, which brought together an interesting selection of articles, presentations and other materials. True, it will not be updated anymore.
Your content is now mobile
Translation of a Karen McGrane article on adapting content to mobile devices.
Flipboard-magazine “Overview of the latest materials on interface design”
Flipboard now has the opportunity to create their own magazines. For the sake of the experiment, I collected a review for January-March in this format.
Designing with context An
epic Cennydd Bowles training manual on how to take into account the user's current context. He identifies his seven types - device, environment, time, activity, personal characteristics of the user, location, social environment - and describes in detail their features.
Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.
A good popular science material that describes the basics of modern scientific knowledge of perception and information theory.
User Experience Shape - Designing For Engagement
James Kalbach says that in the case of modern interfaces, we should talk more about user engagement than just experience. He proposes the term “UX Shape,” which more broadly and subtly describes the process of user interaction with company products.
Designing Great Feedback Loops
Loren Baxter talks about the importance of the right feedback chains that arise when a user interacts with a product. This mechanism allows you to better engage the user in solving problems and makes working with the interface more understandable and predictable.
The process and the result
An article by Yuri Granovsky on the importance of the entire process of using the product by the user. He talks about four components that are important for a good experience.
Designing For The Multifaceted User
Stephanie Troeth writes about an interesting way to describe the users of a product that is better suited for the design of modern complex products than a fairly limited character technique. This is a series of slices showing the desires and motives of users depending on a set of behavioral characteristics.
Stop Designing for “Users”
Mike Long is also skeptical of characters, criticizing them for fragmenting interfaces. Instead, he recommends Activity-Centered Design and offers an interesting method for describing user needs and scenarios.
Using Cohort Analysis to Optimize Customer Experience
James Torio and Rishabh Dayal describe the concept of “cohorts” for user segmentation in service design. Like characters, they are based on common patterns of behavior for consumer groups.
Think Again - Assumptions About Mobile To Reconsider A
good review article by Karolina Szczur, in which she dispels several irrelevant stereotypes about mobile. She cites statistics and working products in support of her thesis.
Teenage Usability - Designing Teen-Targeted Websites
Jakob Nielsen publishes results of a study of teenage users on the general level of knowledge of technology and work with specific services and devices. He writes that many of the attributes attributed to their qualities, including technical knowledge, are a myth.
Hypothesis Testing in the User Experience
Jeff Sauro writes about the importance of building and testing hypotheses when conducting user research. The concept of hypotheses is used in the scientific world and should be used by front-end specialists.
Dr. Barbie Clarke, Siv Svanaes - Tablets in Secondary Schools - An Evaluation Study (PDF)
A report by Barbie Clarke and Siv Svanaes on a study of student use of tablets in British high schools. For two years, students went with them to classes, during which many interesting conclusions were collected.
15 Mobile UX Facts and Insights
Jeff Sauro provides a selection of facts about mobile and tablet users. These are figures of statistical and user studies relating to general points of use and work with specific services.
Conceptual Models in a Nutshell
A review article by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson on concept models. They released the book Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design on this subject in 2011.
How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?
Steven Hoober conducted a study on how users hold smartphones. Although the representativeness of the sample and the method is in question, the conclusions are quite logical.
User Interface Design Toolkits for Mobile and Web Apps
Probably the most ambitious set of design templates, including all popular platforms and adapted for almost all key tools (except InDesign). An impressive product from Axutopia .
Using Mind Maps for UX Design,
Catriona Cornett talks about the possibilities of using mind maps in interface design. The first part shows how you can combine them with sketches of specific screens for different tasks. The second part .
Re-Introducing Page Description Diagrams
Colin Butler and Andrew Wirtanen recall the Page Description Diagrams and ask why this interesting technique is unpopular among modern professionals. The possible answer is an extra layer of specification during lean UX, when they try to minimize the volume of intermediate documents.
Cross Channel Design With Alignment Diagrams
James Kalbach suggests using affinity diagrams to design complex interactions involving multiple platforms. The article has some good examples on this topic. His article on this subject is for TouchPoint Magazine (PDF).
Responsible wireframes
A simple online tool for designing responsive sites. It works at a very basic level and shows the behavior of conditional blocks at different resolutions. WebFlow , a more powerful tool for designing and designing responsive sites, solves the same problem .
Lean Sketching Tips - Flexible Fidelity & Cutting Corners
A small reminder for interface sketches from Jakub Linowski. It shows a different degree of elaboration of typical blocks in prototypes.
Adobe Edge Reflow - CSS generator, design
Adobe made a set of decent tools for developers, which can be used to prototype interfaces. Among them, Reflow, a powerful product for creating adaptive layouts - objects are inherited, an arbitrary number of sizes, a variable grid, work in a single space.
The Grammar of Interactivity
Jonathan Richards article on how to write micro texts for buttons and other call-to-action elements correctly. He gives possible tonality of communication with the user and shows how to use the most effective.
BLOKK font
A great BLOKK font for use in prototypes. Instead of the abstract and incomprehensible to customers lorem ipsum, he puts conditional blocks of words that clearly indicate the area with the text.
Mobile prototyping - A new paradigm
Alexis Piperides describes why designing mobile interfaces is very different from working with the classic web. The article provides interesting comparative tables describing the requirements for prototypes for both environments and tools for their creation.
Framer - Modern Prototyping
An online tool for prototyping mobile applications Framer, which allows you to "touch" complex interactions and animations. True, it requires basic knowledge of layout and scripts.
PlaceIt by Breezi - Generate Product Screenshots in Realistic Environments
Breezi's PlaceIt online service allows you to quickly and cheaply prepare an effective presentation of a mobile or tablet application in the spirit of Dribbble. The set of layouts is constantly updated and now there are several dozen good templates.
MicroPersonas Icons for Wireframes
Jakub Linowski has prepared a set of micro-character icons for use in interface prototypes. These are 40 user archetypes that are well-suited to accompanying specifications.
PowerStory for PowerPoint 2.0 - Build UI Storyboards and Generate Test Cases The
second version of the PowerStory plugin for PowerPoint has been released. His review .
Sneakpeekit - Sketch sheets for web designers
Another collection of templates for designing on paper.
infogr.am - Create infographics & online charts The
infogr.am online service allows you to quickly and cheaply collect simple infographics. Standard templates are quite primitive, but there is a designer and promise to connect the store for a greater variety.
Using Card Sorting To Test Information Architecture
Excellent Jeff Sauro card sorting FAQ. He went over the main issues with examples of results for each of the stages. And a similar FAQ on testing information architecture , partly the reverse method to card sorting.
Use It Better - Improve games, websites and mobile apps
A specialized tool for analytics and user testing of game interfaces. Although it is also suitable for researching mobile and web applications.
What is the Client's Role in User Research?
Memo for companies that order custom research. Jim Ross describes the main stages of the process and the participation that the customer must take in them.
In Participants' Own Voices: Using Quotations from User Research Ethically
Amaya Becvar Weddle gives recommendations on how to use quotes from user studies in presentations and reports. It is important to correctly understand the message of the quoted phrase and not to lose the essence of insight.
Reflector.app - AirPlay mirroring to your Mac or PC, wirelessly
Reflector allows you to transfer what is happening on your iPhone and iPad to your computer using AirPlay. This is a great way to record custom studies without fixed mounts. Tips for integrating it with another Silverback custom research tool.
What does modern usability laboratory look like?
A relatively recent article on Beeline's usability lab. It describes the design process and equipment.
Putting Your Content to Work - A user-centric approach to evaluation
List of metrics for evaluating content projects from Lindy Roux. It includes quantitative and qualitative indicators.
Effectively Planning UX Design Projects An
excellent reminder on how to "sell" UX from Jesmond Allen and James Chudley. They gathered in one place all the reasons to invest in interfaces, a detailed description of most artifacts and research, as well as a template for project planning based on all this.
Bridging the CEO credibility gap
Daniel Rosenberg, who has experience in dealing with the management of the largest companies, talks about the gap between the information that they need and what the leaders of the interface teams are ready to provide. It is important to collect all available research data and present them in two sections - changes in the quality of UX and its comparison with other products of the company and competitors.
Why Certify? Accreditation can add value to UX design
Danny Bluestone writes about the experience of certifying an interface company and the benefits it provides. This allows us to improve internal processes and, as a result, the quality of the final products.
When to apply UX effort in agile
nForm Andrey Wright rethinks the role of the designer in the agile process. He offers front-end specialists to act not as a clear process, but as a set of services at different stages of the project.
Design integration. Each pixel counts
An article by Yevgeny Gavrilov from the Windows Phone development team that talks about the process of integrating mobile app design. This is a separate role in the project team, which is becoming increasingly important with the growing number of supported applications and platforms. The second part .
How we use Trello & Google Docs to make UserVoice better every day
Specialists at UserVoice talk about how the process of designing their product in kanban mode works. They use the Trello product and describe in detail all the stages of the task from setting and design to development and quality control. Translation into Russian .
Stop Explaining UX and Start Doing UX
Kim Bieler compares two approaches to “selling” front-end jobs. She believes that it is much more effective to immediately start acting and propose concrete solutions, even the most basic ones, than to invest in convincing the importance of the discipline itself.
User Experience in Startups
Sasha Giacoppo describes for UXMatters his experience as a startup designer. It describes the specifics of the work process and the life cycle of such a company, as well as problems and opportunities for professional development. Part 2 .
What Brands Really Think of Agencies
An interesting series of articles on what major customers think about working with design contractors. Although it relates more to advertising agencies, all this applies to the market of design and interface design. Continuation of the topic and one more reflection .
Prioritizing UI Improvements - The QFD
Jeff Sauro offers a QFD (Quality Function Deployment) method for prioritizing front-end improvements. It was proposed by Japanese automakers and allows you to collect a visual matrix for decision-making.
The FEMA - Prioritizing Problems in the User Experience
Jeff Sauro describes a methodology for assessing the criticality of FEMA problems (Failure Modes Effect Analysis) in relation to interfaces. It is part of the 6 Sigma management methodology and the article provides a step-by-step guide to its use, as well as a template for a comparative table.
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Megan Geyer writes on how to build an innovative culture in a company. She lists the key organizational factors and approaches that influence her.
Expect More From Product Managers
Laura Klein describes the key qualities and skills of product managers that they should have in relation to user experience. Without this, they are more likely project managers.
Getting Fruitful Collaboration Instead of Stale Groupthink
Gail Swanson describes teamwork techniques that help you solve complex challenges collectively. She believes that this is a more effective approach than classic brainstorms (she refers to an article by The New Yorker ).
STANDARD GOST R ISO 9241-210-2012 The
international standard ISO 9241-210 was translated into Russian and approved in the Russian Federation on November 29, 2012 (GOST R ISO 9241-210-2012 - Ergonomics of human-system interaction. Part 210. Human-oriented design of interactive systems).
The Intersection - How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology and People
The site of Milan Guenther's Intersection, a book that describes the design methodology for large companies. She describes 20 aspects of the activities of such companies, methods and practices, as well as case studies.
Service Design, Chapter 6 - Developing the Service Proposition
Andy Polaine, Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason publish an excerpt from their book " Service Design: From Insights to Implementation"which will be released at Rosenfeld Media later this year.
Process Makes Perfect - Speech Recognition User Interface Design
Stephen Keller describes in detail the process of designing voice interfaces. These are 9 steps that begin with setting a task and ending with debugging a system. Testing voice interfaces .
Government Service Design Manual
The British government has published a guide to designing services to continue its excellent design guidelines, and recently a meeting of a working group to improve Russian government sites took place .
Startups, This Is How Design Works
A good reminder for startups and not only about why product designers are important, and preferably among the founders of the company. This one-page page provides opinions of strong specialists, interesting statistics and general principles of good design.
UX Techniques
The UX Mastery service has compiled a list of design methods and techniques with a brief description of the essence and situations for the application. The result was a hodgepodge of artifacts and processes, but it works well as a quick reference. Another method reference from Jeff Sauro .
Player-Centric Design - The UX of The Room
John Ferrara is preparing the book “Playful Design” and publishes one of its chapters on the mechanics of the tablet game The Room. The book itselfTrue, it was a little delayed - it was supposed to be released back in 2011.
UCDtoolbox - Find and learn methods for UCD
Student project UCD Toolbox collects interface design methods into a single database with selection tools. Access is still closed, but you can ask for an invite.
What do YOU want to know about accessibility?
Karl Groves describes the possible composition of the BOK (book of knowledge) for the accessibility discipline. There is less structured knowledge on it than on other interface disciplines, so there is such a need. The list in the article will also be useful to those who are interested in structuring complex technical documentation.
Redesigning Google - How Larry Page engineered a beautiful revolution A
gorgeous article by The Verge on how a large-scale redesign of key Google products took place in 2011-2012. It took place thanks to the fact that the president of Larry Page declared this one of the priorities and gave way to designers, as well as a small team of visionaries, who directed all the other designers in the company. One of the first models of the new style.
Google finds its design voice on iOS
The Next Web is writing about Google’s new iPhone apps in which they have successfully found their recognizable style. It fits well with the platform’s guidelines and at the same time perfectly echoes the company's main web services. Thoughts on this subject from John Gruber . And yet - aboutdesign principles embodied in Google Now .
How we designed a new News Feed using your feedback
On March 7, Facebook introduced a new update feed design and a unified interface for the main and mobile versions. Jane Justice Leibrock from the front-end team talks about how the redesigned newsfeed was created .
Design for Continuous Experimentation
Dan McKinley's stunning presentation on how to build business design with significant turnover step by step through experimentation and testing. Graphs and figures perfectly illustrate that many achievements are the result of consistent and systematic work.
Apple's design problems aren't skeuomorphic An excellent
system overview of the problems in the iOS interface that have accumulated over the six years of the platform's existence. This is interesting and whatever Apple - the article describes the problems of any mature platform.
Design Space by InVision InVision
online service blog publishes interesting interviews with leading designers of major products like Zappos, eBay, Airbnb. They talk in detail about the design process of their team, tools and features of product work.
A Brief History of Usability
Jeff Sauro has compiled a history of interface discipline dating back to 1911. This is an interesting timeline of the most important theories, publications, discoveries and events that influenced the development of the profession.
The Four Waves of User-Centered Design
A small overview of the four stages of developing interest in the discipline of interface design based on the American Bentley University curriculum. It began in 1988, so the slice is representative enough. Another article on the history of the profession and trends in education .
Photoshop is a city for everyone - How Adobe endlessly rebuilds its classic app
The story of the creation and development of Adobe Photoshop from The Verge. This is a great example of why a product with such an extensive past is hard to change dramatically. Adobe has posted for free download the source code of the first version .
Lotus 1-2-3 turns 30 - Mitch Kapor on the Google before Google
January 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Lotus 1-2-3 office suite. This product has become one of the key reasons for the purchase of personal computers at company offices, giving impetus to a new stage in software development. Comments by Dan Bricklin , one of the creators of the first Visicalc spreadsheet.
The changing face of computers on screen
A small overview of the evolution of interfaces in the movie. They have gone from hundreds of buttons and indicators without a single signature to more modern ways of interaction.
For Amusement Only - The life and death of the American arcade
Laura June has prepared for The Verge an excellent article on the history of slot machines, from pinball to computer games. The article describes the evolution of specific devices and the reasons for the rise and fall of gaming halls. Unfortunately, Atari soon filed for bankruptcy . Most recently, they celebrated 40 years. And yet - a photo from one of the latest pinball machine factories .
John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94
In late January, John E. Karlin, one of the founders of Bell's ergonomic laboratory and the first ergonomists in commercial companies, died. His most famous solution is a numeric keypad for push-button telephones, which is now widely used.
Trends in interactive design 2013 The
smartest presentation on trends in web and mobile design for 2013. Petra Sell has collected almost all the more or less significant changes in front-end approaches, visual solutions, technologies and working methods. Another great review of trends with a bunch of interviews with the best industry experts and a poster for it.
Lost Signal - 7 Lessons from TV History
Nate Cox from Punchcut takes a detailed look at the qualities of classic television that are lacking in modern approaches to television and film viewing. They relate to both interfaces and use cases and distribution models.
Flat Pixels - The Battle Between Flat Design And Skeuomorphism
Last year, in the design community, an active discussion began about the new trend of “flat design” that came to iOS from Metro-style. Sacha Greif has published one of the most correct articles on this subject, and has also compiled a selection of other discussions. A version of this style from Google is called an " almost flat design ." And another great discussion on the topic with the participation of good designers.
UX Job Title Generator
Every year in our profession a bunch of new terms appears, often describing the same thing with new words for the sake of spectacular novelty. Aaron Weyenberg has created a random posts generator that collects great titles for bulshit bingo.
The Apple iWatch
Wearable devices are slowly gaining momentum and Bruce Tognazzini is speculating on this topic, describing the possibilities of hypothetical watches from Apple. These thoughts do not add up to the whole picture, but they are a useful list of possible scenarios for using such devices. Controversy with the article - http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/11/iwatch-app-speculation-is-filler-not-killer/ and http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/11 / 3976406 / why-would-apple-want-to-make-an-iwatch. And the story of Bill Buxton about the 37-year history of computerized watches .
The state of the second screen - Will TV companion apps proliferate or dwindle?
An overview of the current state of the “second screen” industry for TVs, tablet applications with supporting content for what goes on TV. Their number is actively growing and it is interesting what scale will gain in the new year. A few more materials on the topic:
Google Glass The
first official materials appeared showing the real work of the current version of augmented reality glasses Google Glass. In addition to them - a detailed presentation of how the interface works at the technical and user levels . A few more materials on the topic:
Developer preview of touch-based Ubuntu
Smartphone and tablet versions of the new Ubuntu OS are available for download. This is an interesting mix of Windows 8, WebOS and Android solutions that will be released next year, but for now it can be put on Google Nexus devices. A few more materials on the topic:
BlackBerry 10 OS review
On January 30, BlackBerry introduced its new mobile OS, BlackBerry 10. It has a lot of interesting gesture control solutions. Other reviews are http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3929760/blackberry-z10-review and http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/blackberry-z10-ui/ . By the way, the operating system has interesting gesture shortcuts .
Creating An Adaptive System To Enhance UX
Avi Itzkovich writes about adaptive interfaces whose behavior adapts to a specific user. He gives a number of examples of such products, as well as contexts that should be considered when creating them. Translation into Russian .
Aaron Marcus - The past 100 years of the future - HCI in science-fiction movies (PDF)
Aaron Marcus's publication, in which he describes the vision for the future of technology and interfaces in films and books over the past hundred years. A useful addition to the recently released Make It So book on the same topic.
Health Design Challenge: d + collab
The US government announced a large-scale redesign of medical records aimed at simplifying the work of doctors and motivating patients to better monitor their health. The site contains the most interesting of several hundred works. Short review of the competition .
5 Reasons Why Responsive Design is Wrong for Your Business
A wave of skeptics of an adaptive approach to website development is gaining strength. The first years of universal enthusiasm gave way to a more reasonable approach in this area. All arguments, by and large, come down to the idea of a sober assessment of the audience and its needs. It is nice when the topic is discussed, and not blindly following the trends.
ConveyUX: Cross Platform Product Design
Carol Taylor from Rhapsody talks at ConveyUX about the features and complexities of cross-platform product design. It is present on the web, on mobile and tablets, TVs, which requires new approaches to work.
ConveyUX: Rethinking User Research
Notes to Dana Chisnell at ConveyUX on the Future of Custom Research. She says that modern products and the connections between them have become so complex and multifaceted that the classical approaches to research are limitedly applicable to them and new methods are needed.
Measuring the value and role of design The
British Design Council conducted a study of the current state of the service design industry. The report describes the current problems of the industry, which in the UK is one of the most advanced in the world. Direct link to PDF .
How To Think About Turning Your Products Into Services
Fast Co.Design gives tips on how to turn a product into a service, because they bring about 75% of the income of the modern economy. These are three key areas and a couple of real-life examples.
Lamps - A design research collaboration with Google Creative Labs, 2011
BERG, in collaboration with Google, made a series of experimental developments in the field of projected interfaces, describing the project in detail on its blog. This is one of the most promising areas in our industry, which is likely to use the new XBox .
Learning to See
A chic article by Oliver Reichenstein from the Information Architects on design philosophy and the profession in general. He talks about the visual presentation and the logic of the product, going through in detail the main controversial points and misconceptions, including the “No UI” trend. By the way, an excellent article with his criticism .
Hack Design
Basic course of interface design and design in a convenient format - once a week one of the lessons is sent to the mail. Training materials are compiled and supported by a group of specialists from well-known and not very services. And another basic selection of basic design principles . And:
Publishing and Presenting
Jim Ross motivates designers and designers to speak more often at conferences and publish articles on a professional topic. This is a series of articles listing key concerns like “I have nothing to say” and specific tips for preparing articles and presentations. Part 2 and 3 .
Interaction13
The tenth anniversary Interaction13 conference was held from January 27 to January 31 in Toronto. Cooper Consulting's blog posted reports on all four days - 1 , 2 , 3, and 4 .
Fresh links can also be tracked in the same Facebook group .
Patterns and Best Practices
DesignCamp2012: Yuri Vetrov - Metro design at Mail.Ru
My presentation about the experience of Metro design at Mail.Ru. We already have 9 applications for Windows Phone and Windows 8, so a lot of interesting nuances and details of the work of the designer and the designer with these platforms have gathered.
The M-Commerce Usability Report
Baymard Institute has published the continuation of its last year’s study of forms in e-commerce - the usability of mobile forms. The report is available for $ 250. Excerpts from it:
- Three main problems of mobile data entry .
- About the location of the form field names .
- It is important to offer similar products .
Common Misconceptions About Touch
Steven Hoober conducted a useful study of clickable areas in modern smartphones and tablets. It describes four key features - the visual and actual size of a clickable element, the danger of a miss on adjacent elements and the prevention of related problems.
Tapotype - A reference library of transitions A library of transition
animation patterns in mobile applications, for each of which there is a visual animated demo. It connects to the TAP add-in for Fireworks and allows you to use these animations in prototypes of mobile applications. The TAP add-in itself for Fireworks .
The top responsive web design problems ... and how to avoid them
James Young provided an excellent overview of modern techniques and responsive design issues with tons of useful links. Translation into Russian . And a detailed description of modern approaches to adaptability with a listing of the pros and cons of each.
Trello uses an icon font and so can you!
FogCreek's Bobby Grace has prepared a detailed guide for implementing icon fonts. Great reminder for designers and developers. Implementation experience from my Mail.Ru colleagues
Designing For The Empty States
An excellent review article by Craig Dennis on the importance of the “zero state” of mobile application screens. He distinguishes between three situations - the first launch, the content is deleted or moved, an access error. Also availablea collection of examples of "zero state" in mobile applications .
UX Process, Models & Other Diagrams
Transferred his collection of design process illustrations, concept models, and other interface diagrams to Pinterest. It has many famous and rare schemes of good and conditional quality. There are many other collections of characters, prototypes, patterns, and a host of other things related to the design and design of things.
OneNote for Interaction Designers
Chris Noessel talks about how Cooper uses MS Office OneNote to work on projects. This is a powerful note-taking tool, much more functional and flexible than Evernote. Part 2 and 3 .
Boost Your Mobile E-Commerce Sales With Mobile Design Patterns
Will Hacker has put together a collection of patterns for mobile online stores for Smashing Magazine. He also describes the tasks of each of them and comments on implementation options. Another collection of mobile patterns, this time the checkout phase .
Designing For The Reading Experience The
most gorgeous article by Marko Dugonjić about modern web typography. It examines the issues of device features, adaptability, localization, support for older browsers.
Breaking down amazon's mega dropdown
Ben Kamens describes the mechanics of the new Amazon drop-down menu that solves the problem of unpredictability of nesting behavior. The developers take into account the trajectory of the mouse cursor and if its final point is in the area corresponding to the path to the submenu, it stays on the screen longer. Translation into Russian .
Design Inspiration (Windows Store Apps)
The official guidelines for Windows 8 were supplemented by a series of articles on how to make a good interface for different types of popular applications. Some of them were already available earlier, the full list includes games, entertainment, news, sports and educational applications, e-commerce, travel and professional tools.
Discover Beautiful Android Homescreens and Customizations
A great collection of application start-up screens for Android smartphones and tablets. It has already collected about 700 examples and the gallery is constantly updated.
How To Design For Android Devices
A small but useful overview of the pitfalls of Android app design from Meng To. It describes the nuances of permissions, slicing, using controls, and the overall layout of the application. A tool for previewing layouts on the device and a style generator for application panels .
Android Carousel Design Pattern - The Definitive Guide
Greg Nudelman is preparing a book on the design and design of applications for Android, which will be released this year. Smashing Magazine has published a piece of material for her on the use of the carousel control.
Mad Libs madness
A few years ago there was a wave of interest in non-standard forms presented in a narrative form. Formulate conducted a series of studies on this approach and identified its main problems. It has limited applicability and is mainly suitable for optional, involving forms. Study in terms of accessibility .
All Dashboards Should be Feeds
Anil Dash criticizes modern dashboards with a lot of infographics, which shows a stream of not always necessary data instead of providing the user with conclusions from them. In his view, the ideal control panel is a notification tape about trends and important changes in the monitored process or object.
Social Usability Workshop @ LIFT13
Davide Casali's presentation on social interfaces. It has an excellent selection of patterns used in modern products.
Infinite Scrolling: Fab or Fad?
Danielle Arad describes the specifics of using infinite scrolling in interfaces. She lists his problems and benefits, accompanying them with examples of real products.
Designing a Practical UI for a Gesture-Based Interface
An interesting case for creating a tablet application from Omek. When creating it, it turned out that the menus located along the arc are convenient for the natural movement of the hand.
Improving User Experience in Manuals
Anastasios Karafillis review article on how to create reference guides. He divides them into several categories according to structure, content and general approach.
Avoid the Pains of Pagination
Useful page navigation guide from Anthony T. A checklist of everything you need to remember when using it.
Listrak - Email Marketing Whitepapers
Listrak publishes useful research on the effectiveness of front-end solutions in online stores. A lot of materials have accumulated over several years, they are available for download on request.
Which Site Seal do People Trust the Most? (2013 Survey Results)
Baymard Institute conducted a study of user trust in site security badges. Most trust certificates from antivirus companies - Norton and McAfee.
Navigation, not the same old story
Autodesk's Kursat Ozenc talks about trends in the navigation of complex desktop applications. These are fairly fresh and unusual approaches, especially for the industry, about which fresh consumer products are more and more forgotten.
Stop Misusing Select Menus A
useful overview article about the basic nuances of using drop-down lists. Nothing new is said here, but in one place everything is collected that needs to be taken into account.
Data Monday: The Six Inch Gap
Luke Wroblewski has prepared a line of screen sizes for modern devices, comparing it with the control methods and the place of usual placement.
A few words about application internationalization
A useful overview of the main nuances of application localization from Pavel Doronin. Although they are written from the point of view of the developer, the described problems are also important for designers.
Designing Tablet Apps
A series of tips for designing and designing tablet apps from UXMatters, including my comments. They describe the features of the form factor and specific platforms, the relationship with applications for smartphones and the ecosystem as a whole. Tips for quickly adapting sites for tablets will also be helpful .
The Power of Faces in User Experience
James Coston describes in sufficient detail how the use of images of people's faces in design affects the user's perception of information and, in general, work with the product. He gives many practical examples, in particular the success of charitable services depending on the photos posted.
UX Archive
An interesting gallery of patterns of mobile applications that shows usage scenarios and processes as a whole. There are few examples so far, but as usual, they promise to replenish the collection.
Responsive Web Design With Physical Units
Radu Chelariu says that focusing on pixels when creating responsive design is not the most effective approach. In modern smartphones and tablets, the resolution of the screens is significantly different and the physical pixel size can vary significantly. He suggests working with PPI (dots per inch) so that clickable areas and readability do not deteriorate.
Car UX
The Car UX website collects examples of the dashboards of modern cars, as well as their individual indicators and controls. There is also a selection of complimentary mobile applications for interacting with machines.
Mobile Design Details: Just in Time Actions
An interesting pattern for working with forms in mobile applications from Luke Wroblewski. He suggests replacing interface elements that are not needed at the time of input with a screen keyboard hiding mechanism. Translation into Russian .
Skeu it!
A collection of skeomorphic interfaces in mobile and tablet applications, the web. Part of the images, unfortunately, is not available. The correct definition of skeomorphism (as it turned out, Wikipedia gives incomplete).
UXmas - Wishing you a great experience through the festive season!
The creators of the UX Mastery resource launched on the eve of Christmas the UXMas mini-site, which brought together an interesting selection of articles, presentations and other materials. True, it will not be updated anymore.
Your content is now mobile
Translation of a Karen McGrane article on adapting content to mobile devices.
Flipboard-magazine “Overview of the latest materials on interface design”
Flipboard now has the opportunity to create their own magazines. For the sake of the experiment, I collected a review for January-March in this format.
User understanding
Designing with context An
epic Cennydd Bowles training manual on how to take into account the user's current context. He identifies his seven types - device, environment, time, activity, personal characteristics of the user, location, social environment - and describes in detail their features.
Our perception of the world is a fantasy that coincides with reality.
A good popular science material that describes the basics of modern scientific knowledge of perception and information theory.
User Experience Shape - Designing For Engagement
James Kalbach says that in the case of modern interfaces, we should talk more about user engagement than just experience. He proposes the term “UX Shape,” which more broadly and subtly describes the process of user interaction with company products.
Designing Great Feedback Loops
Loren Baxter talks about the importance of the right feedback chains that arise when a user interacts with a product. This mechanism allows you to better engage the user in solving problems and makes working with the interface more understandable and predictable.
The process and the result
An article by Yuri Granovsky on the importance of the entire process of using the product by the user. He talks about four components that are important for a good experience.
Designing For The Multifaceted User
Stephanie Troeth writes about an interesting way to describe the users of a product that is better suited for the design of modern complex products than a fairly limited character technique. This is a series of slices showing the desires and motives of users depending on a set of behavioral characteristics.
Stop Designing for “Users”
Mike Long is also skeptical of characters, criticizing them for fragmenting interfaces. Instead, he recommends Activity-Centered Design and offers an interesting method for describing user needs and scenarios.
Using Cohort Analysis to Optimize Customer Experience
James Torio and Rishabh Dayal describe the concept of “cohorts” for user segmentation in service design. Like characters, they are based on common patterns of behavior for consumer groups.
Think Again - Assumptions About Mobile To Reconsider A
good review article by Karolina Szczur, in which she dispels several irrelevant stereotypes about mobile. She cites statistics and working products in support of her thesis.
Teenage Usability - Designing Teen-Targeted Websites
Jakob Nielsen publishes results of a study of teenage users on the general level of knowledge of technology and work with specific services and devices. He writes that many of the attributes attributed to their qualities, including technical knowledge, are a myth.
Hypothesis Testing in the User Experience
Jeff Sauro writes about the importance of building and testing hypotheses when conducting user research. The concept of hypotheses is used in the scientific world and should be used by front-end specialists.
Dr. Barbie Clarke, Siv Svanaes - Tablets in Secondary Schools - An Evaluation Study (PDF)
A report by Barbie Clarke and Siv Svanaes on a study of student use of tablets in British high schools. For two years, students went with them to classes, during which many interesting conclusions were collected.
15 Mobile UX Facts and Insights
Jeff Sauro provides a selection of facts about mobile and tablet users. These are figures of statistical and user studies relating to general points of use and work with specific services.
Conceptual Models in a Nutshell
A review article by Jeff Johnson and Austin Henderson on concept models. They released the book Conceptual Models: Core to Good Design on this subject in 2011.
How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?
Steven Hoober conducted a study on how users hold smartphones. Although the representativeness of the sample and the method is in question, the conclusions are quite logical.
Designing the structure and screens of the interface
User Interface Design Toolkits for Mobile and Web Apps
Probably the most ambitious set of design templates, including all popular platforms and adapted for almost all key tools (except InDesign). An impressive product from Axutopia .
Using Mind Maps for UX Design,
Catriona Cornett talks about the possibilities of using mind maps in interface design. The first part shows how you can combine them with sketches of specific screens for different tasks. The second part .
Re-Introducing Page Description Diagrams
Colin Butler and Andrew Wirtanen recall the Page Description Diagrams and ask why this interesting technique is unpopular among modern professionals. The possible answer is an extra layer of specification during lean UX, when they try to minimize the volume of intermediate documents.
Cross Channel Design With Alignment Diagrams
James Kalbach suggests using affinity diagrams to design complex interactions involving multiple platforms. The article has some good examples on this topic. His article on this subject is for TouchPoint Magazine (PDF).
Responsible wireframes
A simple online tool for designing responsive sites. It works at a very basic level and shows the behavior of conditional blocks at different resolutions. WebFlow , a more powerful tool for designing and designing responsive sites, solves the same problem .
Lean Sketching Tips - Flexible Fidelity & Cutting Corners
A small reminder for interface sketches from Jakub Linowski. It shows a different degree of elaboration of typical blocks in prototypes.
Adobe Edge Reflow - CSS generator, design
Adobe made a set of decent tools for developers, which can be used to prototype interfaces. Among them, Reflow, a powerful product for creating adaptive layouts - objects are inherited, an arbitrary number of sizes, a variable grid, work in a single space.
The Grammar of Interactivity
Jonathan Richards article on how to write micro texts for buttons and other call-to-action elements correctly. He gives possible tonality of communication with the user and shows how to use the most effective.
BLOKK font
A great BLOKK font for use in prototypes. Instead of the abstract and incomprehensible to customers lorem ipsum, he puts conditional blocks of words that clearly indicate the area with the text.
Mobile prototyping - A new paradigm
Alexis Piperides describes why designing mobile interfaces is very different from working with the classic web. The article provides interesting comparative tables describing the requirements for prototypes for both environments and tools for their creation.
Framer - Modern Prototyping
An online tool for prototyping mobile applications Framer, which allows you to "touch" complex interactions and animations. True, it requires basic knowledge of layout and scripts.
PlaceIt by Breezi - Generate Product Screenshots in Realistic Environments
Breezi's PlaceIt online service allows you to quickly and cheaply prepare an effective presentation of a mobile or tablet application in the spirit of Dribbble. The set of layouts is constantly updated and now there are several dozen good templates.
MicroPersonas Icons for Wireframes
Jakub Linowski has prepared a set of micro-character icons for use in interface prototypes. These are 40 user archetypes that are well-suited to accompanying specifications.
PowerStory for PowerPoint 2.0 - Build UI Storyboards and Generate Test Cases The
second version of the PowerStory plugin for PowerPoint has been released. His review .
Sneakpeekit - Sketch sheets for web designers
Another collection of templates for designing on paper.
infogr.am - Create infographics & online charts The
infogr.am online service allows you to quickly and cheaply collect simple infographics. Standard templates are quite primitive, but there is a designer and promise to connect the store for a greater variety.
User research and testing
Using Card Sorting To Test Information Architecture
Excellent Jeff Sauro card sorting FAQ. He went over the main issues with examples of results for each of the stages. And a similar FAQ on testing information architecture , partly the reverse method to card sorting.
Use It Better - Improve games, websites and mobile apps
A specialized tool for analytics and user testing of game interfaces. Although it is also suitable for researching mobile and web applications.
What is the Client's Role in User Research?
Memo for companies that order custom research. Jim Ross describes the main stages of the process and the participation that the customer must take in them.
In Participants' Own Voices: Using Quotations from User Research Ethically
Amaya Becvar Weddle gives recommendations on how to use quotes from user studies in presentations and reports. It is important to correctly understand the message of the quoted phrase and not to lose the essence of insight.
Reflector.app - AirPlay mirroring to your Mac or PC, wirelessly
Reflector allows you to transfer what is happening on your iPhone and iPad to your computer using AirPlay. This is a great way to record custom studies without fixed mounts. Tips for integrating it with another Silverback custom research tool.
What does modern usability laboratory look like?
A relatively recent article on Beeline's usability lab. It describes the design process and equipment.
Metrics and ROI
Putting Your Content to Work - A user-centric approach to evaluation
List of metrics for evaluating content projects from Lindy Roux. It includes quantitative and qualitative indicators.
Management of front-end projects and processes
Effectively Planning UX Design Projects An
excellent reminder on how to "sell" UX from Jesmond Allen and James Chudley. They gathered in one place all the reasons to invest in interfaces, a detailed description of most artifacts and research, as well as a template for project planning based on all this.
Bridging the CEO credibility gap
Daniel Rosenberg, who has experience in dealing with the management of the largest companies, talks about the gap between the information that they need and what the leaders of the interface teams are ready to provide. It is important to collect all available research data and present them in two sections - changes in the quality of UX and its comparison with other products of the company and competitors.
Why Certify? Accreditation can add value to UX design
Danny Bluestone writes about the experience of certifying an interface company and the benefits it provides. This allows us to improve internal processes and, as a result, the quality of the final products.
When to apply UX effort in agile
nForm Andrey Wright rethinks the role of the designer in the agile process. He offers front-end specialists to act not as a clear process, but as a set of services at different stages of the project.
Design integration. Each pixel counts
An article by Yevgeny Gavrilov from the Windows Phone development team that talks about the process of integrating mobile app design. This is a separate role in the project team, which is becoming increasingly important with the growing number of supported applications and platforms. The second part .
How we use Trello & Google Docs to make UserVoice better every day
Specialists at UserVoice talk about how the process of designing their product in kanban mode works. They use the Trello product and describe in detail all the stages of the task from setting and design to development and quality control. Translation into Russian .
Stop Explaining UX and Start Doing UX
Kim Bieler compares two approaches to “selling” front-end jobs. She believes that it is much more effective to immediately start acting and propose concrete solutions, even the most basic ones, than to invest in convincing the importance of the discipline itself.
User Experience in Startups
Sasha Giacoppo describes for UXMatters his experience as a startup designer. It describes the specifics of the work process and the life cycle of such a company, as well as problems and opportunities for professional development. Part 2 .
What Brands Really Think of Agencies
An interesting series of articles on what major customers think about working with design contractors. Although it relates more to advertising agencies, all this applies to the market of design and interface design. Continuation of the topic and one more reflection .
Prioritizing UI Improvements - The QFD
Jeff Sauro offers a QFD (Quality Function Deployment) method for prioritizing front-end improvements. It was proposed by Japanese automakers and allows you to collect a visual matrix for decision-making.
The FEMA - Prioritizing Problems in the User Experience
Jeff Sauro describes a methodology for assessing the criticality of FEMA problems (Failure Modes Effect Analysis) in relation to interfaces. It is part of the 6 Sigma management methodology and the article provides a step-by-step guide to its use, as well as a template for a comparative table.
Fostering a Culture of Innovation
Megan Geyer writes on how to build an innovative culture in a company. She lists the key organizational factors and approaches that influence her.
Expect More From Product Managers
Laura Klein describes the key qualities and skills of product managers that they should have in relation to user experience. Without this, they are more likely project managers.
Getting Fruitful Collaboration Instead of Stale Groupthink
Gail Swanson describes teamwork techniques that help you solve complex challenges collectively. She believes that this is a more effective approach than classic brainstorms (she refers to an article by The New Yorker ).
Methodologies, Procedures, Standards
STANDARD GOST R ISO 9241-210-2012 The
international standard ISO 9241-210 was translated into Russian and approved in the Russian Federation on November 29, 2012 (GOST R ISO 9241-210-2012 - Ergonomics of human-system interaction. Part 210. Human-oriented design of interactive systems).
The Intersection - How Enterprise Design Bridges the Gap Between Business, Technology and People
The site of Milan Guenther's Intersection, a book that describes the design methodology for large companies. She describes 20 aspects of the activities of such companies, methods and practices, as well as case studies.
Service Design, Chapter 6 - Developing the Service Proposition
Andy Polaine, Lavrans Løvlie and Ben Reason publish an excerpt from their book " Service Design: From Insights to Implementation"which will be released at Rosenfeld Media later this year.
Process Makes Perfect - Speech Recognition User Interface Design
Stephen Keller describes in detail the process of designing voice interfaces. These are 9 steps that begin with setting a task and ending with debugging a system. Testing voice interfaces .
Government Service Design Manual
The British government has published a guide to designing services to continue its excellent design guidelines, and recently a meeting of a working group to improve Russian government sites took place .
Startups, This Is How Design Works
A good reminder for startups and not only about why product designers are important, and preferably among the founders of the company. This one-page page provides opinions of strong specialists, interesting statistics and general principles of good design.
UX Techniques
The UX Mastery service has compiled a list of design methods and techniques with a brief description of the essence and situations for the application. The result was a hodgepodge of artifacts and processes, but it works well as a quick reference. Another method reference from Jeff Sauro .
Player-Centric Design - The UX of The Room
John Ferrara is preparing the book “Playful Design” and publishes one of its chapters on the mechanics of the tablet game The Room. The book itselfTrue, it was a little delayed - it was supposed to be released back in 2011.
UCDtoolbox - Find and learn methods for UCD
Student project UCD Toolbox collects interface design methods into a single database with selection tools. Access is still closed, but you can ask for an invite.
What do YOU want to know about accessibility?
Karl Groves describes the possible composition of the BOK (book of knowledge) for the accessibility discipline. There is less structured knowledge on it than on other interface disciplines, so there is such a need. The list in the article will also be useful to those who are interested in structuring complex technical documentation.
Cases
Redesigning Google - How Larry Page engineered a beautiful revolution A
gorgeous article by The Verge on how a large-scale redesign of key Google products took place in 2011-2012. It took place thanks to the fact that the president of Larry Page declared this one of the priorities and gave way to designers, as well as a small team of visionaries, who directed all the other designers in the company. One of the first models of the new style.
Google finds its design voice on iOS
The Next Web is writing about Google’s new iPhone apps in which they have successfully found their recognizable style. It fits well with the platform’s guidelines and at the same time perfectly echoes the company's main web services. Thoughts on this subject from John Gruber . And yet - aboutdesign principles embodied in Google Now .
How we designed a new News Feed using your feedback
On March 7, Facebook introduced a new update feed design and a unified interface for the main and mobile versions. Jane Justice Leibrock from the front-end team talks about how the redesigned newsfeed was created .
Design for Continuous Experimentation
Dan McKinley's stunning presentation on how to build business design with significant turnover step by step through experimentation and testing. Graphs and figures perfectly illustrate that many achievements are the result of consistent and systematic work.
Apple's design problems aren't skeuomorphic An excellent
system overview of the problems in the iOS interface that have accumulated over the six years of the platform's existence. This is interesting and whatever Apple - the article describes the problems of any mature platform.
Design Space by InVision InVision
online service blog publishes interesting interviews with leading designers of major products like Zappos, eBay, Airbnb. They talk in detail about the design process of their team, tools and features of product work.
History
A Brief History of Usability
Jeff Sauro has compiled a history of interface discipline dating back to 1911. This is an interesting timeline of the most important theories, publications, discoveries and events that influenced the development of the profession.
The Four Waves of User-Centered Design
A small overview of the four stages of developing interest in the discipline of interface design based on the American Bentley University curriculum. It began in 1988, so the slice is representative enough. Another article on the history of the profession and trends in education .
Photoshop is a city for everyone - How Adobe endlessly rebuilds its classic app
The story of the creation and development of Adobe Photoshop from The Verge. This is a great example of why a product with such an extensive past is hard to change dramatically. Adobe has posted for free download the source code of the first version .
Lotus 1-2-3 turns 30 - Mitch Kapor on the Google before Google
January 26 marks the 30th anniversary of the release of the Lotus 1-2-3 office suite. This product has become one of the key reasons for the purchase of personal computers at company offices, giving impetus to a new stage in software development. Comments by Dan Bricklin , one of the creators of the first Visicalc spreadsheet.
The changing face of computers on screen
A small overview of the evolution of interfaces in the movie. They have gone from hundreds of buttons and indicators without a single signature to more modern ways of interaction.
For Amusement Only - The life and death of the American arcade
Laura June has prepared for The Verge an excellent article on the history of slot machines, from pinball to computer games. The article describes the evolution of specific devices and the reasons for the rise and fall of gaming halls. Unfortunately, Atari soon filed for bankruptcy . Most recently, they celebrated 40 years. And yet - a photo from one of the latest pinball machine factories .
John E. Karlin, Who Led the Way to All-Digit Dialing, Dies at 94
In late January, John E. Karlin, one of the founders of Bell's ergonomic laboratory and the first ergonomists in commercial companies, died. His most famous solution is a numeric keypad for push-button telephones, which is now widely used.
Trends
Trends in interactive design 2013 The
smartest presentation on trends in web and mobile design for 2013. Petra Sell has collected almost all the more or less significant changes in front-end approaches, visual solutions, technologies and working methods. Another great review of trends with a bunch of interviews with the best industry experts and a poster for it.
Lost Signal - 7 Lessons from TV History
Nate Cox from Punchcut takes a detailed look at the qualities of classic television that are lacking in modern approaches to television and film viewing. They relate to both interfaces and use cases and distribution models.
Flat Pixels - The Battle Between Flat Design And Skeuomorphism
Last year, in the design community, an active discussion began about the new trend of “flat design” that came to iOS from Metro-style. Sacha Greif has published one of the most correct articles on this subject, and has also compiled a selection of other discussions. A version of this style from Google is called an " almost flat design ." And another great discussion on the topic with the participation of good designers.
UX Job Title Generator
Every year in our profession a bunch of new terms appears, often describing the same thing with new words for the sake of spectacular novelty. Aaron Weyenberg has created a random posts generator that collects great titles for bulshit bingo.
The Apple iWatch
Wearable devices are slowly gaining momentum and Bruce Tognazzini is speculating on this topic, describing the possibilities of hypothetical watches from Apple. These thoughts do not add up to the whole picture, but they are a useful list of possible scenarios for using such devices. Controversy with the article - http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/11/iwatch-app-speculation-is-filler-not-killer/ and http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/11 / 3976406 / why-would-apple-want-to-make-an-iwatch. And the story of Bill Buxton about the 37-year history of computerized watches .
The state of the second screen - Will TV companion apps proliferate or dwindle?
An overview of the current state of the “second screen” industry for TVs, tablet applications with supporting content for what goes on TV. Their number is actively growing and it is interesting what scale will gain in the new year. A few more materials on the topic:
- A Google study on how often using second screen increases the number of searches .
- An overview of several popular products .
- The catalog of thematic applications for iOS .
Google Glass The
first official materials appeared showing the real work of the current version of augmented reality glasses Google Glass. In addition to them - a detailed presentation of how the interface works at the technical and user levels . A few more materials on the topic:
- A small review .
- An essay on the use of wearable devices and life-blogging in real life .
- Review and interview with designers .
Developer preview of touch-based Ubuntu
Smartphone and tablet versions of the new Ubuntu OS are available for download. This is an interesting mix of Windows 8, WebOS and Android solutions that will be released next year, but for now it can be put on Google Nexus devices. A few more materials on the topic:
- Overview of the tablet version .
- The official presentation of the tablet .
- Overview of the smartphone version .
- Design guidelines for Ubuntu OS - layout, patterns, general style. Structured similarly to Android guides.
BlackBerry 10 OS review
On January 30, BlackBerry introduced its new mobile OS, BlackBerry 10. It has a lot of interesting gesture control solutions. Other reviews are http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3929760/blackberry-z10-review and http://www.engadget.com/2013/02/12/blackberry-z10-ui/ . By the way, the operating system has interesting gesture shortcuts .
Creating An Adaptive System To Enhance UX
Avi Itzkovich writes about adaptive interfaces whose behavior adapts to a specific user. He gives a number of examples of such products, as well as contexts that should be considered when creating them. Translation into Russian .
Aaron Marcus - The past 100 years of the future - HCI in science-fiction movies (PDF)
Aaron Marcus's publication, in which he describes the vision for the future of technology and interfaces in films and books over the past hundred years. A useful addition to the recently released Make It So book on the same topic.
Health Design Challenge: d + collab
The US government announced a large-scale redesign of medical records aimed at simplifying the work of doctors and motivating patients to better monitor their health. The site contains the most interesting of several hundred works. Short review of the competition .
5 Reasons Why Responsive Design is Wrong for Your Business
A wave of skeptics of an adaptive approach to website development is gaining strength. The first years of universal enthusiasm gave way to a more reasonable approach in this area. All arguments, by and large, come down to the idea of a sober assessment of the audience and its needs. It is nice when the topic is discussed, and not blindly following the trends.
ConveyUX: Cross Platform Product Design
Carol Taylor from Rhapsody talks at ConveyUX about the features and complexities of cross-platform product design. It is present on the web, on mobile and tablets, TVs, which requires new approaches to work.
ConveyUX: Rethinking User Research
Notes to Dana Chisnell at ConveyUX on the Future of Custom Research. She says that modern products and the connections between them have become so complex and multifaceted that the classical approaches to research are limitedly applicable to them and new methods are needed.
Measuring the value and role of design The
British Design Council conducted a study of the current state of the service design industry. The report describes the current problems of the industry, which in the UK is one of the most advanced in the world. Direct link to PDF .
How To Think About Turning Your Products Into Services
Fast Co.Design gives tips on how to turn a product into a service, because they bring about 75% of the income of the modern economy. These are three key areas and a couple of real-life examples.
Lamps - A design research collaboration with Google Creative Labs, 2011
BERG, in collaboration with Google, made a series of experimental developments in the field of projected interfaces, describing the project in detail on its blog. This is one of the most promising areas in our industry, which is likely to use the new XBox .
Professional Development
Learning to See
A chic article by Oliver Reichenstein from the Information Architects on design philosophy and the profession in general. He talks about the visual presentation and the logic of the product, going through in detail the main controversial points and misconceptions, including the “No UI” trend. By the way, an excellent article with his criticism .
Hack Design
Basic course of interface design and design in a convenient format - once a week one of the lessons is sent to the mail. Training materials are compiled and supported by a group of specialists from well-known and not very services. And another basic selection of basic design principles . And:
- A similar course on interface prototyping .
- Basic principles of understanding typography .
- Another online tutorial and reference for those learning interface design.
Publishing and Presenting
Jim Ross motivates designers and designers to speak more often at conferences and publish articles on a professional topic. This is a series of articles listing key concerns like “I have nothing to say” and specific tips for preparing articles and presentations. Part 2 and 3 .
Conference proceedings
Interaction13
The tenth anniversary Interaction13 conference was held from January 27 to January 31 in Toronto. Cooper Consulting's blog posted reports on all four days - 1 , 2 , 3, and 4 .
Fresh links can also be tracked in the same Facebook group .