Tips for creating designs that give the user a delightful, clear, and well-planned experience with a high-quality UX (user experience).
Sometimes websites make me grouchy. I click with anticipation and then… design disaster. Admit it, you have grumbled at the screen more than a few times, too.
From poor type to missing links to usability issues, I am going to share the mistakes that just drive me absolutely bonkers. Take heed! These are things to address and fix on your own site, before someone else comes across them!
Interaction design might be the most talked about design concept of 2015. It’s something you should be thinking about and planning for in all of your digital projects.
But how can you make the most of interaction design? How can you design something people want to interact with? While some of those answers are changing with technology, one element remains the same – people want to use design that is intuitive, functional and aesthetically pleasing.
Good design is not something the average user look at and says “wow, that’s a great design!” Good design is something that is easy to use, read and interact with. It makes users want to engage and experience your website, app or physical material and evokes a specific emotional response.
As a designer you may spend days, weeks or months working on a project that does not look like anything especially spectacular to those outside the design community, and that is probably a good thing. Good design is pretty much invisible.
Content is a major part of the user experience. Content is more than search engine optimization; it’s more than blogging. It is part of your site, brand identity and why users interact with your design.
Every day it becomes even more important to design for content as part of the overall function and user experience in website and app design. But how can you do it? (We can help you with some case studies and examples, such as The Hen House, which uses a variety of design and user engagement techniques to keep you scrolling.)
You probably keep hearing the phrase “material design” popping up in conversations. The concept is pretty new; it was introduced in the summer and references a new design language from the folks at Google.
But material design is more than just an idea; it is likely to cause designers to completely rethink web and app design processes. Sites are already beginning to role out design schemes using Google’s material design documentation. So now is the time to learn what it’s all about and if a material design framework is in your future.
Yes. Those little pop-ups matter, and are starting to matter more every day. Interstitial space – and content for it – is becoming an increasingly popular part of designing for the web. From ads, to forms, to bits of information, the interstitial experience is a vital part of the design process.
The dilemma for designers is to create something that users want to look at and not feel annoyed by. Here we’ll work to gain a better understanding of interstitial space and how you can work within it well.
Despite arguments that hover styles are dead, these small boxes that pop-up over images, text or other elements on websites are still found all over the web. Designers like them for an added bit of style and information; users like them for functionality. (They are only “dead” because hover styles don’t work without a mouse-over).
The UI function is still there for now. And if you opt to use it, you’ll want to create well-designed hover styles that engage users. You’ll also want to think about how to alter these areas of your website for responsive sites.
Having a website in today’s market is not enough. You also need see how your visitors are really using your website. This information can help you better plan, create content and design for the way your users interact with you.
That’s where Hotjar Insights comes in. The new service is launching later this month and will include lots of tools that really can help you understand your visitors better. The interface includes heatmaps, session playbacks, polling, surveys, chats and funnel analysis. Here’s a look at the new tool.
User experience – notably poor user experience – has been a hot topic in recent months with the much-publicized launch of HealthCare.gov and its subsequent issues. User experience is a part of the design process that you don’t hear about unless something goes wrong. But it is something that should be an integral part of the design process, from early concepts to the final product.
So with this renewed – and very public – discussion about user experience, why does it matter to designers?
QR codes are all the rage… aren’t they? Their presence certainly seems to have increased in recent years, indicating an impressive adoption rate among marketers. But does that mean that you should be using them? If a client asks you whether or not using QR codes is a good idea, what will you say?
Join us as we take an honest and critical look at both sides of the QR debate so you can decide for yourself whether or not you should be designing with QR codes.
Good design is all around us. Not just in printed materials or on websites, but also in everyday items. What’s great is that you often don’t notice it — you just enjoy whatever item, tool or website you are using.
Nowhere is this more true than with mobile apps. Most of us use them every day, but do you ever stop to think how much they are shaping the way you approach design? Apps can be a great source of inspiration and also another reminder of time-tested design concepts. Here are ten of the great lessons I have learned (and re-learned) from iPad apps.
There is an ever-growing argument in the design community about whether designing for the scroll on your website is necessary. The arguments for producing stellar design concepts for the first part of the website a viewer will see and those against are wide ranging and are greatly affected by changes in technology.
Where the scroll lands on the screen is even changing with wider monitors and great variances in the size viewers open their web browsers. How can a designer account for all of it?