Tips for creating designs that give the user a delightful, clear, and well-planned experience with a high-quality UX (user experience).
The smallest parts of a design project can be the most important. It’s something we all know conceptually, right?
But do you ever get caught just filling in these details at the last minute? Does your micro-content suffer because you are ready to be finished with a project? Don’t let that happen. Plan out micro-content from the start to create better, more usable pieces that will help make the design better than you had hoped.
It’s one of those fundamental parts of design we don’t talk about much: Designing within the rules. We talk a lot about creativity and innovation, but sometimes leave out one of the ideas that pushes most projects along, and that’s actually creating something with a lot of rules attached. It’s thinking “inside the box.”
Design constraints are those little keys to consistency that help brands establish visual identity and guide voice. These restrictions can come in a number of forms, and like them or not, it’s something you are going to have to deal with.
And here’s the good news: Constraints can actually help you become a better designer.
Is your design starting to look old? Old and out-of-date user interface elements can make a site feel much more dated than it actually is.
Here, we look at eight UI elements that you should eliminate from your design plan. But that’s not all; each “don’t” comes with a suggestion for modernizing your website. We’ll get that design looking up-to-date in no time!
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!
The art of the newsletter signup form is one that you may interact with more often than you think. Email marketing is one of the best and most-used ways that brands interact with customers. And it all starts with a simple sign up.
From pop ups to full-page forms, newsletter signups are everywhere. Many of us click through without consciously thinking about the design, but a well-designed form encourages that action in the first place. Some of the best-designed forms in the email signup landscape are from retailers, which are using emails to sell to customers directly. So how can you create a signup that looks fresh? Here are 10 ideas.
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.
Nothing brings you closer to the functionality of the final product than prototyping. While wireframes sketch out the blueprint and mockups show the feel and texture of the design, it is the prototype that brings to life the “experience” behind “user experience.” That beautiful call-to-action may look great on the screen, but you won’t know if it works on end users until the clickable prototype. Not only do prototypes help provide proof of concept, they more importantly expose any usability flaws behind the wireframes and mockups.
So how do we actually put into the practice this safeguard against emergency stakeholder meetings, endless revisions, and painful late nights in the development phase? While we previously touched upon proper prototyping in the Guide to UX Design Process & Documentation, let’s dive deeper into how prototyping can make or break a product’s success. In this piece, we’ll begin by looking at the most compelling reasons to prototype and how prototypes improve collaboration, design, and usability testing.
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.