Emergency car shopping is no fun. This past month was the second time I had to shop for a car in a short timeframe without advance warning. Like most informed shoppers, I went online to get a feel for my options, armed with knowledge of what I was looking for: apart from safety, gas mileage and reliability, it had to comfortably seat six and not require me to take out a second mortgage.
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When iOS started to gain momentum, soon after the first iPhone launched, many businesses started to pay attention to apps. The number of apps for iOS grew exponentially, and every company, big and small, rushed to create their own app to support their business.
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After taking a look at Craigslist mobile, it became obvious we could all benefit from some best practices around mobile search, sort and filter UI design. In this article Theresa Neil and Rich Malley explore a dozen different ways to surface and refine the data your customers want.
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The country selector. It’s there when you create an account for a new Web service, check out of an e-commerce store or sign up for a conference. The normal design? A drop-down list with all of the available countries.
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The way mobile devices are being used is changing all the time, and users are increasingly expecting exceptional experiences from the applications they use. In this post, Tim R. Todish brings us guidelines to help you create a great experience in your mobile application.
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Mobile strategies for browser platforms can vary massively from website to website, depending on what the company wants to offer visitors. Matt Lawson takes a look at some of the more common approaches.
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How can your customers quickly access thousands of popular search term combinations by typing just a few initial characters? Learn how Tap-Ahead design patterns resolve typing avoidance and slower bandwidth.
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This article is a part of our new eBook Mobile Design For iPhone And iPad (just $9.90). The eBook presents articles on professional design for the iPhone and iPad, including guidelines for the development of mobile web pages. Available in PDF, Mobipocket and ePUB formats.
The industry has evolved in many ways, but one particular area has affected how we build websites to a greater extent than any other. The surge in Web-enabled mobile devices has forged a subculture of visitors who require the adaptation of our websites to meet their needs. While mobile design is still in its infancy (and little primary research on mobile trends exist), we need to observe how this now-critical element of our industry is evolving, and the patterns which exist from current development efforts.
The aim of this article is to showcase the variety of methods in which some of today’s most popular websites provide an interactive and (hopefully) useful mobile experience for their end users. There are plenty of big names which were analyzed, such as Facebook and Amazon, and you’ll see plenty of useful graphs to draw some inspiration from. With statistics and some really interesting revelations on the diversity of modern design, you can be excited about the future of mobile Web design!
You may be interested in the following related studies:
* Typographic Design Patterns and Best Practices
* Portfolio Design Study: Design Patterns and Current Practices
* A Small Study of Big Blogs
* Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up FormsRead more…
Some time ago I started a mobile app design review section on our company’s website. The idea behind this “Crit Board” was simple: if mobile developers want to create apps that people want to buy, they’ll need help with design and usability. But most of the time they can’t afford it. Developers can send us their mobile apps (iPhone apps, Android apps, Blackberry apps) along with questions and problems, and we (free of charge) will pick apart key usability issues, illustrate our design recommendations and post our findings.
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In any industry where the people behind a company are as important as the company itself, you’re likely to find a kind of expanded “about” page that includes information on individual employees. “Meet the Team” pages are popular among web design and other creative firms, but are also found on sites within various other industries. These pages are a valuable addition to any site where human contact is an important part of the industry. It adds a personal touch to the company and can lend trust to visitors.
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