The best error message is the one that never shows up. It is always better to prevent errors from happening in the first place by guiding users in the right direction ahead of time. But, when errors do arise, well-designed error handling helps teach users how to use the app as you intended. In this article, Nick Babich will examine how the design of apps can be optimized to prevent user errors and how to create effective error messages in cases when errors occur independently of user input.
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In this article, Cosima Mielke has done some digging around and found some interesting UI demos and concepts for you to indulge in and build upon: dialog and modal windows, signup and login screens, navigation and menus, sliders and toggles. Small bits of delight that make the user’s interaction with a website or app more pleasant. Enjoy!
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As our artifacts and everything around us become more connected, we run the risk as humans of becoming increasingly disconnected from each other. We have a responsibility as interaction designers and user experience researchers to consider the ways in which we create interfaces for everyday experiences in the home, at school, out and about, and with our trusted advisors such as financial planners, doctors and educators. In this article, Jes Koepfler & Kieran Evans will discuss the concept of shallow interaction design and show how we applied some basic principles of this approach to a learning game related to disaster resilience.
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Too complex and feature-driven products may not provide the users what they need or want. When designers reduce to the minimum the footprint of their product in the user’s life, they provide better actual usage for digital products. They should be focusing on processes, not screens, to get more results with less interactions. In this article, Goran Peuc will dive into a review of remarkable products and services that actually bring easy solutions through simpler processes. It’s up to you to remove complexity for the user and to minimize the footprint of your product in the user’s life. Yes, this requires a lot of work, but that is how you will differentiate your product from the competition’s.
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Usually, Numeric keypad Design is an inversion of the Calculator Layout, but why? Nowadays the users experience most of digital products using gestures, not only buttons. In this article, C Y Gopinath explores the roots of this disparity and proposes a better solution. He will discuss how to simplify and adapt a traditional numeric interface to a minimalist design norm by taking advantage of modern touch–driven modes of human–mobile interaction. He’ll also tackle the design logic behind developing a new interface for the basic calculator.
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Designing mobile apps requires a deep knowledge of devices, and it often means changing the way we think — even if that means leaving behind much of what we’ve learned from designing for the web. Changing one’s mindset to adapt to apps comes from the inside. No one will force you to do it. If you don’t adjust, you run the risk of becoming little more than an icon factory, just a small step in a larger process of design. Designing apps requires a new way of thinking. It’s time to leave our web design boxes and to understand smartphones, tablets and even watches as separate and distinct devices.
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You have likely experienced the 300-millisecond delay in mobile browsers or wrestled with touchmove versus scrolling. Certain events that used to be very clear are now filled with ambiguity. The click event used to mean one thing and one thing only, but touchscreens have complicated it by needing to discern whether the action is a double-click, scroll, event or some other OS-level gesture. In this article Dustan Kasten will introduce the event cascade and use this knowledge to implement a demo of a tap event that supports the many input methods while not breaking in proxy browsers such as Opera Mini.
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In this article, Matt Reamer will introduce you to the human-centered design process. He’ll tell a personal story in which he built a challenged family member a device to help them communicate more efficient and effortlessly and he’ll share lessons he learned from the failures and successes along the way. He hopes that this will inspire or at least get you thinking about how you can push your skills to help the people around you, as well as shed some light on some basic principles of user experience design that are too often overlooked.
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In a previous article, Svetlin Denkov briefly mentioned another category of clickthrough prototypes: widget-based mockups that are designed on the target device and that expand on sketches by introducing user interface (UI) details and increased visual fidelity. These prototypes can be used to pitch ideas to clients, document interactions and even test usability. In this article, he will teach you how to use the iPad app Blueprint to put together such prototypes in the form of concept demos, which help to manage a client’s expectations when you are aligning your visions of a product.
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Is drawing the best way to begin to design an interface? Luca Leone started by writing an imagined human-computer conversation, and only afterwards he continued by drawing. The easiest tool is to imagine an interaction. The diagrams and sketches come afterwards. This changed his way of thinking and he never went back to drawing first. In this article Luca will explain the reasons behind his decision.
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