The best mobile web applications are the ones that excel at handling mobile processors, network connectivity, bandwidth, latency and touchscreen keyboards. In this article, Nick Gauthier will look at how to identify the tasks your users want to accomplish on a mobile device, memorize your users’ situation, presume that their actions will succeed, and also how to predict your users’ next actions, and prepare accordingly. The mobile web is a harsh environment, but by simply focusing on what matters, you will find a clear path to a superior experience.
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We all have our favored methods and techniques, but the general process is similar: Conduct research, prototype, then present to stakeholders and users. However, every once in a while something will take you by surprise. In this article, Chrisday will discuss the variety of challenges that he faced and how he eventually overcame them. Many of these learnings can be applied to enhance the user experience design process in smaller projects.
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With iOS 7’s new Dynamics API, views can be influenced by gravity, attached to each other with springs, and bounced up against boundaries and each other. We’re used to objects in games feeling real. To get this effect, game designers use a physics engine that treats the elements as bodies in a simulation and that uses Newton’s laws of motion to calculate how they move over time. In using the engine, designers specify an object’s bounciness, its density, the level of gravity, and how things are attached to each other. In iOS 7, Apple made that technology available to UIKit-based apps as well.
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During brainstorming sessions, UX professionals would generate concepts as paper or whiteboard sketches. But this artifacts limit participants from visualizing interactivity and the system’s flow. In this article Svetlin Denkov will look at clickthrough prototyping on the iPhone with the Prototyping on Paper (or POP) app. His goal is to introduce the tool, share his prototyping experience and discuss competitors.
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While responsive design is an extremely elegant way to handle coding for multiple device types when executed with HTML and CSS, the prototyping tools available to UX professionals have not delivered testable or demonstrable experiences of the same quality. That changed with the new Axure RP 7. With this feature, a UX designer can create a multi-device prototype in a few hours. As we all get further along in designing for our multi-device world, Axure RP’s adaptive views are a great tool to have in your arsenal.
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The debate about what a “User Experience Design” exactly is, is as old as the discipline itself, and while sitting back and watching the drama is sometimes fun, let’s try to figure out which user experience techniques are useful for startups, in-house teams, big corporations and anyone who wants to improve their website, product or service.
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The psychological dimension that springs from a dialogue between two strategic conceptions that depend on the personality of each chess player has long been a mystery. How do Grandmasters think? The most successful strategies are rooted in our very own nature. And common to most Grandmasters is that they almost never take the easy way out. That creativity, that compulsion to look beyond what comes instinctively is what fuels successful strategies and explains why so few Grandmasters are out there.
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The best thing any designer can do is to collect feedback from real users. Recently, Joshua Gross had an opportunity to experience thiswhen iterating on HelloSign. Thanks to testing, the app went from four stars to a solid five stars after a redesign. You’ll look at how the app started, how they ran the tests and how the product ended up with five stars.
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Some websites outperform others, whether in their content, usability, design, features, and so on. Details of interaction design and animation make a fundamental difference on modern websites. We’ll share some lessons drawn from various models and analyze why these simple patterns work so well.
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Simon Schmid has been fascinated by little things that make a big impact on the web, which is one of the reasons why he started blogging about these details. Some of the recurring topics early on were the strategies that creators use to expand the reach of their websites, the campaign page and launch and landing pages. In this post, you’ll learn what to look out for when creating your own small campaign.
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