(This article is kindly sponsored by Adobe.) When designing your user interface, it helps to have a system in place. Spend some time to establish a considered design system. Not only does this ensure that your design is consistent, but it also helps keep your team on the same page and provides any freelancers working on the project with all the guidance they need in one central location. With this guide, Christopher Murphy will help you find a solid UI approach that will stand the test of time by exploring how we design interfaces that are consistent and scalable.
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In experience design, friction is the newsletter signup overlay covering the actual content, the difficult wording on a landing page, or the needless optional questions in a checkout flow. It’s usually the opposite of being intuitive or effortless. However, that doesn’t mean that it’s always bad for the users. In this article, Zoltan Kollin will show you when and how friction can be an efficient tool to actually design better experiences.
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Though we have a good understanding of the types of button design rules that universally work, there will be times when you’re surprised by a rogue element that performs well. Like ghost buttons. They aren’t much of a mystery, despite their eerie-sounding name. They’re call-to-action (CTA) buttons for your website, like any other. The key difference is in how they look. Logic would dictate that ghost buttons are not good for web design. Yet, research shows us that visitors don’t necessarily see them that way.
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Links make the Internet what it is. A robust visual design is essential to making the user journey joyful. While underlining has its downsides, it remains one of the most explicit ways to indicate the presence of a link. Underlining text makes links both easy to find and easy to understand for visitors. In this article, Nick Babich will explain the concept of underlining and provide a few tips on how to use it to improve the web experience, and help you find out when and why underlines should be used in our digital products.
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(This series of articles is kindly supported by Adobe.) User Experience (UX) is evolving rapidly, and as designers, we need to ensure our knowledge keeps pace with the changes. This article, the first in a series of ten sponsored by Adobe XD, gets the ball rolling, exploring how UX is evolving.
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Understand your audience and purpose. Try employing mobile usability testing to better understand your visitors’ needs. Have one big idea per screen. Put content under properly labeled display elements, instead of on secondary pages. Maximize mobile capabilities. In this article, Alex Jasin covers five mobile interface myths that you’ve probably been sold on (and why that might be a bad thing). Remember: Test, test, test. And then test again.
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Finding a hotel and flight is relatively easy, but when it comes to tours and activities, the problem is that late or last-minute bookings are not always available, and the mobile experience can be limited because many websites are slow or their booking process is long and complex. Building a great mobile experience is really hard and time-consuming, but with enough attention to detail, you can succeed. In this article, Einar Þór Gústafsson will present a case study and share observations on the project he designed and built: GetLocal, an online travel-agency and booking platform in Iceland.
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Let’s look into the fine details of designing better slider controls for selecting a value or a range of values, with do’s and don’ts and things to keep in mind when designing one.
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Vitaly Friedman has spent a lot of time working with various companies trying out various approaches and studying them in usability tests. This series of articles is a summary of observations and experiments made throughout that time. He’ll be exploring everything from carousels to car configurators. Let’s look into the design of date and time pickers today. With a date picker you can combine day, month and year into one input field, add a fancy calendar icon, and prompt a calendar overlay that exposes the main purpose of the calendar prominently. In fact, there are plenty of contexts in which date pickers matter! Let’s find out.
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Users can be reluctant to fill out forms, so make the process as easy as possible. Minor changes can significantly increase usability. Forms remain one of the most important types of interactions for users on the web and in apps. In this article, Nick Babich will show you practical techniques that have been gleaned from usability testing, field testing, eye-tracking studies and actual complaints from disgruntled users. These techniques enable designers to produce faster, easier and more productive form experiences. All you need to do is to download Adobe XD and get started right away. At the end of the article, you’ll also find new ways to design forms.
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