I’ve always loved reading good design books. I believe they are better and reliable source of information as compared to blogs as many great people put lot of hard work to get a single book out. In 2011, I bought 40 books and managed to read just 16 as of now. Books I’ve read: Recommended [...]
I’ve been working on PopSurvey—An awesome survey creation app powered by simplicity—for over an year now. The best part is the survey player (patent pending) where each slide carries just 1 question. We are also making the PopSurvey player compatible for iOS and other mobile platforms using media queries. After designing the mockups for PopSurvey [...]
I really love the simple and clean design of Readmill. The app. is awesome. Great design! Yesterday while logging into the app. I encountered their sign in form and thought it could be little better.
Designer Richard Seymour explores our response to beauty and the surprising power of objects that exhibit it.
How I almost ignored our single best source for customer feedback It turns out that answering our support calls has been an incredibly productive experience as well as potentially a profit center. When customers call, not only am I in a great position to help them as I understand the product inside and out, but [...]
All those who participate in design, from interaction designers, to usability engineers, to IA masters, fall victim to the same kinds of challenges when trying to bring good design into the world. From politics, to hubris, to downright incompetence, what can we learn by confessing to, and examining the causes of, our failures? Scott Berkun [...]
An electronic company were testing for a new boom box they hoped to start selling. Their research included focus groups where they showed the two colour options, yellow and black. The participants were in agreement that yellow was the best colour because it is a vibrant and energetic colour. At the end of the focus [...]
I like how Paul Boag thinks about using Media Queries to design better and overcome the limitations of the fold. Having a technique like this at our disposal means that we can avoid a lot of the awkward conversations with the client where we try to explain how the fold does not really exist. It [...]
Keith – lead designer at Forrst – has some interesting thoughts about the concept of “Getting Back to Zero” in design: The ability to consistently look at a design as a new user while laying out elements and keeping the project goals in mind. Getting back to zero. An on-going back-and-forth between making design decisions, [...]
These days I’m designing in browser instead of Fireworks for a live project — Pixoto.com. Designing in browser has some solid advantages as it helps you launch quite early instead of hanging there in design revisions. Get a quick mockup together and start coding. Quick design, faster revisions and early deployment.
Dear fellow designers, I hope you are having great time designing great stuff. You’ll be excited to know that I’ve 3 dribbble invites which I would like to give away to some really talented designers. So please leave your portfolio urls and your emails (in comments) where you would like me to send the invitation. [...]
The part of the world using Latin script may have enough type designers. But for the Arab world or India it is very different. More designers are needed there. — Gerard Unger, Type Designer quoted in his interview with MyFonts Gerand might be referring to only type designers here but I strongly believe that India [...]
As usual Luke Wroblewski posted his invaluable notes for An Event Apart – Atlanta, GA 2011 talks. Following are the ones that concern me: Crafting the User Experience by Sarah Parmenter On Web Typographyby Jason Santa Maria Design Principlesby Jeremy Keith
Joshua Porter (Bokardo) explains how to identify best design problems and how to tackle them using UX principle: Saying we have a problem is easy, but the real problems are the ones we get emotional about. Frustration is the first clue that people have a real problem on their hands. They might not know how to articulate [...]
Couple of weeks back I received an email from Mark Grantham — a User Experience Recruiter @Google — about working with them.
Tim Brown rightly states: By using culturally relevant, historically pleasing ratios to create modular scales and basing the measurements in our compositions on values from those scales, we can achieve a visual harmony not found in layouts that use arbitrary, conventional, or easily divisible numbers. → Read the article at A List Apart
Fundamental principles for designing effective User Interfaces. Effective interfaces are visually apparent and forgiving, instilling in their users a sense of control. Users quickly see the breadth of their options, grasp how to achieve their goals, and do their work. → Read the article at asktog.com
Jared Spool talks about Calls to Action with Paul Boag: … you have to be clear on what clicking that link is going to deliver. You have to mitigate any risk, so you have to have message that says “look, we’re not signing you up to be trapped into something. This is safe.” And then [...]
Designing for User Experience involves much more work than designing User Interface. UX design begins by learning about the business model, doing user research and understanding how a service can fit into the users’ lives in a meaningful way. Thus UX design has a crucial part in defining the business strategy, providing baselines for business [...]
Hiding important stuff behind code words might cost you business. Navigation titles should be clear and that people use in daily life. Jared Spool beautifully explains this with examples and following DOs and DON’Ts: Don’t hide your most valuable assets behind generic links. Avoid copying the design of your site’s navigation from other sites, especially [...]