Sometimes it’s good to think outside the box. The Mozilla Developer Roadshow gave Markus Seyfferth the opportunity to get up close with developers in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong. How do they work? How do they learn? And what are their local communities like? Let’s find out!
Read more…
Knowing who your competitors are is pointless unless you do something with that information. Learn how to build your own competitive analysis matrix that organizes your collected information into useful, usable data. In this article, Amanda Short elaborates how you can start improving your mobile app today.
Read more…
Productivity tips always make for a popular topic for an article, as everyone is looking for the silver bullet, that one weird trick that turns you into a productivity machine. So, we asked the community on Twitter and Facebook to share their best productivity tips, and in this article Racheal Andrew is going to round these up alongside some things she’s learned that work well for her. Let us know your own advice in the comments, or tell us the popular tip that would never work for you!
Read more…
The world is a stressful place. That’s probably why if you search for articles about dealing with stress you’ll find lots of great advice. But the problem is that most of it is pretty generic. Is there anything more specific to the profession of design? In this article Ollie Campbell takes some of the academic research on stress and applies it to the challenges designers face every day. If you’re a designer who feels stressed from time to time, then this article is for you. It takes some of the academic research on stress and applies it to the challenges designers face every day.
Read more…
To remove the dust from the term “office” and give the visuals revolving around it a fresh and friendly face, too, the creative minds at Vexels designed a set of 32 office-themed icons. The icons come in AI, EPS, SVG, and TIFF formats and can be downloaded for free. Attribution is required, so if you would like to use the icons, please do remember to credit the designers and to link to this article if you want to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else.
Read more…
A grid is like invisible glue that holds a design together. Even when elements are physically separated from each other, something invisible connects them together. Grids help designers to build better products by tying different design elements together to achieve effective hierarchy, alignment and consistency, with little effort. If executed properly, your designs will appear thoughtful and organized. In this article Nick Babich aims to give you a good understanding of grid systems, what they are, and how they can be applied to your design process. Understanding how to use grids will come from practical experience.
Read more…
Making improvements to your mobile app’s design isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. In this article, Suzanne Scacca explains the six key ways in which dating app developers successfully use design to create an engaging and addictive experience for their users. Dating apps often get a bad rap for turning the dating scene into something superficial, mechanical and impersonal. Log in through Facebook. Swipe left. Swipe right. While it’s easy to write off these apps as fun little diversions for people trying to find love, they’re actually quite successful. So, what’s their secret?
Read more…
Most potential users will want to try out the software or service before committing any time and money. Often this is where the age-old demo account comes into play. However, anyone who has ever implemented a demo account can attest to the problems associated. In this article, James Pierce brings you a solution: SQLite. It’s commonly known that SQLite does not handle multiple threads since the entire database is locked during a write command, which is one of the reasons why you should not use it in a normal production environment. However, in his solution, a separate SQLite file is used for each user demoing the software.
Read more…
You know how sometimes during one of those late conference evenings somebody brings up a seemingly ridiculous topic and then the entire conversation seems to circle around it? That’s exactly what happened at SmashingConf Freiburg when suddenly the entire conversation was about how famous books and movies could be represented in an emoji, and it turned out to be a pretty decent cliffhanger for this particular Emoji Riddle. These riddles can be quite addictive and annoying, can’t they? With seven mischievous riddles published over the last few years, we’ve learned a few lessons along the way. At this point, you might be used to endless, mischievous, tricky, mean, time-consuming and intricate Mystery Riddles, and the latest one wasn’t any different.
Read more…
What happened in the web community in the last few weeks? The web is developing and changing so fast, and we need to acknowledge that we as individual persons can’t know and understand everything. And that’s fine. Choose what you want to do, set your priorities, and, most importantly of all, don’t hesitate to hire someone else for the things you can’t do on your own. In this article, Anselm has summarized the most important happenings in the web community that have taken place over the past few weeks in one handy list for you. Enjoy!
Read more…
