The difference between a good app and a bad app is usually the quality of its user experience (UX). The average US user spends 5 hours per day on mobile. The vast majority of that time is spent in apps and on websites. So, there are many things to consider when designing for mobile. Today, Nick Babich brings you a detailed guide will help you get rid of that headache when building apps.
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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?
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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.
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To celebrate the relaunch of this little website, we’ve prepared something special yet again — a Smashing Emoji Mystery Riddle. Below you’ll find the first of a few animated GIFs that contain a hidden key. The key is always exactly one emoji. Your job is to find these emoji as fast as possible. Once you’ve reached the last level, just tweet out all the discovered emoji in one single tweet at @smashingmag.
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There are a good number of benefits and reasons why you should consider integrating design workouts into your team. In this article, Arturas Leonovas shares some exercises which are worth trying out with your design team and get you all to train before the big game — together. Doing this at least once a month is a fun way for everyone to polish skills that they use every day. Not only that, the added benefit of team-building and knowledge-sharing will help everyone become the best versions of themselves.
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Conversations about ethics are often difficult and awkward. Nevertheless, designers can play a vital role in finding new ways for people to relate to and communicate with each other. In this article, Ciara and Samantha set out to understand how ethics is used in contemporary design.
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When Denys Mishunov was invited to speak at one of the best front-end conferences in Europe, he felt like he did not deserve to be at that conference. And he didn’t even know that those feelings of his had a name! This is called impostor syndrome and it is a real psychological issue, rooted deeply in many of us. If we do not pay attention to its symptoms, if we blindly follow its triggers, then we can get into real psychological trouble. The good news is that, even though there is no pill for it, we can change out attitude towards it. Simply acknowledging the feeling can help to neutralize its effect.
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We’ve been closely working with Maya on this article, and we’re happy to see the final result now being published on 18F. We highly encourage more teams to share the lessons they learned when building design systems or pattern libraries, and we’re always happy to support them in writing, editing and shaping that article. This post is a re-post of Maya’s final article. In this article, Maya will shed some light on how to built tools to leverage industry-standard best practices and produce a design system with reusable components.
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Windows, macOS and Linux made up font-wise, and since then, all modern fonts have been compatible across those OS’. There’s no question, the future of web typography looks promising. At the 2016 ATypI conference, the world’s biggest type design conference, Microsoft, Google, Apple and Adobe announced that they have been working on a new iteration of the OpenType standard, called variable fonts. Because it gives a lot more control to the user to modify the typeface depending on the context and device, this new version opens new opportunities for web typography and will close the gap in quality between web and print. In this article, François Poizat will show you the ins and outs of these new tools and how to take control of our typography.
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Making a major career shift late in life to follow your passion is scary. Thankfully, becoming a professional creative is now more accessible than ever because of the numerous educational resources available. With so many options available just a few mouse clicks away, how do you decide which option is the best fit for you? In this article, Alec McGuffey has put together a list of the best ways to learn design according to your personality, budget, lifestyle and personal goals. Get out there and find the perfect one for you! If you set your mind to it and immerse yourself fully in the creative world, you’ll be able to learn the skills necessary to build a career in design, no matter which educational route you go down.
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