“What tool should I use?” has become one of the most frequent questions in online forums, design meetups and blogs. It’s turned into quite a passionate debate — and designers tend to quickly argue for a certain tool or application. In this article, Fabricio Teixeira will explore five steps to decide on the right prototyping tool for your project. The objective is to guide designers who are making that decision for the first time or who are faced with a project with unique requirements and constraints.
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When talking to potential clients, be aware that many will have never solicited a professional design service and likely have little understanding of the design process itself, or they have had a poor experience in the past. For many clients, it can be an anxious jump into the deep unknown, a big financial investment steeped in risk. Our knowledge and experience shouldn’t be seen as a free commodity. However, at times, a little patience and empathy are required on our part. Many designers will agree that clients, for the most part, need us to guide them through the design process, to ask the difficult questions and ultimately to reassure them by delivering measurable results.
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Websites aren’t just meant to look good – they are meant to be easy to use for everyone, including people who are color-blind. There are many types of color blindness but it comes down to not seeing color clearly, getting colors mixed up, or not being able to differentiate between certain colors. In this article, Adam Silver will cover the majority of problems color-blind people experience when using websites, by providing 13 tips to improve their experience - something which can often benefit people with normal vision too.
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Websites aren’t just meant to look good – they are meant to be easy to use for everyone, including people who are color-blind. There are many types of color blindness but it comes down to not seeing color clearly, getting colors mixed up, or not being able to differentiate between certain colors. In this article, Adam Silver will cover the majority of problems color-blind people experience when using websites, by providing 13 tips to improve their experience - something which can often benefit people with normal vision too.
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Studies reveal that 90% of all downloaded apps are used only once and then eventually deleted by users. Sometimes, when people finally download an app, they feel abandoned. You must clearly show users why they need your app. In this article, Anton Kosolapov will show you that for users to give your app a second chance, they need to understand a few things. The best way to communicate the purpose of your app is through an engaging onboarding experience.
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Creating a flexible UI system that is consistent and easy to customize, while also scalable and cost-efficient, depends not only on how it is built, but on how it is designed. A library of components has very little value if every new design is created independently, ignoring established standards and patterns. In this article, Adriana De La Cuadra explains the value of modularity in UI design and how it ties into the process of style guide-driven development, which improves the implementation of flexible and user-friendly applications, while helping designers and developers collaborate more productively.
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Designing a city’s metro map is quite a challenging task, even when there is just one line. In this article, Ilya Birman will cover his design process. It’s going to be detailed, so, depending on your interests, this might be very boring or very exciting. In no way is this meant to be a comprehensive guide to designing a map. Each city presents its own set of problems and peculiarities. But hopefully this gives you an idea of what to look for and what to try if you take on such an assignment!
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The problem with brainstorming is, even if there are great ideas in the room, there is often no clear-cut way to decide on what ideas to take action on. But there is a technique that Jonathan Courtney has been using with all his clients over the past year to release or enhance many successful products. Over the last year he’s found that applied USM is not just a fantastic way to get ideas that nobody would have come up with on their own, it’s also the perfect alignment tool for your client or stakeholders. Let Jonathan show you exactly how it’s done.
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Passwords are written off as inconvenient and unavoidable, but due to a combination of sensors, encryption and seasoned technology users, authentication is taking on new (and exciting) forms. In this article, Drew Thomas will show you that it’s OK to rethink common password habits, and it’s acceptable to use common sense and due diligence to create usable, secure and error-free authentication – passwords or otherwise. Most other interaction patterns have been updated over time, but no one wants to mess with password authentication. It’s time to change that!
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In this article, Luca Leone and Anders Schmidt Hansen will investigate an alternative to the classic “pages and links” paradigm, a model dubbed “zoom navigation.” Perhaps the reason why zooming interfaces are rare is that traditional HTML linking quickly became the dominant navigation paradigm, and zooming navigation presented problems of implementation, but we have good reasons now in a multi-device world to give zooming navigation another chance and to experiment with ideas and implementations. At the end of the article, they will introduce some prototypes and discuss their technical implementations.
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