TARIFFARIO. PROTOTYPING. Freelance. Digital Web Magazine - The Ideal Web Team (part. Designer. Code. Beyond "I hate green:” Managing Productive Visual Design Reviews. Case study of agile and UCD working together - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design. Large scale websites require groups of specialists to design and develop a product that will be a commercial success. To develop a completely new site requires several teams to collaborate and this can be difficult. Particularly as different teams may be working with different methods. This case study shows how the ComputerWeekly user experience team integrated with an agile development group. It’s important to note the methods we used do not guarantee getting the job done. People make or break any project. Finding and retaining good people is the most important ingredient for success.
The brief In 2008, we were tasked with resurrecting a tired, old, and ineffective site. Our goals were: Make content visible and easy to findCreate an enjoyable and valuable user experience so users would returnIncrease page impressions to bring in ad revenueAllow site staff to present more rich media contentGive the site more personality and interactivity Boundary Spanner Do people get on with each other? Getting Real. Here are the 16 chapters and 91 essays that make up the book. Introduction chapter 1 What is Getting Real? A smaller, faster, better way to build software About 37signalsOur small team creates simple, focused software Caveats, disclaimers, and other preemptive strikesResponses to some complaints we hear The Starting Line chapter 2 Build LessUnderdo your competition What's Your Problem?
Stay Lean chapter 3 Less MassThe leaner you are, the easier it is to change Lower Your Cost of ChangeStay flexible by reducing obstacles to change The Three MusketeersUse a team of three for version 1.0 Embrace ConstraintsLet limitations guide you to creative solutions Be YourselfDifferentiate yourself from bigger companies by being personal and friendly Priorities chapter 4 What's the big idea?
Feature Selection chapter 5 Process chapter 6 The Organization chapter 7 Staffing chapter 8 Interface Design chapter 9 Code chapter 10 Words chapter 11 Pricing and Signup chapter 12 Promotion chapter 13 Support chapter 14. Organization Tips For Web Designers - Smashing Magazine. Advertisement As a web designer, you’re often forced to wear many different hats every day. You’re the CEO, creative director, office manager, coffee fetcher and sometimes even janitor.
That’s a lot for anyone, and it certainly makes it difficult to find any time for quality creative thinking. Organization in any operation is important, and for our work as web designers it is important, too. The good news? You don’t have to have been born an organizational machine. 1. What it means to be an organized person or run an organized business is commonly misunderstood. But how do you go about finding and implementing a strategy if you’re starting from square one? For example, if you have trouble paying all (and I mean every single one) of your bills on time because they are perpetually lost in the mess on your desk, make it a goal to pay every bill before it is due for the entire year. 2. Original image by garyknight. Once you have this list, you should start to notice patterns. 3. It's done. Site Diagrams: Mapping an Information Space. Information spaces surround us. When we retrieve a file from our computer, we are browsing through an information space; when we use a search engine we are sifting through an information space; and when we visit a website we are moving through yet another information space.
As user experience professionals, it is our job not only to understand how this space works (and how people work within the space), but also how to best access and communicate the information contained therein. Understanding the structure of an information space for a website boils down to the following questions: What is the information structure? How do I visually represent that structure? What relationships exist among the web pages? I suspected that site diagrams would be quite helpful in answering these questions. The evolution of a diagramming approach My earliest inspiration came in a graduate class on Information Architecture at the University of Michigan’s School of Information.
Starting with a site outline. The big decisions about design and how to make them « Boagworld. Season 2: The estimated time to read this article is 12 minutes Subscribe to this podcast using iTunes or RSS | Download this show The process by which a designer creates the final design for a site seems to be shrouded in mystery. This is partly due to the fact many web designers don’t have a ‘process’ as such, instead relying on instinct. This is partly because many of them are insecure about how they work and don’t want anybody else knowing. Things are further complicated by the fact that every designer works in a different way so it is hard to establish much in the way of ‘best practice’.
That said, the time has come for me to address the design of boagworld.com and so it felt only right that I outline my process and give you an insight into the underlying design principles I use. Avoiding the ‘empty canvas’ nightmare. I hate that moment when you launch Photoshop and you are faced with a blank canvas. It’s so fine and yet so terrible to stand in front of a blank canvas. Browser vs. Grid. What You Need to Know about Cross-Cultural Web Design. How do you ensure your website will be well-received around the world? At Lingo24, we’ve learnt some valuable lessons about how affordable – and profitable – it can be to dip your toes into the foreign language internet by building websites optimised for different countries and language groups.
Several years ago we built special sites for our translation agency that were optimised for the German, Spanish, French, Italian, Chinese and Japanese markets, and consequently saw a surge in our profits as our custom in those markets soared. It wasn’t all smooth sailing, though, and along the way we learnt a few things about how to not only optimise your website for search engines in foreign markets, but also how to create websites and content that communicate easily across cultures.
Here are a few of the lessons we’ve learnt… Content that travels You need to take special care with your content if you want it to ‘travel’ successfully to different cultures. Keywords that translate Layout that works.