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Optimizing a Screen for Mobile Use. Web Designers vs. Web Developers (Infographic) Meltwater Culture. What would Feynman do? - Fabulous Adventures In Coding. No one I know at Microsoft asks those godawful "lateral-thinking puzzle" interview questions anymore. Maybe someone still does, I don't know. But rumour has it that a lot of companies are still following the Microsoft lead from the 1990s in their interviews.

In that tradition, I present a sequel to Keith Michaels' 2003 exercise in counterfactual reasoning. Once more, we dare to ask the question "how well would the late Nobel-Prize-winning physicist Dr. Richard P. Feynman do in a technical interview at a software company? " Interviewer: Now we come to the part of the interview where we test your creative thinking. You are in a room with three switches that each control a different light fixture in another room. RPF: That seems straightforward. Interviewer: Um. RPF: Then I could obtain an inexpensive digital video camera and put it on a dolly with a sufficiently long rope attached to it.

Interviewer: Yeah, I guess so. RPF: And these are single switches? Interviewer: Does it matter? Rising Sun. 10 Tips to master the art of “status updates” « Surendra Phatak's Blog. What forms an ideal status update on a social network? Specifically a professional social network like LI? What makes people comment on discussions/ shares/ or for that matter just simple updates?

I do not really know but as I am working at it, I am able to learn the finer tricks of the trade. The plan is to share few of things which I have learned over past few months. It’s obvious that your updates have to be relevant to the Target group and should cater to their interests and needs. What might not be obvious are the 10 things below Shorter than a tweet You status update should be like a mini skirt. The imperfection I might sound strange here but it should be just short of complete or perfect. Interesting Vs important I have seen lot of not so important status updates getting lot of traction because they are interesting. In Installments Never try to do it all with one status update. Be Human Be genuine A curse that comes with being human. Be consistently inconsistent Rules and exceptions. Vorteile einer Zertifizierung. My Best Advice for Conducting User Interviews. In a previous life, I was a Professional Writing major and part-time journalist. I contributed to my school’s student newspaper, as well as the faculty and staff newspaper, and almost every week for two years, I wrote an arts column for the Pittsburgh City Paper — Western PA’s leading alternative newsweekly [read my old clips].

As a result of all that reporting, I became adept at interviewing people to get a good story. That skill has certainly served me well as a user experience designer, and now unsurprisingly, conducting user interviews is my absolute favorite part of this wonderful job. I’m in the thick of user research on my current project for House Party, and along the way I’ve been reminding myself of all sorts of best practices to squeeze out the most evocative insights from my participants. Perhaps the maxims that work so well for me will make you a more effective interviewer, too.

Set the schedule yourself Factor in breaks Recruit more participants than you need Record the sessions. UXPin Paper Prototyping Kit Helps Designers Mock Up Web Sites | Drake Martinet | Voices | AllThingsD | Share on LinkedIn. Encrypting Cookies in the Browser. Cookies are a convenient, often necessary way to maintain state and data in web applications. Since this is well known, cookies are a target and potential vulnerability you have to be aware of when developing for the web.

There are various ways to go about improving cookie security. In this article we’ll discuss an additional method, client-side encryption. Attacks on cookies Cookies are stored locally on a computer, usually in clear text. Cookies are generally set server-side using the ‘Set-Cookie’ HTTP header and sent to the client. Another common attack, cross-site scripting (Xss for short), is when some client-side code, usually JavaScript, is injected into a web page and executed without the user’s knowledge.

Encrypting cookies in your browser My company, CompletelyPrivateFiles.com, provides encryption solutions for the web. You’ll need an API account so your application can obtain the seed key from our servers. Now, you’re ready to read and write encrypted cookies. Cookie security. Top 6 Help Design Patterns for iPhone Apps. User Experience Designers usually aim to make application interfaces intuitive and easy to use without relying on help or a manual to guide the user through how to use the app.

However, there are times when an interface is most effective and efficient to use once some initial behaviors are learned. In these cases, designing an application to be completely intuitive upon first-time use can be impractical or detrimental to repetitive use. There are also times where a quick introduction on how to use an app simply makes the user feel more comfortable interacting with it for the first time, and is not a reflection of a poorly designed interface. iPhone applications that introduce new, innovative interaction models or that allow the user to access a wide range of information or complete several tasks often use first-time use help screens to help users learn how an app works. 1.

A demo animates a series of screens showing the primary functions of the application. Examples: Considerations: Pros: AjaxRatingScript. FlaggedRevs. The Flagged Revisions extension allows for Editor and Reviewer users to rate revisions of articles and set those revisions as the default revision to show upon normal page view. These revisions will remain the same even if included templates are changed or images are overwritten. This allows for MediaWiki to act more like a Content Management System (CMS). Download[edit | edit source] You can download the extension directly from the MediaWiki source code repository (browse code).

You can get: One of the extensions tags Not all extensions have tags. Go to the tags listClick the name of the tag you want to downloadClick "snapshot" The latest version of one of the extensions branches Each extension has a master branch containing the latest code (might be unstable). Go to the branches listClick the branch nameClick "snapshot" A snapshot made during the release of a MediaWiki version. This might be unstable and is not guaranteed to work with the associated MediaWiki version. Download snapshot Example. Add Colours Web design - Freelance/Portfolios CSS Gallery. L.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.uxmatters.com%2Fmt%2Farchives%2F2011%2F02%2Fasking-questions-about-internet-behavior-2. The Nano-Second SignUp :JDallCaps. Have you noticed how easier signing-up has got. Or is it because I spent a lot of time in the clunky Triassic era of world wide web – and it all looks easier to me now. Either way, easy is in.

The advent of sharing everything – from your files and photos to your quiz scores and the title of the current song playing on your mac – implies the competition is on: to make sharing easier and make signing-up to share, even more so. I can’t recollect how long the original Facebook sign-up page was, my gut feel it was longer than what it now is. Not always, there are horses for courses, as they say. Here is a hand-picked collection of some sign-up pages, that, for me, redefines the words: quick, simple and easy. With 5 fields to fill in and a couple of clicks, Virb.com (another visibly neat portfolio/media sharing site) ranks amongst the easy sign-ins, though that isn’t good enough!

Squarespace, a web hosting company is another great example of quick sign up. Kontain, is simplicity redefined. UX Designer as Product Owner. UX and Product Owner: The two-headed beast! For the past 4 months I’ve been functioning as the Product Owner for my Scrum team. Interestingly, I’m also the UX designer for the team. Many articles point to the challenges, at times seemingly insurmountable, that this dual-role creates. While those challenges are indeed rearing their, err, challenging heads, let me recap how the team has worked through them. Challenge #1: There is not enough time to be the PO and the UX person Both roles are full-time jobs.

The answer is to get those obligations pulling in the same direction. Challenge #2: developers need constant direction about what’s coming in each iteration. The UX designer, working in parallel with the rest of the team, is constantly providing assets, answers, and feedback. The way I’ve handled this is by splitting my time in the iteration. But wait! Challenge #3: Approval cycles can be notoriously long.

To solve this challenge I’ve had to become a UXPOlitician (hot!). [Jeff] The Untold Story of How My Dad Helped Invent the First Mac | Co.Design. Jef Raskin, my father, (below) helped develop the Macintosh, and I was recently looking at some of his old documents and came across his February 16, 1981 memo detailing the genesis of the Macintosh. It was written in reaction to Steve Jobs taking over managing hardware development. Reading through it, I was struck by a number of the core principals Apple now holds that were set in play three years before the Macintosh was released.

Much of this is particularly important in understanding Apple's culture and why we have the walled-garden experience of the iPhone, iPad, and the App Store. Even better, I found some sometimes snarky comments Jef had made to the memo as part of the Stanford Computer History project. The annotated memo follows my commentary. Apple Learns to Own the Entire Experience Reading the memo, we see that Apple was struggling with an explosion of fragmentation with the Apple II: This is the exact problem that Google Android now faces.

Interesting Sound Bytes Introduction. The Cognitive Style of Unix. One of the most deeply held beliefs in the culture of *nix (and everything that springs from it) is that the steep learning curve pays off. Yes, the tools seem cryptic and “hard-to-use”, with hardly any crutches for the beginner. But if you stick with it and keep learning you will be rewarded. When you grok the power of economical command lines, composability and extensibility, you’re glad you didn’t run back to the arms of the GUI on the first day. It was worth it. There is another belief that goes deeper, and it is the reason that after decades of existence and millions of newbie-suffering-hours, the learning curve has not become any easier, or gone away. I recently came across some research which rigorously backs up this line of thinking.

Dr. He frames the issue in terms of internalization vs externalization. However, Nimwegen’s studies reveal the following curve: From the paper: (emphasis mine) Their recommendation is less assistance: Help – How, When and what ... Why and why not ... Wireframing. Peterme.com. Swissmiss. Tea With Teresa. Tea With Teresa. Home. Understanding by Design. Prototyping and Wireframing - It's your choice which diagram tool supports your work best. I do not know whether you know it, but there are more than one real good wireframe tool in the software orbit - and there aren't a best for every one. As freelancer I have to gear myself and my work up for my individual clients, their business and their development procedures. And I am forced to work with different tools. And I have owned several licenses for various wireframe tools to support my client as good as I can.

But currently I just work with four tools. Concept-DrawVisioAxurePencil and Paper (A tool that you should never forget or is not to be underestimated – by the way … “Do you know the stencil kits by UIstencils?” Visit: )In recent years the number of tools available to help us document our development process by wireframes has steady risen. It can be invaluable and vital to have a visual representation of content, functions and hierarchy. 1.

Don't let your first glance fool you. ConceptDraw MindMap has a couple of options. 2. 3. 1. Prototyping and Wireframing - It's your choice which diagram tool supports your work best. Usability And You: The Design Process. As someone who works at a web design company running a usability tool , I get many questions from interested parties on how we use usability in our design process. Many people seem to see usability as an impediment to a smooth design process, as something that breaks up the workflow rather than complementing it and smoothing it out. They see implementing a usability testing process as a very time consuming, expensive, arduous task that adds little value to their business or for their clients. This is all very negative sounding, and something I hear repeated rather too frequently for my liking.

Contrary to this belief however, actual experience has shown us when done well, usability can speed up our development cycle, save us money, improve overall designs and usability, and show the clients the value of the work we do. As designers and developers on the cutting edge of internet trends we need to be evangelizing the concept of a better, more usable web. Our design process Design Sketches.

Improving perceived site performance with spinners. At the London Ajax meetup this week, Piotr (one of the creators of the rather good jsfiddle.net talked about spinners — the pretty common “I’m doing something” indicator — and how users perceive them. Apparently, people perceive Chrome to be faster in part because the little activity indicator keeps changing — it appears and disappears, and changes speed — while a page is loading. This sense of something happening persuades people that something is in fact happening, and faster, even if the actual speeds are identical.

So Piotr set up a randomized survey, comparing perceptions of load speed after clicking two buttons — it’s here if you’re interested. When you click the button there’s a delay before the spinner is shown, and then a short (random) time later the results are shown. Then you click another button, and the same thing happens. The results are here. How To Build A Product In 99 Days | Jet Cooper.

Today we launch a product. In a lot of ways, it's no different from the dozens of products we've launched for clients to date. They all start with a small but powerful idea that, with the right amount of love, could create an order of magnitude difference in the lives of many. Our idea is called Rocketr. It’s for teams that like to keep notebooks for their own small, but powerful ideas.

As is always the case, we agonized over every pixel, every interaction, every decision. Each Unique Decision The biggest difference in building our own product was the understanding that we were the absolute final say on each unique decision. The Importance of Sharing the Vision We’ve always believed in design being a difference-maker in a world where time is of greater value than money. ‘Minimum’ Truly is a Skill I’m beginning to wonder if it’s even possible to achieve “Minimum Viable Product” without having a team that challenges that definition (unless you’re Steve Jobs).

Tactically Speaking Random Quirks. Experience design, user experience, customer insights | ExperienceLab. User advocacy and human-centered design. Industrial design magazine + resource / Columns category. Posted by An Xiao Mina | 25 Nov 2013 | Comments (0) Hacking away at San Francisco's Freespace, a pop-up space for artists, designers, developers and other creatives.

I've been spending a lot of time at hackathons lately. It's not a surprise; here in the Bay Area, hackathons and coding sessions are a way of life, a social scene as common as a cocktail party in New York. The idea is what it sounds like: a bunch of people come together and "hack" on a project. It can be a group project or an individual project, something you've been working on for a while or something you're starting. And it's an idea I've seen come to life in creative communities across the globe, in places like Shanghai, Kampala and Manila. The "-athon" suffix is appropriate: As in a marathon, simply doing an activity with others is a lot more fun than coding alone, even when you're aiming for your personal best.

One of the many rooms for hacking at the California Academy of Sciences. continued... Moon (2009) continued... Design Thinking: A Useful Myth. Why Design Contests Are Bad. Easy website usability testing, make money, save time. | Overview. 10 Best UX (User Experience) Design Blogs : Web 2.0 : Technology. Pretty Sketchy | Jason Santa Maria. Why Great Ideas Can Fail. Design Without Designers. Why Design Education Must Change. I Have Seen the Future and I Am Opposed.

You Don’t Need a UX Portfolio. Ghost in the Pixel » Tips for portfolios. What are the essential skills for a ux designer. Why Don’t Usability Problems Get Fixed? Understanding the Value of Constructive Discussion in the Design Community Design Informer. Testmoderation. Design Thinking for Non-Designers - Articles on web design by Front, a Belfast, Northern Ireland team of web designers and developers. User Experience - UX Design - What Matters To Interaction Design Professionals. Design - What are some good UX books. Never Use a Warning When you Mean Undo. UI vs UX | bijansabet.com. How to get better at UI design. The role of design at Front: user centred design, design thinking and expressive design - Articles on web design by Front, a Belfast, Northern Ireland team of web designers and developers.

Storyboarding iPad Transitions. Winning Content by Leen Jones | Thoughts on influence, content strategy, and user experience. UsabilityPost. Responsive Web Design. CSSKarma. UX Freelancing. UI and Us — UI and Ux design — Interface — User Experience - UI and us Blog. Bobulate. 52 Weeks of UX.