Good Call-To-Action Buttons What can you do to make your calls-to-action more effective? The call-to-action button is an important tool in the user experience designer’s box of tricks. In this article I’ll give you a few pointers on providing effective ones. Prioritizing tasks Some tasks on your website are more important than others. Essentially, both analogies make the point that the majority of your site’s value is provided by a small number of tasks. With these priority tasks, you need to remove any friction that slows the user’s progress. Choosing your words carefully Buttons are for actions, like ‘Get a quote’, ‘Download’, ‘Open an account’, ‘Go to checkout’. Think about what your user would say if you asked him what he was trying to do. Using the right words reduces the friction of your key tasks. Cultural subtleties can be the cause of task friction as well. British people use trolleys (carts) or baskets when in real stores, so in the UK, Amazon calls the ‘Shopping Cart’ the ‘Shopping Basket’. Positioning Size
45 Fresh, Clean and Impressive Designs Advertisement Sometimes it’s just amazing to see, which level of usability, legibility and visual appeal can be achieved using some basic design techniques. In fact, some talented web-developers manage to deliver powerful, functional and gorgeous web-design in “look-and-feel”-style, which is easy to use and nice to see. Recently we’ve listed 50 Beautiful CSS-based web-design of 20061 and chosen some of the most beautiful and inspiring dark web-designs2. 5. 7. 8. 9. 12. 13. 16. 17. 18. 19. 21. 22. scpgt | matt northam15 23. sparklette.net16 26. 28. 29. luke stevens | design + consulting20 32. 34. sebdesign.eu | graphic and web design | online portfolio22 35. 36. 40. 41. kara burke illustrations : prints27 42. 45. It's done.
Great Visualizers: Always With Honor Design duo Tyler Lang and Elsa Chaves are Always With Honor, an Portland-based design team with a specialty in beautifully simple information displays and iconography. I first got turned on to / by their work when I spotted this awesome poster. It visualizes the many domains within design. Somewhat awesomely. (Here’s a link to a massive hi-res version) Simple shapes, simple typography, simple colour characterises their work. Struck me there was something cool about trying to visualize such an unimaginably complex process with super-simple graphics. Always With Honor create the best icons! They also had a strong influence on the look and feel of Good Magazine’s infographic Transparency section. My favourite piece, somewhat selfishly, is the Colours In Culture image on the cover of Information Is Beautiful. In fact, we’ve just litho-printed a gorgeous poster version of this image on 220 gsm, FSC-certified art paper. The coolest thing though is that it’s a 6-colour process print.
lunchbreath El Clampersand Happy to announce the first batch of Clampersands is now on sale at Core77′s Hand-Eye Supply. The Many Faces of Don Draper The dude has become so boring lately. Some spec work that never made it to print. Did this for a certain editor at a certain magazine last year. Holiday Wrappin’ Paper We sent these to all our clients, freelancers and associates. Printed at Screwball Press, Chicago. How The World Spends Its Time Online | Have you ever wondered how people across the world spend their time online? Global research firm Nielsen periodically releases data from its studies of consumer behavior online. Here are the 2010 findings regarding social networking, branding and world net usage. Total Time Online The average person spends more than 60 hours a month online. Social networking accounts for 22 percent of the time while 42 percent is spent viewing content, whether watching videos, reading articles or playing online games. Among people who use the Internet, each person visits 2,646 Web pages on 89 domains and logs in 57 times per month. Most Popular Brands The percentage of all online users that visit Google is 82. Social Network Usage The highest percentage of internet users who log onto social media is in Brazil, with 80 percent using social network sites. Daily Internet Activities For many, internet use is a daily occurrence. Click For Full Size Comments comments
Cell Size and Scale Some cells are visible to the unaided eye The smallest objects that the unaided human eye can see are about 0.1 mm long. That means that under the right conditions, you might be able to see an ameoba proteus, a human egg, and a paramecium without using magnification. Smaller cells are easily visible under a light microscope. To see anything smaller than 500 nm, you will need an electron microscope. Adenine The label on the nucleotide is not quite accurate. How can an X chromosome be nearly as big as the head of the sperm cell? No, this isn't a mistake. The X chromosome is shown here in a condensed state, as it would appear in a cell that's going through mitosis. A chromosome is made up of genetic material (one long piece of DNA) wrapped around structural support proteins (histones). Carbon The size of the carbon atom is based on its van der Waals radius.
The 2010 Social Networking Map This post was written by Jenny Urbano, our Social Media Manager. Here at Demandforce, we love seeing and celebrating your ideas! And more than that, we love to hear from YOU. We want to bridge the gap between us and you, so that’s why we’re offering a once in a lifetime opportunity to win a trip to San Francisco, sightsee in this amazing city, visit Demandforce headquarters and share your ideas with us! 6 winners, and a guest of their choice will be flown out to San Francisco, California on March 12-14th, 2014, where they will stay in Union Square, spend a day at Demandforce, have dinner with the team, and explore the lovely City by the Bay! For contest rules, and how to enter, please visit our post in the Generation Demandforce Community here. Good luck!