Users love simple and familiar designs – Why websites need to make a great first impression Posted by Dave Thau, Senior Developer Advocate Google's GeoEDU Outreach program is excited to announce the opening of the second round of our Geo Education Awards, aimed at supporting qualifying educational institutions who are creating content and curricula for their mapping, remote sensing, or GIS initiatives. If you are an educator in these areas, we encourage you to apply for an award. To celebrate the first round of awardees, and give a sense of the kind of work we have supported in the past, here are brief descriptions of some of our previous awards. Nicholas Clinton, Tsinghua University Development of online remote sensing course content using Google Earth Engine Nick is building 10 labs for an introductory remote sensing class. Topics include studying electromagnetic radiation, image processing, time series analysis, and change detection. Declan G.
Raphaël—JavaScript Library No Such Thing As Perfect Q: Is it possible for a designer to look at their designs from a brand new user’s perspective? Over the years, have you learned how to do this even a little bit better than when you began? Sometimes I feel like I can, and that with more practice I’ll be even better, but people keep saying that I should suck it up and have other people test my designs for me. I learn something new every time, but I wonder if I’ll ever reach a point where user testing reveals what I made is “perfect” and doesn’t need to be fixed. A: First off, let’s deal with this idea of “perfect”. And no, it’s not possible for a designer to look at their work from a brand new user’s perspective. You’re also conflating two very important concepts here. Before you design anything, you need to research the users you’re designing for. Once you’ve done the research, and have a design solution that you think works to solve the problem, then you test it. You will only ever know what you know. You will get better with practice.
d3.js Discover the secrets of a great landing page How do you persuade someone to visit your web page? And how do you persuade them to purchase your product or sign up for your newsletter? Landing page optimization is the answer. What's the difference between a landing page and a home page? A home page provides information about your site. The landing page is more specific. In the words of "America's Greatest Marketer" Seth Godin (according to American Way Magazine) a landing page is there to initiate only one of five actions: Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else's).Get a visitor to buy.Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). What benefits will you gain from an optimized landing page? 1) Like a needle, you'll get found more easily in the haystack that is the internet. 2) More people will convert when they arrive at your website (ie, take the course of action that you intended them to take). 4) You'll learn about your customers' likes and dislikes. Your headline
BigVideo.js - The jQuery Plugin for Big Background Video The jQuery Plugin for Big Background Video (and Images) This plugin makes it easy to add fit-to-fill background video to websites. It can play silent ambient background video (or series of videos). BigVideo.js is built on top of Video.js from zencoder. You can read about how to use BigVideo.js below. DOWNLOAD: zip tar examples bower install BigVideo.js Setup BigVideo.js uses the Video.js api. To simply play a video that takes up the entire browser window (like in this example), do this: For crossbrowser fallbacks, you can include a source order with different video formats. Ambient Video To play silent video in the background of a page (like in this example), use BigVideo’s ambient setting: Or play a series of ambient background videos (like in this example) Keep in mind that mobile devices do not allow video autoplay. Video.js Because BigVideo.js is built on top of Video.js, you can use the Video.js api. BV.getPlayer().pause(); Tips For best results, I recommend using Vimeo.
How to Create Content Maps for Planning Your Website’s Content Content mapping is a visual technique that will help you organize and understand the content of a website. It can be a simple and valuable part of your site’s overall content strategy. This short and simple guide should help you get started. What is Content Mapping? Content mapping is similar to mind maps, but it’s focused on a site’s content. It will help you explore and visualize your content. More specifically, content mapping allows you to see your content as it relates to the goals of your client, the goals of your site users and all the other pieces of content in your website (as well as external websites), allowing you to spot gaps (and opportunities) in your content development strategy. I’ll cover two types of content mapping in this guide: Mapping your content to goals (the goals of the client and the goals of site users)Mapping your content to other content Note: Content mapping may lead to mind-melting over-complication! Why Should You Create Content Maps? Content Mapping Tools
Cubism.js Time Series Visualization foo7.6 bar−6.2 foo + bar1.4 foo - bar14 Cubism.js is a D3 plugin for visualizing time series. Scalable Cubism fetches time series data incrementally: after the initial display, Cubism reduces server load by polling only the most recent values. Effective Cubism also scales in terms of perception: small multiples aligned by time facilitate rapid comparison. Area (120px)7.6 Area (30px)7.6 In contrast, horizon charts reduce vertical space without losing resolution. Horizon, 1-band (120px)7.6 Horizon, 2-band (60px)7.6 Horizon, 3-band (40px)7.6 Horizon, 4-band (30px)7.6 By combining position and color, horizon charts improve perception: position is highly effective at discriminating small changes, while color differentiates large changes. Flexible Cubism is data-source agnostic. Want to learn more?
Login Screen – behind the scenes Here at GoSquared, we love to obsess over the little details that make the real difference in your experience of the site and Dashboard. The new login screen design and experience was no exception. We wanted the login screen to feel personal and for our customers to feel comfortable and familar with signing in. Getting personal. We decided to use Gravatar to show an image relating to the users email – which updates every time the email changes. Quick fades between the GoSquared logo and the Gravatar, depending on whether a Gravatar is found or not, make the transition natural. BREAKING! When have you ever gone to “Forgot your password” without entering an email first, or having guessed a password? 25+% of customers use Gmail. Mistyping your email address is easy, and infuriating. And then there’s the final touch, as soon as you submit the form, the box shrinks away into the background, leaving a loading spinner. Check it out for real now!
spin.js - Loader How To Design Mental Models That Create a Superior User Experience “Much of this article is adapted or excerpted from the book Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with User Behavior by Indi Young (Rosenfeld Media, 2008).” Designing something right requires that you completely understand what a person wants to get done. You need to understand how a person uses something if you’re going to get the design right for them. You also need to know the person’s goals and the procedures she/he follows to accomplish those goals. Mental models give you a deep understanding of people’s motivations and thought processes along with the emotional and philosophical landscape in which they are operating. Let’s begin with a simple mental model that might be used by a company like Procter and Gamble to determine the needs of its market on a typical work or school day. Click to enlarge Mental model of a typical morning for people who commute to work or school. They can also act as a road map, ensuring continuity of vision and opportunity. Affinity Diagram Grocery Store