Top 29 Free UX Tools and Extensions Ever wonder how usable your site appears to someone with a disability, slower connection, or different setup? This list of tools highlights some of the most useful tools and extensions for making your website more usable. Accessibility Tools Web Accessibility Checker The accessibility checker evaluates your Web page and produces a report of all accessibility problems for your selected guideline. The checker identifies known problems, likely problems, and potential problems. Worldspace Accessibility Analysis Worldspace is an accessibility analysis tool designed to identify errors with Section 508, and the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. The Flicker Rate Test for GIF images helps designers test images to ensure they won’t affect users with photosensitive epilepsy.Flicker Rate Test for GIF Images People with photosensitive epilepsy can have seizures triggered by flickering or flashing. Validators CSS Validation Service Validate your CSS or CSS documents or HTML with CSS. Color Tools
Stripe Generator - ajax diagonal stripes background designer TIP: You can bookmark your favorite stripes simply pressing CTRL + D (Win/Linux) / CMD + D (Mac). stripe sizespacingstripe color(s)background styleshadowgradient heightbackground color(s)stripe orientation preview Tile size: 40px * 40px open fullscreen preview Tiled 15 seconds how-to Play with sliders and color pickers, untill you obtain a super-cool stripe tile Press "Download" to save your creation Edit your css adding this line to the element you want to stripe:background-image: url("path-to-stripe.png"); If you want to only repeat horizontally your tile (as in the case of tiles with gradient), you must add this line too: background-repeat: repeat-x; stay tuned about new webdesign, ajax, web 2.0 tools!
Customer Experience v User Experience In the process of writing the book (, yes, it’s coming, I promise!) I found myself surprisingly flummoxed when it came to writing about Experience Strategy and the role it plays (or should play) in business strategy. I’ve talked about Experience Strategy with clients over the years, written Experience Strategies for projects I’ve worked on, and worked under the illusion that I was clear about what this actually entailed… however, in coming to write about and thereby define what it meant, it all of a sudden felt very fuzzy. What is Experience Strategy? Having done a review of some of the significant contributions to this topic from the UX community, I found myself dissatisfied… for Johnny Holland some time ago. Then I discovered Customer Experience (CX). Turns out there is this whole other profession, born, it seems, mostly from the marketing discipline, who have an active interest in orchestrating company wide good experience for their customers. This worries me.
UX is for Cheesemakers, Too I’ve worked as a user experience designer for large corporations and agencies for a few years now, and have found a lot of inflated terminology creeping into my vocabulary—alarming anyone who hasn’t ‘gone corporate’. So when I was asked to help a small Orkney Island dairy farm to sell their product, I had cause to rethink: do most of the phrases and practices we use actually mean anything to anyone but us? I have no doubt that the service and UX design ethos works. How can you design something great for someone without knowing enough about what they actually want? However, there is an extensive range of methods we use to get this information, and those methods have names like 'service safaris' and 'desktop walkthroughs'. In truth, for very small businesses, UX and service design practices would appear to be an impractical luxury. Step 1: Creating a Stakeholder Map The Farmers The Wilsons are the husband-and-wife team who own Noltland farm. The Shopkeepers The Local Community The Cows 3. 4.
Newspaper websites need to improve their readability Most newspaper websites are doing a bad design job in making their stories readable. Too many are using: small fonts,long off-putting paragraphs,no subheadings,no in-content boxes or pictures, andno in-content links. To explain more, I’ve written a companion post on online readability (design, not writing – and this post was first published here). And here’s an example each of their news stories so you can see the issue: Daily Mail, Express, FT, Guardian, Independent, Mirror, Sun, Telegraph, Times. Main readability design mistakes This table summarises the main ways they are going wrong. Tiny fonts They are all using font sizes that are too small for comfortable reading on copy-heavy pages. But most of the sites use 12 or 13px fonts for body copy. No sub-headings Long paragraphs Nearly half use long paragraphs, serving up great slabs of unappealing copy. Bad readability These three are vying for last place when it comes to readability. Fairly poor readability Getting there Headings explained
How people really use the iPhone - SlideShare Font Families: How to Decide Which Font Family to Use -- Serif, One of the easiest ways to affect the design of a web page is with the fonts that you use. But many beginning web designers often go crazy changing fonts every couple words and experimenting with fonts that are virtually unreadable, just because they are “cool.” This article will help you find the font family that works best for your situation. Some Rules-of-Thumb Don’t use more than 3–four fonts on any one page. Remember that these are all suggestions, not hard and fast rules. Sans serif Fonts are the Basis of Your Site Sans serif fonts are those fonts that have no “serifs”—the little hooks on the ends of the letters. If you’ve taken any print design courses you’ve probably been told that you should only use sans serif fonts for headlines. This isn't true as much now, because monitors have much better resolution than they did when the web was young. Best Practice: use sans serif fonts for your web page body copy. Some examples of sans-serif fonts are: Use Serif Fonts for Print
What makes a good UX designer? What makes a good UX designer? It’s an important question, not just for current and aspiring UX designers, but also for those looking to hire a UX designer and for those working with UX designers. In this article I outline some of the skills, characteristics and qualities that in my opinion a good UX designer should possess and discuss what it is that I think really makes for a good UX designer. But there’s no such thing as a typical UX designer Before I dive in to what in my opinion makes a good UX designer I think that it’s worth pointing out that in my experience there’s really no such thing as a typical UX designer. Being like Mr T I pity the fool! UX designers by nature are a varied bunch. Being a designer First and foremost I think that a UX designer should be just that – a designer. Being a researcher UX designers obviously need to be designers, but they shouldn’t just be designers. Being a techie Being a creative Being a suit Being a team player It’s more than just skills Being dedicated
What Is User Experience Design? Overview, Tools And Resources Advertisement Websites and Web applications have become progressively more complex as our industry’s technologies and methodologies advance. What used to be a one-way static medium has evolved into a very rich and interactive experience. But regardless of how much has changed in the production process, a website’s success still hinges on just one thing: how users perceive it. User experience design is all about striving to make them answer “Yes” to all of those questions. What Is User Experience? User experience (abbreviated as UX) is how a person feels when interfacing with a system. Those who work on UX (called UX designers) study and evaluate how users feel about a system, looking at such things as ease of use, perception of the value of the system, utility, efficiency in performing tasks and so forth. UX designers also look at sub-systems and processes within a system. Compared to many other disciplines, particularly Web-based systems, UX is relatively new. Why Is UX Important?
Online Advertising And Its Impact On Web Design In recent years, advertising has become a major revenue source for many websites. Not too long ago, online ads were often met with disapproval from visitors, and advertisers were unsure about their value or effectiveness. Today, most visitors have come to expect ads on commercial websites, and advertisers have recognized the potential of various online ad opportunities. Although advertising is a concern for website owners and those pushing products or services, it is also has an impact on Web designers, because they have to be able to design and develop websites that can produce ad revenue and still meet the needs of visitors. While advertisements are hardly the primary concern of Web designers in general, not accounting for them will result in a very awkward layout that can either detract from the flow of the website or put the ads in a spot where they will not receive enough attention from visitors. Starting with the Basics Why do advertisers pay for ads? The Conundrum of Online Ads 1.
20 Steps to Better Wireframing | Think Vitamin Possibly the biggest mistake in any development project is failure to plan. Recently, the owner of a prospective start-up told me that planning was unnecessary and a good developer could just start coding. This, I promise you, will end in tears. Wireframing is one of the first steps in your planning process and arguably it’s one of the most important ones. 1) Be Clear About Your Objective As a developer I can understand the temptation to jump in and start coding. A wireframe will help you identify many of these issues in a way that is time and cost effective. The process also helps to create a better understanding of the application. The final output will be a blueprint from which designers, developers, architects and project managers will work and makes sure everyone is in sync. 2) Make it Functional, Not Pretty There are variations in how wireframes are presented and this is reflected in the various tools available. 4) Decide Who’s in Charge? design
Logo Design Process of Top Graphic Designers Posted on 01'08 Feb Posted on February 1, 2008 along with 212 JUST™ Creative Comments Want to know the secrets of how top graphic designers create their logos? This article will reveal exactly how top logo designers of today’s modern age create their logos. It will show the design process that these designers go through to get to their final logo design. Their Design Process: The BriefResearchVisual ResearchSketching & ConceptualisingReflectionPositioningPresentationsCelebration 1. Nearly all designers agree that the initial accumulation of information from the client is the most important step, either by a face to face interview or a questionnaire. If you haven’t got a client yet you may be interested in how to get your first job. 2. After moulding the design brief, getting to know your client’s businesses is the next crucial step in making a logo successful. 3. This is research not into the clients business, but into the actual logo style. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Summary Moral Share this Article