The easiest way to observe bad user interfaces is by keeping your eyes open. Every time you order something online, every time you visit a new website, every time you fill in a form, purchase a product or publish a post, think about how you’re being asked to perform that task. Where are the buttons […]
A Guide to Getting Ready for iOS 12 Notifications for Designers
Now that iOS 12 is out and some users have upgraded to the operating system, you’ll want to start revising your application to take advantage of the new features of iOS 12 notifications. What’s new in iOS 12 Notifications? iOS 12 brings a number of changes to how notifications work. While no single change completely […]
Best Practices For Website Footer Design
Almost everything in website design has changed over time, but the core elements have always remained the same. There’s a header, navigation, a body, and a footer. But what’s a website footer for? Is it truly necessary, in 2018, to run a footer on your site? Why should I have a website footer anyway? Nothing […]
7 Key Factors In Interviewing Users for UX Surveys
When it comes down to it, you need to find out if your design works for the end user. That’s what usability testing is all about. As a designer, you live in a small bubble, intimately familiar with the design, fluent enough to navigate complex menus with ease. But will the user attain the same […]
Creating Smooth User Pathways With Your UX
As a web designer, it’s easy to jump right in to the visual part of web design. We start messing with templates and wireframing pages right away, excited to start a new project. But that’s really the last step of the process. First, we need to think about how our users will progress through the […]
The Hamburger Menu Is Stupid and Worth Killing
If you don’t know what the “hamburger menu” is, it’s a mobile app design icon used to indicate the presence of a hidden menu. The familiar icon includes three horizontal lines of equal length stacked on top of each other, representing an abstracted, flattened hamburger in its most basic elements. Its cutesy name has stuck […]
Best Practices for Designing Push Notifications
Notifications are a crucial part of any app. Not only are they a key part of keeping users engaged with your application: many apps require notifications for their basic functionality. You won’t have much of an email app, for example, if you don’t have notifications. But the line between good notifications and bad notifications is […]
Building Effective Navigation Menus
Designing effective navigation menus should be a core competency of any decent web designer. A good navigation menu will be short, well-organized, sufficiently descriptive and effective at corralling user intent. There no secret recipe involved: it comes down to empathy for the user and understanding of their intentions.
How to Write Helpful User Tutorials and Onboarding Guides
Writing user tutorials is essential to launching any new software project. But writing helpful user tutorials requires a careful hand, with a correct understanding of the user’s needs and expectations. With a solid foundation of empathy and understanding, we can build user tutorials that will educate our users without losing their attention or going over […]
