Tips For Making Your Website Multilingual Friendly
Aug 30, 2010 General, Inspiration, Resources, Tutorials
Tweet Many people overlook making their websites multilingual friendly thinking that the majority of their traffic or visitors understand the English language. One thing to note is that nearly two billion people worldwide now have access to the internet, which is almost one third of the world’s population. Therefore, the expansion of your website worldwide depends greatly upon multilingual support. Implementing multilingual support may sound as easy as just translating your pages, however in most cases, it is not.
Tags: accessibility, article, color, Colors, Design, english, flexible-design, idesign-studios, Inspiration, language, targeted, thoughts, Tutorials, usability
User Experience and the Platform War
Aug 10, 2010 General, Resources
If there is one thing constant about the technology industry, it’s the fact that there is always a battle taking place. Whether it’s to dominate a platform or agree on standards, we are always evolving, and often debating over which direction is best. It’s imperative, however, that our focus on user experience not get lost in the crossfire. [Editor's note: In the spirit of full disclosure, this look into the present state of UX is written by a member of the EffectiveUI team.] Right now we are in the midst of what I call the “Platform War.” Apple-versus-Adobe hit a fever pitch this spring.
Tags: apple, battle, events, platform, process & practice, rebecca-flavin, stumbleupon, technology, tools, usability, user, user experience, ux-booth, words
Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions
Aug 9, 2010 General
Despite the somewhat provocative title, you shouldn’t really stop designing aesthetics. Gradients and colors and contrast are all good, but there’s a more important side to web design that many people overlook most of the time: Designing emotions. Discussing emotion in design is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, it seems to be popping up in more and more blog posts and speaker sessions. In fact I saw at least three different web designers say that it was the subject of the talk which they had recently submitted for next year’s SXSWi.
Tags: creating-emotions, Design, development, emotions, friends, start-designing-emotions, usability
Capturing Customer Data on the Web
Aug 6, 2010 General, Inspiration, Resources, Tutorials
Data – for some reason when I hear the term, I still tend to think of the almost, but not quite human android from Star Trek: The Next Generation . As cool as good old, white-skinned Data might have been, though, in the real world data is a much more immediate entity that drives much of what goes on in our everyday lives. In fact, this whole thing that we call the internet has been constructed on data of some type. HTML is a type of content data.
Tags: article, boxed-in-design, clients, Design, Inspiration, internet, thoughts, Tutorials, usability
Designing with Paper Prototyping
Aug 5, 2010 General, Resources, Tutorials
Paper Prototyping. Prototyping is key to any successful design. Paper prototyping is usually the first step, but does it fit into a world where mobile devices are king? Yes, but not using the conventional method.
Tags: Design, internet, iphone, method, paper, paper-prototyping, presentations, process & practice, prototype, Resources, stumbleupon, Tutorials, usability, ux-booth
Overcoming the Obstacles of Usability Testing
Jul 27, 2010 General, Resources
When people hear about ‘usability testing,’ many things come to mind—eye-tracking cameras, big HCI labs, a long testing process, a lot of expenses, and maybe a little confusion as well. Even at this stage in the proverbial game, usability testing isn’t so well understood, and misconceptions abound. While it’s true that when doing usability testing there are several stumbling blocks that can impede your progress (lack of funding, lack of time, lack of motivation, and especially lack of testers), there are also many ways to get around these issues. There may even be reasons why they’re no longer valid in today’s Internet world.
Tags: clients, Design, facebook, jacob-creech, presentations, process & practice, project, stumbleupon, time, usability, usability-testing, user testing, ux-booth
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy
Jul 20, 2010 General, Resources
A common occurrence: you or someone you know wants to create content and have it published online. A slightly less common occurrence? Having that same someone articulate high aspirations for their content . For those select few, instead of creating content destined for some digital landfill, their content is special; it’s going places and it’s taking them, their brand, and their experience with it.
Tags: analytics, article, content-strategy, definition, Design, follow, guide, strategy, usability, ux-booth
Complete Beginner’s Guide to Content Strategy
Jul 20, 2010 General, Resources
A common occurrence: you or someone you know wants to create content and have it published online. A slightly less common occurrence? Having that same someone articulate high aspirations for their content . For those select few, instead of creating content destined for some digital landfill, their content is special; it’s going places and it’s taking them, their brand, and their experience with it.
Tags: article, business, communication, content, content-strategy, definition, Design, facebook, usability
Content Organization: Deciding What Matters Most
Jul 12, 2010 General, Inspiration, Resources, Tutorials
The content of any website is paramount to a site’s success. High quality content, regardless of whether the site aims to inform, entertain, or sell a product, will increase the site’s likelihood of converting visitors. But beyond providing high quality content, a site also needs to organize that content in a way that makes it accessible to visitors. Prioritizing your content is one of the best ways to make sure your visitors are finding the information you want them to find, and that they want to find.
Tags: advertising, card-sorting, content, Design, designer, development, naldz-graphics, speak-human, Tutorials, usability, User Interface, visitors, Web Design
Diving Into The User Interface With Fundamental Questions
Jun 28, 2010 General, Inspiration, Resources, Tutorials
The charismatic process of designing a user interface is one that requires not only the adequate skills, but understanding of an effective user to application relationship. Engineering an effective user interface means you should place focus on certain parameters that will allow you to build a set of accomplished user goals. Everything from the visual elements to the functional aspects must be in tact. This might sound challenging, and many times it will be, however, if you have the right set of tools at your disposal then designing a UI that lets the user interact with minimal adaptation is definitely achievable .
Tags: article, color, idesign-studios, looney-designer, nice-pic-eh, poster-printing, Tutorials, usability, user
