Designing mobile apps requires a deep knowledge of devices, and it often means changing the way we think — even if that means leaving behind much of what we’ve learned from designing for the web. Changing one’s mindset to adapt to apps comes from the inside. No one will force you to do it. If you don’t adjust, you run the risk of becoming little more than an icon factory, just a small step in a larger process of design. Designing apps requires a new way of thinking. It’s time to leave our web design boxes and to understand smartphones, tablets and even watches as separate and distinct devices.
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Mobile technology has brought us some fantastic benefits, but with always available, always connected technology, it can have a negative impact when it demands our attention and distracts us from the real world.When was the last time you enjoyed a meal with friends without it being interrupted by people paying attention to their smartphones instead of you? How many times have you had to watch out for pedestrians who are walking with their faces buried in a device, oblivious to their surroundings? We have to shift our design focus from technology to the world around us. As smartwatches and wearables become more popular, we need to create design experiences that allow us to create experiences that are still engaging, but less distracting.
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By 2030, around 19% of people in the US will be over 65. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it happens to be about the same number of people in the US who own an iPhone today. Which of these two groups do you think Silicon Valley spends more time thinking about? This seems unfortunate when you consider all of the things technology has to offer older people. A lot of people in the tech industry talk about “changing the world” and “making people’s lives better.” But bad design is excluding whole sections of the population from the benefits of technology. If you’re a designer, you can help change that!
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The way you frame communication, or how you say something, could be extremely effective at persuading people to start using your product. In this article, Victor Yocco will cover how to effectively frame a message, and how to test it before implementation. Design teams need to give deeper thought to how they are conveying their message, not just what they are saying. Outlined above is a process for creating and testing a message, which will help you communicate clearly and effectively with users. Your messages will resonate with them.
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A diagnostic can be done during design and development to ensure that the mobile website or app adheres to best practices and guidelines. It also serves as a great starting point for a redesign to identify particular opportunities for improvement. In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will describe a process you can follow to evaluate a mobile UX, be it for an app or a website accessed on a mobile device. Alongside the explanation of each step, you’ll illustrate the step using the United States Postal Service as an unwitting real-world example.
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When planning your IA, involve users of your website in the process as soon as you can. Card sorting is a great way to become familiar with information architecture and user-centred design. It’s cheap, reliable and easy to set up. It’s a great way to become familiar with concepts such as information architecture and user-centred design. In this article, Pierre Croft will discuss card sorting, a tried and true technique for doing just that. You’ll go through some practical tips for running a card-sorting session, and also cover some examples.
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When sliders are not done well, they can cause a lot of frustration (not to mention lost sales) by standing between your customers and what they want. And getting them wrong is surprisingly easy.
In this article, Greg Nudelman and Daria Kempka will present a solution, including the design and code, for a new type of Android slider to address common problems, along with a downloadable Android mini-app for you to try out. It’s a deep dive into sliders based on a chapter in Android Design Patterns. Working with sliders is no great mystery, and there’s nothing to stop you from trying!
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Dammed up inside our heads are creative waterfalls of fresh interactions, transitions, and animations. But how are we supposed to communicate them to our teams, our developers? How do we get them out of our heads? Through a game of charades? Not being able to “show” the interactions and animations that bring our designs to life is one of the common struggles plaguing our industry. Exacerbating the urgency of this challenge is the simple fact that we now design for screens that can be tapped, pinched, swiped, zoomed, and more.
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Jon Bernbach is a user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) designer of mobile and web applications. In a way, like a teacher, he needs to present information in an easily understandable way to new visitors. He needs to consider how his students (end users) consume the information that he provides. So, reflection on his high-school experience serves a purpose (aside from painful fashion memories).
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There are myriad ways to integrate user-centered thinking into the creative process of UX design, and personas are one of the most effective ways to empathize with and analyze users. This final part of the series will explain an effective method of creating a persona. There is no one right way to develop one, but the method Shlomo Goltz will share here is based on processes developed, field-tested and refined over the years at the interaction design agency Cooper. This process follows a logical order that begins with knowing nothing about users and ends with a refined perspective of users that can be shared with others.
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