Summary: A user’s understanding of an icon is based on previous experience. Due to the absence of a standard usage for most icons, text labels are necessary to communicate the meaning and reduce ambiguity.Aurora Harley | July 27, 2014 In addition to…

May 14, 2013 | by Nick Switzer The best responsive web designs show a rich understanding of what users are looking for and the right way to deliver it. The mobile market is exploding with unprecedented growth, and marketers are no…

by: Rachel Lovinger  |  Posted on March 27, 2007 Not that familiar with “content strategy?” That’s ok. It’s in my job title, and I struggle every time I’m asked what I do for a living. Many people have no idea what…

Summary: Modern day UX research methods answer a wide range of questions. To know when to use which user research method, each of 20 methods is mapped across 3 dimensions and over time within a typical product-development process.Christian Rohrer on October 12,…

When designing for the web, you can analyze usage data for your product and compare different interfaces in A/B tests. This is sometimes called “data-driven design”, but I prefer to think of it as data-informed design — the designer is still…

Microinteractions are contained product moments that revolve around a single use case—they have one main task. Every time you change a setting, sync your data or devices, set an alarm, pick a password, log in, set a status message, or favorite…

“Oh hai Smashing Magazine!” That’s one of the dozen ways that Flickr welcomes its users upon signing in every time. It’s an easily overlooked detail, one that the service would work without flawlessly. Yet this detail is a big part of…

We have many words for the frustration we feel when an interface isn’t directing us to what we need to know. Loud, messy, cluttered, busy. These words have been appropriated from other parts of life, of course, but we need them…

Visual design focuses on the aesthetics of a site and its related materials by strategically implementing images, colors, fonts, and other elements.  A successful visual design does not take away from the content on the page or function.  Instead, it enhances…

by Luke Wroblewski – July 29, 2013 The situation on mobile is dire. People expect a faster experience on mobile then they get on the desktop but the networks connecting them to your service are naturally slower. As a result, your…

July 24, 2012 | by Ted O’Meara Noticing and tracking failures helps discover unexpected uses of your product or service and improves flow for primary use cases. You stumble, you fall, you keep getting up until you can walk. Failure is…