- Simple and Usable: An Interview with Giles Colborne
- Dec 13, 2010
- Karen McGrane interviews Giles Colborne about his book, Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design, where he discusses the four core solutions for simplifying, advice for designers, and finding “simplicty on the other side of complexity.”
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- The Art and Science of Influential Web Content: What Rhetoric Really Is
- Dec 1, 2010
- In this excerpt from her book, Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content, Colleen Jones distills many of the useful ideas from the debate on the theory and scope of rhetoric into four principles for web content and offers advice on when to use what principles.
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- Obvious, Yet Subtle: Making Interactivity Easy for Users
- Nov 22, 2010
- As the creator of an interactive project, you expend a lot of effort to make the project intuitive for the end user. You have to anticipate the needs and reactions of the viewers. Somehow, you have to make it obvious where to click in order to make things happen; otherwise, how will they know where all the fun is? Claudia McCue shows how to make interactivity simpler for your users.
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- The Art and Science of Influential Web Content: An Interview with Colleen Jones
- Nov 18, 2010
- Colleen Jones, author of Clout: The Art and Science of Influential Web Content, discusses why influential web content is critical, the three real benefits of social networking, and the biggest mistake most organizations make with regard to their web content.
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- Fractal Documents Tell Infinite Stories: An Interview with Dan Brown
- Nov 17, 2010
- Miraz Jordan interviews Dan Brown, author of Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, 2nd Edition, about how the field of user experience has changed, the three kinds of pressure user experience will face over the next decade, and why designers need to convey their concepts through stories.
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- Undercover User Experience Design: Making It Real
- Oct 28, 2010
- The authors of Undercover User Experience Design discuss deliverables that you can use to document your ongoing design work, including sitemap, storyboard, and wireframe.
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- Simple and Usable Web, Mobile, and Interaction Design: Remove
- Oct 6, 2010
- Giles Colborne explains the “remove” strategy, which is about removing distractions to bring focus to your project, including learning what’s valuable to users, focusing your resources on delivering value, meeting users’ goals, and removing the distractions of tiny speed bumps that add to the load on the user.
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- Interaction Design Frameworks that Work: Search
- Sep 6, 2010
- How can you apply lessons from Google to on-site search to generate effective results and commonsense interactions? In this chapter from their book, Web Anatomy, Robert Hoekman and Jared Sppol explain the elements you need for a good search engine interface and how they need to work.
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- InterACT with Web Standards: Positioning
- Jun 3, 2010
- Chris Mills covers positioning, one of the hardest concepts to grasp in CSS. He also sneaks in some words about z-index and media queries for an extra special crunchy treat.
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- InterACT with Web Standards: Learning from the Web
- Jun 1, 2010
- Much like anything, learning effectively on the Web requires a skill set that goes beyond constructing a solid keyword search in Google. Denise R. Jacobs shows you how to identify your learning style, introduces you to useful online tools, and explains the best ways to collaborate, share, and find inspiration.
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- The Case for Designing with Progressive Enhancement
- May 14, 2010
- Learn how to create sites that deliver the highly interactive experiences that JavaScript, advanced CSS, and Ajax afford, and at the same time ensure that the very same codebase will work everywhere.
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- Designing with Progressive Enhancement: Applying Styles Effectively
- Mar 10, 2010
- In this chapter, learn the best practices for applying CSS with progressive enhancement, including a review of how to divide styles into basic and enhanced style sheets, and techniques to improve the accessibility, usability, and performance of styles.
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- Q&A with Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice: An Interview by Jason Cranford Teague
- Feb 17, 2010
- Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but how can you truly know what they are beholding? In their new book, Eyetracking Web Usability, Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice explore usability through examining the gaze of the viewer. Jason Cranford Teague had a chance to talk to them about Web usability studies, navigation, misdirecting your audience, and the frustration of ad overload.
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- What Do You Test, and When Do You Test It?: Why the Hardest Part Is Starting Early Enough
- Jan 14, 2010
- If there’s one thing that usability professionals agree on, it’s that you want to start testing as early as possible. Steve Krug shows you how to do it.
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- Fluid Web Typography: Scale & Rhythm
- Dec 23, 2009
- Jason Cranford Teague shows how giving careful consideration to the measurements and scale you are designing for is what separates good Web typography from great Web typography.
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- Eyetracking Web Usability: Images
- Dec 11, 2009
- In this chapter, Jakob Nielsen and Kara Pernice examine what specific attributes attract people or repel them from images on the Web.
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- Interaction Design Frameworks that Work: Search
- Dec 7, 2009
- How can we apply lessons from Google to on-site search to generate effective results and commonsense interactions? Robert Hoekman and Jared Spool discuss the web anatomy of search.
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- Planning for and Managing Browser Support
- Dec 7, 2009
- With a flurry of new browsers hitting users’ computers and mobile devices this year, everyone involved with the Web has had to scramble to ensure that their sites are compatible with the latest and greatest. This has left many Web professionals and business teams wondering, “What browsers should my site support?” Kimberly Blessing helps you answer that question.
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- Research-Directed Design Methods: Project Definition
- Nov 16, 2009
- Sarah Horto shows the importance of restraint in approaching a new website design project. Project success depends on defining the project purpose and goals before diving into wireframes, navigation, and especially visual design.
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- The Future of Web Standards
- Nov 12, 2009
- This chapter starts by connecting the dots between web standards, "Web 2.0," Search engine optimization (SEO), and other industry-leading ideas that can make even a businessperson who is indifferent to technology sit up and roll over. This chapter is also for web designers and developers who want to understand what the best web standards have in common, where they came from, and where they (and we) are going.
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