Your Facebook Account has Three Passwords How Facebook Will Fix Its Like Button Problem You can't deny the success of Facebook's Like button. Its popularity quickly skyrocketed; it took less than a month for the button to appear on more than 100,000 websites. Now it is a standard method for endorsing something on the social web. But that's exactly the problem — the Like button is an endorsement. The company did some internal research and found that users, especially younger ones, were afraid to "Like" because of the implied endorsement. Facebook's bet is that more people will click a button that says they've "Listened" to a song or "Watched" a video, rather than simply liking it. Called Gestures, these actions are the next step in integrating Facebook with every part of the web. It's Facebook's partners that will take this capability and turn it into applications that populate Facebook and their websites with these Gestures, though.
10 UI Ideas to Learn from Gumroad) 10 UI Ideas to Learn from Gumroad Gumroad is an exciting new startup that lets anyone sell digital content with just a link. It was founded by the prolific Sahil Lavingia. Sahil has designed a number of useful apps, ranging from Pinterest in the early days, to Turntable, to Crate, to Caltrainer, etc. This is how the Gumroad home page looks, un-dissected. And here is the dissected version, with the 10 things we’ll learn - Let’s get started - 1. This top bar has become increasingly common. When we visit sites, a split second is used to subconsciously say “Oh, these are the colors we’re using here. Note that Sahil has picked energetic colors. 2. A lot of logos have very little to do with the name or product of a company. But others have plenty to do with the name of the company/product. Until you have a brand and you own blue birds the way that Twitter does, ensuring your logo and the favicon are as good as possible at reminding a user of your company name is key. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
13 Must See Lead Generation Examples You Need…To Grow Your List | This weekend I was trying to find a post about good examples of lead capturing , but I couldn’t find anything useful…I saw the opportunity and this is the result. I spent all Sunday looking for websites that I believed did a good job at using an email list form and applied well known practices in marketing. On all of the examples I marked the persuasion tactics most commonly used that you can apply to your business or blog/website. A lot of the content on this post is easy to apply but I learned this weekend even some well known websites fail to use them. If you’re using a good email service provider integrating an email sign-up form should be a walk-in-the-park. Now I understand if your goal is NOT to capture people’s email and build a relationship with your list then these examples might not be useful for you. Social Triggers Viperchill Social Media Examiner Smart Passive Income SlideDeck I Will Teach You To Be Rich Kissmetrics DIYthemes Dan Zarrella Copyblogger Big Brand System
Why most UX is shite I was invited to speak at the event this week where getting a little sweary and ranty is kind of encouraged (it goes well with the craft beer consumption that is an integral part of the conference mix). This was my contribution. Slides: When I checked the agenda to see what I was supposed to be talking about at Monkigras, I saw that I was down to talk for 15 mins about ‘Crafting Good UX’. Where to start. An elegant UIBeing AddictiveA Fast Startbeing Seamless, andIt Changes You I hate these kinds of lists. If only that were true, we’d be overwhelmed by UX amazingness. It’s not that simple right. Now, there are plenty of ways you can make a user’s experience of your product rubbish, but in my experience, there are a handful of serial offenders. 1. So, this one I see ALL the time. From a start up who doesn’t want to rule anything out of its value proposition so doesn’t really know what it is so, as a consequence, no one knows what problems it’s solving so they don’t engage. 2. 3. 4.
Dim Sum Warriors: Comic Book Snacks that Talk Back in Two Languages The other day, I was in Chinatown in New York City, eating dim sum with Yen Yen Woo and Colin Goh. They’re a married couple, transplants from Singapore. For reasons that’ll soon become clear, I couldn’t help imagining that those little Chinese snacks we were eating were…alive. Here’s a taste of Goh and Woo’s creation, Dim Sum Warriors: “Their bravery and skill have inspired millions worldwide, while the mere mention of their names causes enemies to quiver like tofu.” Dim Sum Warriors is a comic book that started as an iPad app. Goh and Woo created Dim Sum Warriors partly for their daughter, Kai Yen Goh. “We felt especially because we were bringing up a daughter in America we wanted something that would represent her mixed-up cultural heritage,” says Goh. On an iPad, you can read Dim Sum Warriors in English or in Chinese. Nick Sousanis is a big fan of Dim Sum Warriors. “If you read the New York Times on the web and you want to know what a word means, you click on it,” says Sousanis.
Designing Screens Using Cores and Paths Imagine you’re on one side of a grass lawn and you want to reach the bus stop on the opposite side. Do you walk on the sidewalk around the edges or cross in the middle? Assuming the grass is dry and it’s not prohibited, you’d probably take the shortest path and walk across the lawn to the bus stop. Such unplanned paths connect the shortest distance between two points, and we can find them everywhere in our surroundings. Architect Christopher Alexander recognizes desire lines in his renowned book, A Pattern Language (1976)[2]. To lay out paths, first place goals at natural points of interest. In principle, Alexander’s approach is to begin with the goals—the things people ultimately want—and then link them together in the most useful way. Typically in web design, the opposite approach is the rule: designers begin with the homepage. Inspired by “desire lines”, we can reverse this tendency in Web design. The Cores and Paths Model “Start with the goal.” 1. 2. How do users get to the core? 3.
An Ex-Pixar Designer Creates Astounding Kids' Book On iPad E-books are already a fraught subject for many readers, writers, publishers and designers, but children's e-books are even more so. Is it rotting their minds? Is it as good as good ol' paper? Every page has some delightful, hidden feature embedded into it. Part of why the book works so well is its top-shelf creative pedigree: author William Joyce is also an accomplished illustrator and animator who's published New Yorker covers, won a bunch of Emmys, created character designs for some of Pixar's first animated classics, and worked on many others for Dreamworks and Disney. Designing interactive interfaces for kids is no mean feat, and the Moonbot team really made some great choices with "Morris Lessmore." In fact, the interface design is so subtle it wasn't until I was about six pages in that I realized that every page of the app has some delightful feature embedded into it that you have to find for yourself. [Buy "The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr.
5 Essential Product Design Books That Aren’t About Product Design "What are some good books about product management?" is a frequent question for designers and engineers, especially those who are first-time founders. While there are any number of volumes you can peruse about agile development, team building, roadmaps or whatever skill you want to acquire, the art of product design is more elusive. Here are five of my essential product design books that have nothing to do with product design: 1. If you don't own this book don't even read further. Breathless praise aside, Cialdini identifies key principles of persuasion such as social proof, reciprocity, subservience to authority figures, desire to act in a consistent manner and perceived scarcity. Free bonus content! 2. If you want to quickly remove the romanticism from your relationships, just tell your partner that the only reason you're monogamous is that humans have long gestation cycles and babies have high mortality rates if left unattended. That shit cray, right? 3. 4. 5.