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10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs

10 Useful Techniques To Improve Your User Interface Designs
Advertisement Web design consists, for the most part, of interface design. There are many techniques involved in crafting beautiful and functional interfaces. Here’s my collection of 10 that I think you’ll find useful in your work. They’re not related to any particular theme, but are rather a collection of techniques I use in my own projects. Without further ado, let’s get started. 1. Links (or anchors) are inline elements by default, which means that their clickable area spans only the height and width of the text. Obviously, the larger the clickable area is, the easier it is to click on the link because there is less of a chance of missing it. Make sure to also add a healthy dose of padding to the links, because converting a link into a block only affects its behavior and width; adding padding ensures that the link is high enough and has some room to breathe. 2. Attention to every detail is what separates a great product from a mediocre one. 3. All the text is set in black. 4. 5. 6. 7.

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/12/15/10-useful-techniques-to-improve-your-user-interface-designs/

» 10 Brilliant Multi Level Navigation Menu Techniques Web-developers can create user-friendly horizontal or vertical navigation menus using CSS. Javascript makes it possible to create more interactive, more responsive and more flexible navigation to any website. Today we wanted to highlight 10 brilliant Multi Level Navigation Menu Techniques built using different Javascript Libraries including jQuery, Mootools along with some CSS magic to give us what you see below. 1. Create Vimeo-like top navigation Operating System Interface Design Between 1981-2009 A Graphical User Interface (GUI for short) allows users to interact with the computer hardware in a user friendly way. Over the years a range of GUI’s have been developed for different operating systems such as OS/2, Macintosh, Windowsamiga, Linux, Symbian OS, and more. We’ll be taking a look at the evolution of the interface designs of the major operating systems since the 80′s.

12 Useful Techniques For Good User Interface Design Advertisement Last week, we presented 10 Useful Web Application Interface Techniques, the first part of our review of useful design trends in modern Web applications. Among other things, we highlighted embedded video blocks, specialized controls and context-sensitive navigation. 30 Essential Controls By Theresa Neil As Bill mentioned in an earlier post, we don’t want to limit this blog to just the principles and patterns found in the book. For that you can check out our Explore the Book section. This is the second article in a three part series on patterns and principles for RIA design. Standard Screen Patterns: 12 patterns w/100 examplesEssential Controls: 30 controls for RIA design and developmentComponents for Commonly Requested Features: 15 patterns and examples Every designer has a set of controls they rely on to communicate an effective UI.

10 Useful Usability Findings and Guidelines « Smashing Magazine Everyone would agree that usability is an important aspect of Web design. Whether you’re working on a portfolio website, online store or Web app, making your pages easy and enjoyable for your visitors to use is key. Many studies have been done over the years on various aspects of Web and interface design, and the findings are valuable in helping us improve our work.

User interface design principles: 12 pro tips As its name implies, great user interface (UI) design should revolve around the needs of the target user. That is why user interface design principles are so important. All else is secondary, including the aesthetic - although in many cases form goes hand-in-hand with function. Design To Sell: 8 Useful Tips To Help Your Website Convert Advertisement As we see more and more businesses move their services online, and even more that begin their life on the Web, a greater need arises for websites that are designed and built to sell. A great-looking website may achieve the goal of shaping and delivering a strong brand, but its good looks alone aren’t enough to sell the products or services on offer. For that, you need to introduce the element of marketing. You may want to take a look at the following related articles:

Don Norman Interview - UX Week Video - Events - User Experience - UX Design Re. UX Week – Video Don Norman, the esteemed “Ralph Nader of design,” gives us 52:29 of his time to offer wisdom gained from his experience in matters of user experience, design, business, and making our case to management. Don Norman Quotes Notable quotables, for those who may not have the fifty two and a half minutes: Smashing UX Design — Usability, Psychology and Information Architecture Category: UX Design This category features quality articles on usability, information architecture, interaction design and other user experience (UX) related topics – for digital (Web, mobile, applications, software) and physical products. Through these articles, experts and professionals share with you their valuable ideas, practical tips, useful guidelines, recommended best practices and great case studies. Curated by Chui Chui Tan. . Popular tags in this category: Freebies, Web Design, Techniques, Inspiration, Business A Guide To Validating Product Ideas With Quick And Simple Experiments

10 Tips to Create a More Usable Web Whether it’s your portfolio, a blog, a marketing web site, or a collection of games, we all want to attract visitors to our website and to ensure that they have a pleasant experience. Usability measures the level of a user’s experience and can be characterized by how easily a given task can be completed; whether it’s done with prior knowledge, or by having the user learn a new way to interact. I think Jakob Nielson probably explained it best when he said: “Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word “usability” also refers to methods for improving ease–of–use during the design process.” In this article I hope to give you some form of a usability checklist, covering topics from form design to simple navigation tips that you can apply to any Web project.

Methods Project Management (4) A project plan takes into account the approach the team will take and helps the team and stakeholders document decisions made regarding the objective, scope, schedule, resources, and... Creating an interdisciplinary team with the right mix of skills is vital to the smooth and successful execution of any project. Team members may be able to cover multiple roles or there may... Eye tracking study reveals 12 website tactics Eye tracking studies have revealed valuable information about how people read and interact with websites. One study, Eyetrack III, published a summary of their eye tracking results for news sites. While this is just one eye tracking study focused on a particular type of site, I think there are instructive nuggets here for any informational website. In no particular order, here are 12 results I found particularly interesting. 1.Headlines draw eyes before pictures.

Web design personas Creating personas of website visitors is a powerful technique for helping increase the usability and customer centricity of a web site as part of a user-centred design (UCD) process. I've been a big fan of using personas since around 2003 I was introduced to it by Matt Dooley, a customer experience manager in the HSBC Global E-business team. At the time, they were following reports by Forrester on creating personas. This shows that they're certainly not new, indeed their equivalent of using customer thumbnails for customer segmentation or ad campaigns has existed for decades. However, I find they're still not so widely-used when giving examples on training courses. What is a website design persona for marketing?

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