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How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?

How Do Users Really Hold Mobile Devices?
For years, I’ve been referring to my own research and observations on mobile device use, which indicate that people grasp their mobile phones in many ways—not always one handed. But some of my data was getting very old, so included a lot of information about hardware input methods using keyboard- and keypad-driven devices that accommodate the limited reach of fingers or thumbs. These old mobile phones differ greatly from the touchscreen devices that many are now using. Modern Mobile Phones Are Different Everything changes with touchscreens. So, I’ve carried out a fresh study of the way people naturally hold and interact with their mobile devices. What My Data Does Not Tell You Before I get too far, I want to emphasize what the data from this study is not. Most important, there is no count of the total number of people that we encountered. Since we made our observations in public, we encountered very few tablets, so these are not part of the data set. What We Do Know One-Handed Use

iPad Usage Survey Results Freebie iPhone 5 PSD iOS 6 Mockup Collection Our iPhone 5 Cover Actions are a faithful recreation of Apple’s newest Retina display iPhone. These Action will render your 2D artwork, UI/UX workflow designs or wireframes onto a hi-resolution 300DPI glossy 3D product shot that you can freely place into your website, office presentation or marketing campaign. Each Action is approximately 300KB in size, but don’t let this small digital footprint fool you. Each Action in this set will give you a fully layered PSD file @ 300DPI and a resolution of 1150×1860. Allow us to render your mobile app and impress your clients, we have all the popular angles for the new iPhone 5 so we guarantee that your product will look consistent across all angles and positions. Our Cover Action mockups include black and white colours. All iPhones are rendered at the same resolution allowing you to create unique compositions and layouts. iPhone 5 PSD Mockups Thunderbolt Display Macbook Pro iPad 2 and iPad 3

Creative UI Design Examples for Great UX UX (User Experience) is all those elements and factors related to the user's interaction with a particular environment or device which generate a positive or negative perception of the product, brand or device. UX is subjective and focused on use. The standard definition of UX is "a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service". These factors are related to design and usability, but also to the emotions and feelings generated in the user, accessibility, brand trust... In the case of the web, the user's experience with the device is not a matter of concern to web designers: big hardware companies do the job of building our machines and computers. However, web designers have much to say about the user experience that the interfaces and websites that we develop generate: it is a key element of our work! GUI to present information: The interface controls should be intuitive and easy to use. UI Elements and Techniques:

Why 90% of Startups Fail [INFOGRAPHIC] There's a hot new startup in the limelight more often than not — but the cold truth is 90% of technology startups fail. Even companies which make it big out of the gate often lose momentum and shift from a potential powerhouse to a thing of the past. A new inforgraphic from Allmand Law analyzes the successes and failures of well-known tech startups from Zynga and Shopkick to AirTime and MySpace, helping us understand why some companies fall short. "The successful startups seem to be flexible enough to shift with changes in the tech climate," an Allmand Law spokesperson told Mashable. "Whereas with the failed startups, some fail due to a lack of vision and others have terrible timing. Ultimately, there is a lack of foresight which might have saved their companies." Check out the infographic below for a deeper look at some of the industry's biggest success stories — and their not so lucky counterparts. Why do you think some startups succeed while others fail? and Allmand Law

Our 50 Favorite Web Development Resources from 2012 Let’s keep it simple: last year, we did a roundup of 50 of the most useful web development resources. Today, we bring to you the 2012 edition, but only better. And what can you expect to find in this years roundup? Pretty much everything a developer could ever need: CSS frameworks & tools, HTML5 resources, JavaScript frameworks & tools, web editors, mock-up tools, application frameworks, responsive layout tools and resources… and on and on. This post does not include any jQuery resources as we published its own round-up last week, you can check it out here Top 50 Useful jQuery Plugins from 2011. CSS Frameworks Base Framework Base is a 12 column 960px grid (max) responsive CSS framework that contains everything you need to get up and running quickly. Bourbon Neat Neat is a simple grid framework built on top of Sass and Bourbon using em units and golden ratios. Kube CSS Framework The Kube Framework is certainly not an overblown responsive CSS framework with multiple layouts and styles. RWD Grid

Inspirational and Useful Resources for App Designers Here we go with a resources post! Here we bring you one of the best collections of utilities and templates for designing apps that you can find. This is a great collection of GUI's, mock-ups, Complete UI and Design elements with PSD files for download, skeuomorphic interface samples, icons, printable sketching templates which we have gathered here for all app designers and we are sure you will find very useful. Save this entry to your favorites! Ready to download and put to work. 11 Apps and Services for Sharing, Discovering and Organizing Music The Trendsetter Tech Series is supported by smart. Test drive the space saving, eco-friendly, totally unique, smart. Visit smartusa.com to find a new smart center near you. smart — unbig. uncar. The digital music revolution might have started in the late 1990s, but in the last few years, the way that we find, share and organize music has undergone drastic changes. Users are no longer reliant on file-sharing services to distribute tracks from person to person or device to device. Still, it can be difficult to differentiate one service or app from the next. Streaming Services Music streaming services are a dime a dozen — and depending on where you live, the differences between one subscription streaming service and the next is difficult to gauge. This is especially true now that companies like MOG and Rdio have followed in Spotify's footsteps, offering users free access to streaming music libraries on their computers. MOG — MOG might only be available in the U.S. Cloud Services and Apps

How to Make Your Site Look Half-Decent in Half an Hour Programmers like me are often intimidated by design – but a little effort can give a huge return on investment. Here are one coder’s tips for making any site quickly look more professional. I am a programmer. But although I am a programmer, I want to make my sites look attractive. For a very long time after I became a programmer, I was scared of design. But a little while ago, I decided to do my best to hack what it took to make my own projects look vaguely attractive. If I hadn’t figured out some basic design shortcuts, it’s unlikely that a weekend hack of mine would have ended up on page three of the Daily Mail. So, if you are a developer, my Christmas present to you is this: my own collection of hacks that, used rightly, can make your personal programming projects look professional, quickly. One thing to note about these tips, though. With that, on to the tools… 1. If you’re not already using Bootstrap, start now. 2. We are going to customize this Bootstrap example page. 3. 4. Bang: 5.

Common Misconceptions About Touch By Steven Hoober Published: March 18, 2013 “44 pixels is not a physical size. … We cannot even translate 44 pixels, or points, to a single actual size.” Touchscreens have been with us for decades—and they’ve been the mobile input method of choice for many of us for about 5 years. But there are still very few designers who seem to know how touchscreens actually work or how people really interact with them. You Can’t Rely on Designing 44-Pixel Touch Targets Even with iOS clearly in second place behind Android, the Apple standard size for touch targets sticks with us, but 44 pixels is not a physical size. Physical sizes matter, so all good guidelines are in millimeters, inches, typographers’ points, or other real-world scales. Plus, a lot of the guidelines for operating systems and OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers) define touch targets that are smaller than the vast body of research indicates would be correct. Do Different Finger Sizes Really Matter? Designing Targets No problem. Apple.

Ideas for Startups October 2005 (This essay is derived from a talk at the 2005 Startup School.) How do you get good ideas for startups? That's probably the number one question people ask me. I'd like to reply with another question: why do people think it's hard to come up with ideas for startups? That might seem a stupid thing to ask. Well, maybe not. I think this is often the case. I also have a theory about why people think this. If coming up with an idea for a startup equals coming up with a million dollar idea, then of course it's going to seem hard. Actually, startup ideas are not million dollar ideas, and here's an experiment you can try to prove it: just try to sell one. Questions The fact is, most startups end up nothing like the initial idea. The initial idea is just a starting point-- not a blueprint, but a question. There's a real difference, because an assertion provokes objections in a way a question doesn't. A question doesn't seem so challenging. Upwind Doodling What happens in that shower? Notes

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