Paper Prototyping vs. Balsamiq Mockups
Our process of designing mockups directly influences the quality of our finished design. Great design isn’t just in pixels and colors, it is also in the interaction design. We can’t design graphically until we have designed and tested wireframes.
Paper Prototyping with Paper and Marker
My design tools are primitive. They include a stack of paper, a Sharpie marker, and a wastebasket. Sketching wireframes on paper is very fast. It takes only a few seconds, and the result is always disposable. Drawing and trashing concepts is the interaction designers way of brainstorming for ideas. Continue →
Review: Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework
About 6 months ago a good friend of mine, Jason Gilmore, came to visit and brought along his new book Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework. He’s the author of the already bestselling Beginning PHP and MySQL on the Apress label.
His new book doesn’t disappoint. It’s an easy read and has easy to follow examples. At around 300 pages, it’s easily digested.
The book is a great introduction to the Zend Framework and walks you through building simple database applications, Facebook applications, applications which integrate with web services such as Amazon Web Services, Google Maps and others.
You can buy the book from his website, or Amazon.com.
Simple user interfaces are not always easier to use
Earlier this week I spoke at the Cleveland Web Standards Association on the importance of thinking before building. The talk included a walkthrough of my UX design procedure, and why I feel it is a superior way of designing for interaction.
I’m frequently asked how to make interfaces simpler, as if we all already have pristine, usable interfaces buried inside of our current cluttered interfaces. Removing elements from your interface makes them simpler and easier to understand… right? Wrong.
Ignite Cleveland 2009
This coming weekend on February 28th, Josh Walsh will be speaking at Ignite Cleveland. The event will be hosted at Lean Dog Software, a good friend of D-I who has their office on a barge overlooking a submarine… pretty cool venue.
What Is Ignite?
If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Could you keep up? Around the world geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers.
Continue →
Photoshop Kung-Fu: Evenly spaced columns and rows
When mocking up a web design or creative of some kind I often find myself dividing areas into equal spaced rows or columns. This is a simple task when dividing into 2 parts, since your guides snap to the center of a selected object. Dividing into 3’s is a little more difficult. Dividing into 4’s isn’t too bad since you can just divide by 2, then subsequently split the divisions by 2. There’s got to be a better way, and alas… there is.
Note: This applies to Photoshop CS2. There may be a more prominent way to do this in newer versions.
Why You Should Outsource Usability Testing
Small companies should consider outsourcing their usability testing instead of doing it in-house. On the surface, it makes perfect sense to have a designer/developer who has a deep understanding of the project be in charge of usability testing, but in fact this can cause serious problems.
A developer will always look at the product you are testing from the inside out. They have internalized the entire product and know it inside and out. This has negative connotations on the evaluation of a test.
It may be appealing to delegate usability testing to a graphic designer on the project, but this also has issues. Artists minds are naturally focuses on aesthetics and many usability problems arise from confusing visual elements.
50 Tips To A User Friendly Website
Here is a list of 50 things that I keep in mind on every website that I build. Some of these are secrets I have acquired from the best designers in the world, and some of them are standard every day practices. Either way, these tips will improve your visitors experience on your website.
Goals for 2009
2009 is going to be an exciting year for D-I, and will largely build on the successes of 2008.
Last year we started our transition from a consulting company into a product company, culminating in the release of our flagship product Simpli5 in September. We also launched a free web service for generating barcodes called Barcodes4.me. Our development framework Sandstone continued to evolve and grow stronger. We moved completely to GIT.
2009 brings a new product, an online university where you can signup as a teacher and get paid when students take your class. Most importantly, 2009 will focus on getting more eyes looking at us and more hands on our products.
How to build a Gantt Chart with the Google Charts API
The Google Charts API is an excellent way to add high quality charting to your web application. We first started working with the API as part of the Simpli5 dashboard development, and were quite impressed with its functionality and ease of use. Wrapper classes were developed and added to our Sandstone Application Framework to make the addition charts to Simpli5 and other applications as simple as possible.
An application we are developing for a client requires some graphic representation of progress along a timeline of multiple steps. A Gantt Chart is the obvious best solution, but alas that is not a chart type available from the Google API. However, a Gantt chart is really just a special type of bar chart, and bar charts are available in the API. So the question was, how can we make the standard Google bar chart display as a Gantt?
The Google Charting API Developer’s Guide does an excellent job documenting the “how” side of things, so to avoid repeating a lot of stuff from there, we’ll just focus on the “what” of building a Gantt chart with Google.
Search
Popular Posts
- 50 Tips To A User Friendly Website
- My Favorite Pomodoro Timers
- How to build a Gantt Chart with the Google Charts API
- Why Flash is Mostly Bad
- Sharing the Grid
- 10 Tips to Better Google Wave Conversations
- The difference between User Research and Usability Testing?
- How to Label Submit Buttons
- Our New Development Process
- Review: Easy PHP Websites with the Zend Framework
Latest Comments
- Nate Klaiber → “ The design industry is plagued with the misconception that product manuals are evil. These designers believe that your product should be intuitive enough to use without a manual. While there is a certain truth to this, there are many viable reasons for product manuals to be used. There needs to be a certain…”
- Joe Fiorini → “ The design industry is plagued with the misconception that product manuals are evil. These designers believe that your product should be intuitive enough to use without a manual. While there is a certain truth to this, there are many viable reasons for product manuals to be used. There needs to be a certain…”
- Roger F Carver → “ The Google Charts API is an excellent way to add high quality charting to your web application. We first started working with the API as part of the Simpli5 dashboard development, and were quite impressed with its functionality and ease of use. Wrapper classes were developed and added to our Sandstone Application Framework to make…”
- Nate Klaiber → “ The “I agree” checkbox has become an interface standard on registration forms. “I agree to the terms and conditions.” While it’s purpose is generally understood by the consumer, it is a key source of frustration for people registering for accounts. eBay's Registration, as an example Why it’s overlooked: Checkboxes are small, particularly ones which aren’t grouped…”
- Josh Walsh → “ Most of the value you gain from a usability testing session comes from the analysis after the session is complete. I have been involved in a few sessions recently where no formal analysis has been conducted. I believe this is a mistake. Traditionally, the analysis portion of a usability session takes quite a long…”