September 3, 2018 — The 2017 holiday season proved — once again — that e-commerce has become a major part of consumers’ shopping habits. This guide will take a closer look at the role mobile websites played in sales from that time period and how to use that data to prepare your website for the 2018 holiday season. Suzanne Scacca is going to give you a quick rundown of what happened during the 2017 holiday sales season and, in particular, what role mobile played in it. Read more…

August 31, 2018 — Do you need a little inspiration boost? Well, then our new batch of desktop wallpapers is for you. Designed by artists and designers from across the globe, they come in versions with and without a calendar for September 2018. Read more…

August 30, 2018 — In order for a product to succeed, designers should know their competition and collect as much data as possible. This data helps to create a solid product that users will actually want to use, rather than a product we want or imagine. Competitive analysis is one of the ways to get this data and to create a user-friendly product. No prior knowledge of the topic is needed because in this article, Mayur Kshirsagar will be explaining what the term means and how to perform a competitive analysis as you go. Read more…

August 29, 2018 — how can we detect the moment you and your phone are in the kitchen, or bedroom, or living room? With today’s commodity hardware, there are a myriad of possibilities: In this tutorial, Alvin Wan will show you how to build a desktop app that predicts which room you’re in using a simple machine learning algorithm: least squares. The code applies to any platform, but we only provide dependency installation instructions for Mac OSX. Read more…

August 28, 2018 — Users can be hesitant to fill out forms. That is why it is our goal as designers to make the process of filling out a form as easy as possible. The primary goal with every form is completion. Two factors have a major impact on completion rate: Perception of complexity and Interaction cost. In this article, Nick shares some techniques that can help you design effective forms. He will help you cover many aspects related to structure, input fields, labels, action buttons and validation. Read more…

August 27, 2018 — This is the second part in a series on enhancing mobile forms for users. In the first part, we saw some general guidelines on how to improve form readability for mobile users, label placement and size, interaction cost and dealing with errors. HTML5 has brought us a lot of really cool features to help users fill in mobile forms and format their data, so today, Stéphanie Walter will show you in detail how HTML5 attributes can help you with that. Read more…

August 23, 2018 — Looking to establish a robust design process for a distributed team? It’s not as difficult as you may think. If you’re a team manager who is looking to establish a robust design process for a distributed team, then this article for you. Here Nick Babich brings you seven of the most common challenges distributed product teams should overcome and how a team-management tool called “monday” can help. Read more…

August 22, 2018 — As designers, we have a real opportunity to provide valuable meaning to these assistants but we’re still trying to work out where the technology can add real benefits to the user. There are folks all over the globe who are unable to easily complete everyday tasks for themselves. Luckily, developers and designers can help by experimenting with voice technology that empowers them to complete tasks that others may take for granted. Read more…

August 21, 2018 — Onboarding is a real challenge as it can be complex, involving the user entering personal information. In this three-part series, Joe Leech outlines the three phases of the product lifecycle, the future for UX, and the skills and approach you’ll need to design modern digital products. Let’s take a closer look at how we can help users to sign up, onboard, and pay for your product. Read more…

August 20, 2018 — Do you test your forms on real users and real devices? If not, you should. Let’s take a look at some of the techniques that can help you take your forms to the next level and help users fill them in. In this first part of a series of two articles, Stéphanie Walter will sum up some essential best practices to improve your mobile forms, including scannability and readability. She will guide you through label and input placement, size and optimization. Read more…