February 11, 2015 — JavaScript is “real” programming. This means you not only have to learn a whole new and complex syntax but also have to “learn how to think.” The barriers to entry are high and prevent many designers from taking the plunge. uilang tries to fix that. In this article Benjamin De Cock will introduce you to uilang’s philosophy and syntax. You’ll start with a simple example to get you comfortable with the basics, before moving to something more exciting. At the end of this tutorial, you’ll be able to code many typical interface widgets, such as popovers, tabs, overlays and much, much more. Read more…

February 10, 2015 — Mobile technology has brought us some fantastic benefits, but with always available, always connected technology, it can have a negative impact when it demands our attention and distracts us from the real world.When was the last time you enjoyed a meal with friends without it being interrupted by people paying attention to their smartphones instead of you? How many times have you had to watch out for pedestrians who are walking with their faces buried in a device, oblivious to their surroundings? We have to shift our design focus from technology to the world around us. As smartwatches and wearables become more popular, we need to create design experiences that allow us to create experiences that are still engaging, but less distracting. Read more…

February 9, 2015 — Carousels come in many shapes and sizes. Some can be effective, others less so. You need a lot more data from a lot of different situations before you dismiss the pattern entirely. In this article, Kyle Peatt aims for a better understanding of the current argument against carousels and whether they really deserve the reputation they’ve gained, using real data. He’ll break down the arguments point by point and see if his data lines up with those expectations. He’ll also detail his findings and methods and make some recommendations on how and when you should use carousels in future. Read more…

February 6, 2015 — Every project starts with a briefing sent to your team. Don’t take the content for granted, and make sure you clearly understand the objectives before working out anything tangible. You can do this by including a small learning phase, based on interviews with your client and their customers. Address your learnings and observations in an involved relationship. By simply asking the right questions, you’ll learn a hell of a lot more. In this article, Thomas Joos shares his learnings after years of streamlining creative dialogue. Read more…

February 5, 2015 — By 2030, around 19% of people in the US will be over 65. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it happens to be about the same number of people in the US who own an iPhone today. Which of these two groups do you think Silicon Valley spends more time thinking about? This seems unfortunate when you consider all of the things technology has to offer older people. A lot of people in the tech industry talk about “changing the world” and “making people’s lives better.” But bad design is excluding whole sections of the population from the benefits of technology. If you’re a designer, you can help change that! Read more…

February 4, 2015 — Mail.Ru Group has about 40 products — even more if you add mobile and tablet websites and apps, promo websites, etc. Yury Vetrov’s team deals with almost half of them. Their goal is to update these products and unify them around several guidelines. Continue reading of Part Two. In this article Yury will discuss the transformation of their design process from the classic Prototype → Design Mockup → HTML → Implement approach for every screen to a modern and more efficient framework-based approach. Read more…

February 3, 2015 — The total size of media elements on the average web page is increasing constantly. Yet, especially on mobile devices, performance bottlenecks remain, which stem from bandwidth issues, widely varying network latency, and limitations on memory and the CPU. You need solutions for better and faster browsing experiences that work across all devices and browsers. In this article Denis Ryabov & Ugur Kaner will discuss why they should and shouldn’t use Lazy Load, and how to implement it. Read more…

February 3, 2015 — This time we decided to turn our mystery riddle into an exercise of patience and stubbornness — beyond problem solving, of course. To achieve just that, we had to hide the right answers properly and provide subtle hints that attentive readers would need to discover first. So, what if we looked closely at the things around us and introduced a riddle that would reflect those experiences? Read more…

January 31, 2015 — As designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for February 2015. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper! This creativity mission has been going on for almost seven years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. Read more…

January 30, 2015 — Something interactive will almost always communicate more than a picture ever could, and you’ll have better conversations because of it. On the other hand, Sketch is an excellent UI design tool, lightweight and quite powerful, and it works great with Flinto, InVision and the like because they live in the borderlands of flat images and HTML or native code. In this article, Joshua Mauldin will talk you through why you should prototype and how you can do it with Sketch and prototyping tools such as Flinto and InVision. He’ll also get a nicely documented freebie Sketch file to help you. Read more…