CategoryDesign

July 22, 2022 — Design is one of those disciplines that has a very low barrier to entry. But what isn’t so easy is acquiring the softer skills that you’ll need when entering this job market. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to a mentor or a guide, which is why we often have to rely on “working it out” by ourselves. In this article, Luis Ouriach tries to help you in this task so that you can walk into the design critique meetings with more confidence and really deliver the best representation of your ideas. Read more…

July 7, 2022 — Using a data visualization case study, we will explore how an accessibility-first approach led us down the path of creating a better visual design for charts. Throughout the article, we will highlight how we used the seemingly constraining Web Content Accessibility Standards (WCAG) to become an empowering factor in our design process. We will also discuss how this approach led us to an unexpected yet better outcome for everyone. Read more…

July 4, 2022 — In this article, John Scott Bowie shares the story of 40 years of attempts to advance corporate UX maturity that — after numerous initiatives with marginal results — culminated in a breakthrough project that accelerated a company’s UX maturity from “Emergent” to “User-Driven” in less than a year. Read more…

June 16, 2022 — All the data in the world won’t do anyone any good if we can’t make sense of it. Or better yet, make it sing. This edition of Web Design Done Well showcases magnificent examples of data visualization on the web, and closes with some of the countless resources available to those who want to learn to make their own. Read more…

June 15, 2022 — In this article, we’ll see how to make our sites friendly for Windows High Contrast Mode. We’ll check a good set of practices we can use for that purpose, and we’ll see the use of the media query forced-colors and its toolset to tweak our website as needed. Read more…

June 7, 2022 — Computer technologies have simplified the process of recording historical events, technological breakthroughs, contemporary art, and everyday life. However, the notion of digital archiving can be deceptive. Often our technical footprints are carved in sand rather than stone. Read more…

May 27, 2022 — In this article, Vijay describes his learning experiences during the design stages of creating his 3dicons image library (a free library for product screens, social media posts and marketing campaigns), which you can download and use for free. Read more…

May 26, 2022 — Developing accessible products can be challenging, especially when some of the requirements are beyond the scope of development. It’s one thing to enforce alt text for images and labels for form fields, but another to define an accessible color palette. From working with design handoffs to supporting custom themes in a design system, the CSS color-contrast() function can become a cornerstone for developers in enforcing sufficiently contrasting and accessible UIs. Read more…

May 11, 2022 — In this article, Denis Studennikov will be taking a closer look at a design case study and discuss possible reasons why its customers abandon their online shopping carts and what solutions are recommended in each particular case. Read more…

April 27, 2022 — We should be able to measure how well a particular design solves a particular problem. Let’s explore design KPIs that capture user’s experience, how to measure them and how to keep both users and business stakeholders happy, over time. In this series of articles, we highlight design patterns and techniques to design better interfaces. You can find more examples in “Smart Interface Design Patterns”, a 10h-video course with 100s of hand-picked examples, curated by Vitaly. Read more…