NYTimes Design Concept
July 25, 2015A very detailed redesign concept for the NYTimes from russian designer Artem Troinoi.
Baymard Institute – E-Commerce Usability Research
July 23, 2015Baymard conducts original large-scale research studies on e-commerce usability.
The research is published in articles, reports, and benchmark databases. Topics include e-commerce search, homepage and navigation design, the checkout process, and mobile sites.
If you are looking for extensive research on E-Commerce Usability, look no further. The full guidelines are priced at $150 each but there’s also a lot of articles for free.
CodeMyUI
July 20, 2015Handpicked code snippets you can use in your web projects. Find web design inspiration with code samples.
A nice collection of Tutorials and Code Snippets from all around the web.
When we went to Hungary during the Christmas period last year I bought a 1GB data plan on a prepaid card. However, soon after I went online with my laptop the entire data allowance was used up. Strangely, I wasn’t able to add another data package. Instead, T-Mobile limited my internet access to 32kbps till the end of the month.
Since there was no easy way to fix it and I had nothing critical to do I decided to embrace the situation as an opportunity to understand how it feels to be on a slow network most of the time. I had already started reading the book Responsible Responsive Design at that time anyway so I was curious.
To be on a slow connection for a longer period of time can really be an eye opening thing if you work on the web. As Gabor mentions in his post it’s not only that pages load slowly, but some just won’t load at all.
I experienced the exact same thing in the last weeks when we were on vacation in Spain after WordCamp Europe. I had a 200 MB mobile data package, and at our AirBnB apartment we had a very slow WiFi. So i had to choose between a moody and sluggish WiFi or the tiny bit faster but crazy expensive mobile connection.
It was frustrating, to say the least. But if you work on the web, you should force yourself into this situation while developing. Gabor recommends to turn on device mode in Chrome and simulate a slow connection right from the beginning, because as he puts it:
I need to feel the pain as soon as possible so that I immediately notice the changes that are bad for performance.
This should be an exercise we should do on a regular basis and – even better – we should integrate them into our project workflows. Imagine if everyone involved, from your client, project manager, boss to the content creators would have experienced a few weeks of bad connection first hand.
I’m sure performance wouldn’t be an afterthought anymore.
Three takeaways for web developers after two weeks of painfully slow internet
Improving Code Quality
July 9, 2015If you’re building things with WordPress, it’s important to deliver quality code. Especially if it’s going to be released to the public or used by a client. There’s a good post on the WPMUDEV Blog covering many aspects from HTML/CSS, JavaScript or PHP to the WordPress Coding Standards or Accessibility.
It’s a great starting point if you are unsure how to improve your code but also a good reminder for experienced developers.
Stop Cowboy Coding: 10 Tips for Improving the Quality of Your WordPress Themes and Plugins
TED Talk: Tony Fadell
June 7, 2015Tony Fadell talks about habituation and how it can prevent us from noticing the problems around us, because we get used to them.
Menu Customizer Plugin approved for 4.3
June 6, 2015Last week it was announced that the Menu Customizer Feature Plugin was conditionally approved to be merged into core. A step which was quite controversial among developers. While we can have different views on whether the customizer is the right place or not, i think Carl Hancock nailed it when he said:
WordPress the open source project needs to decide what the future of the admin user interface is. It needs to pick a direction and it needs to go all in with it. This piecemeal approach of splitting up functionality between the Dashboard user interface and the Customizer user interface is an extremely poor direction to take from from both a user interface and user experience standpoint.
It’s not about whether we like or dislike the customizer at all or an “educational issue” as the plugin developer Nick Halsey has put it. The main problem is the UI fragmentation that comes with it and i think this should be addressed first, before it get’s merged into core.
WordPress Is Making The Same Mistakes Microsoft Did With Windows 8
Upon This Wrist
May 15, 2015After all those “one week with the Apple Watch” reviews, this is probably the most brilliant piece i read so far. About this thing on your wrist.
Very few notice the thing on the wrist. That makes me happy. But some do see it. Once they see it they say, Oh is that the thing? And I say, Yes it is the thing. And they ask, Has it changed your life? And I shrug. And they are so disappointed. They want me to say, Yes. Yes it has changed my life. The wrist thing. It’s made me a better man, a stronger man, a more thoughtful man. But, no. This is what I say: I say, Look, it shows maps. And they Ooooo. And I show them the remote camera and they Ahhhhh. And I say, look — my heartbeat. And they say, Wow, you have a high resting heart rate. And I sigh and say, I know. Oh, how I know.
Designing Settings by Imran Parvez
April 22, 2015Imran Parvez wrote an interesting article on Medium about how to design a settings page. He covers some of the common mistakes and then some possible solutions with many references to the official design guidelines from Android and iOS.
Difficult product decisions should never become a setting. For example: If there’s a debate in your team which is building an email client, whether to show four lines of summary or two lines of summary for each email. Do not make it a setting!
Worth a read if you intend to design a settings page for your product.
Redesigning CodePen
April 15, 2015Some very interesting insights on the design process for an ongoing CodePen redesign by Sparkbox. I love how open they share pretty much everything from User Interviews to Sketches to Wireframe Prototypes.