The world of design got one more active and dynamic week and we have gathered some fresh recommendations on useful reading for those who are interested in design news in our weekly reading list. Enjoy your reading!
Recommended articles
7 UX Tips You Might Not Have Considered – the article offering practical approaches to design practices able to enhance creativity and bring interesting results in terms of user experiences.
Key thought: Talk to other people – outside design and development circles – to see how they interact with websites and apps. You might be surprised to see how different their ideas about how things should and should not work are. Take that information back to your projects. It will make them better and help you craft a much more enjoyable user experience.
How To Integrate Motion Design in the UX Workflow – an informative post presenting research and recommendations on integrating animation into user experience design process while analyzing the benefits and concerns of this technique.
Key thought: With UX animation, subtlety is key. Focusing on helping users achieve their goals is paramount.
Unintuitive Lessons on Being a Designer – important considerations on design job features and results, based on practical design experience. A bunch of highly useful tips for modern designers.
Key thought: At the end of the day, the people whom we are designing for don’t have any of that context, history, or understanding of the constraints we face. And yet, they will still pass judgement. The only thing that matters is whether your design works for them in solving the problem you intended to solve.
The 6 Biggest Design Mistakes Brands are Making Today – the set of thoughts directly from design experts on popular design mistakes that in their opinion should be avoided. Followed by the great thread of professional discussion on the topic.
Key thought: At the foundation of every brand there is purpose, an ideology, a rally cry or a rich history. It is important to break these philosophies down to their most simple visual form. I see so many incredible brands that are quite frankly either forgetting who they are or just being too complicated in their message. As designers, it’s our job to show our clients the way.
The Pros, Cons, and Future of Flat Design – the post analyzing strong and weak sides of flat design, supporting the ideas with practical examples of modern digital design.
Key thought: So while big brands like Microsoft, Apple, and Google definitely have influence when it comes to popularizing design styles, it’s the designers that take trends and run with them to create something new — it’s the designers that help usher in the next “big thing.”
Communicating Design – the set of thoughts and ideas about the ways and features of communication in design process, which is one of the vital conditions of good performance.
Key thought: Long before pencil is put to paper, there should be a shared understanding of the partnership and process ahead. This is more than just a design brief. For one situation, this might mean that you were hired based on the way you work. But in many others, this is an education process. Either one creates a need to communicate expectations at some point.
Designing With the User’s Context in Mind – the article considering such a vital factor as user environment and ways of customizing design according to this aspect.
Key thought: You can create compelling content, presented within a stunning design yet still disappoint users. You see, design and content are not enough if we do not also consider the user’s context. In fact, you cannot create a great design or appropriate content without understanding the context the user is in.
A Simple Checklist for Successful Design Handoffs – the post with a number of practical tips to consider in terms of creating good performance at design stage and enable its efficiency on the further stages of product development.
Key thought: We believe that design is a team sport. Everyone should feel ownership of the entire customer experience, not just their piece.
9 essential rules for responsive image galleries – the article on actual issues of web design, in particular dealing with image galleries in the aspect of their responsiveness.
Key thought: Image galleries feature far more complexity than single images; there are even more variables and things to think about when implementing entire responsive image galleries on your website.
Design must-read book of the week:
UX Gamification Redefined by UXPin team
A free e-book by UXPin team providing ideas on such an aspect as gamification and its influence on design process creating positive user experience. Being not really long but quite informative, it can become a great stuff for those who are too busy for long books and seek for dynamic and informative reading on professional issues. Supported with practical cases of good and bad implementation of gamification in design.
Wish you nice time spent reading! Don’t also miss the updates in our Blog – this week, we are considering the aspect of branding in UI and provide the set of definitions for the basic UI/UX design glossary. Welcome to get inspired!
