We have gotten serious about asking how to better serve users, which reflects a significant change in the designer’s skill set. Designers will use the same tools they have always used, but they are now responsible for more than just the interface. Whether or not a designer calls him or herself a product designer is beside the point; to remain relevant, they need to master these new user-centered values and processes.
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A digital strategy is not as intimidating as it sounds. It is just a document outlining how your client should handle the different aspects of digital from the website and mobile to email. It doesn’t need to cover everything in huge depth, but instead should establish some general approaches to these different areas. This post will provide you with a crash course on where to start and what kinds of things to include. I hope it proves useful.
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The relationship between the media and marketeers is the greatest sham marriage of all time: convenience, rarely love. We need each other. Writers need to be paid, and people making products need to be paid too. That being said, the journalism profession has been somewhat eager to hand a lot of control of their content to advertisers for some time now.
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The way you present your product or service is essential to its success — or at least it could be if you know how to do it right. The first impression you make on people is crucial. When selling a product, you want that first impression to be as positive and remarkable as possible. If you have managed to draw them in, you will need to introduce the product within a few seconds.
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You’ve made your first app! Now what? Anyone in the app business knows that marketing an app is tough. And according to a recent article on TechCrunch, “Getting a mobile app noticed in the increasingly crowded mobile app market is more difficult than ever.” Some titles and concepts are truly unique. Angry Birds? Its title and screenshot alone were enough to catapult it to number one in Finland.
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Web design is a craft that is constantly evolving and yet also sometimes sabotaged. The moment a design is released, a new version is born. In the beginning, like a baby, it seems vulnerable and weak, but in time it grows up and becomes self-sufficient. Redesigning a website for its own sake doesn’t prove anything; quite the contrary, it reveals a lack of effectiveness on the part of the designer.
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Redesign. The word itself can send shudders down the spines of any Web designer and developer. For many designers and website owners, the imminent onslaught of endless review cycles, coupled with an infinite number of “stakeholders” and their inevitable “opinions,” would drive them to shave their heads with a cheese grater if given a choice between the two. Despite these realities, redesigns are a fact of any online property’s life cycle. Here are five key indications that it’s time to redesign your website and of how extensive that redesign needs to be.
The first and most important indicator that your website is in need of a rethink is metrics that are beginning to tank. There certainly could be other reasons for this symptom (such as your product not fitting the market), but once those are eliminated or mitigated, a constant downward trend in conversions, sales, engagement activities and general user participation indicates that the efficacy of your current design has worn off.
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Are you fed up with hearing about yet another Silicon Valley Web application built with fairy dust and funded by magic pixies? If so, this post is for you.
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The business of building websites is one of constant change, adaptation and strategy. The way designers and developers build websites is often informed by the methods of others and their own trial and error. In light of this, we can draw a number of parallels — some philosophical, to a certain extent — between Web professionals and one of the oldest and most popular board games of all time (counting traditional and digital games). This game is chess.
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