Design patterns can be extremely helpful, mostly because they save time and get us better results, faster. We don’t need to apply them exactly as they are to every problem we encounter, but we can build on top of them, using our experience to inform our decisions because we know they’ve worked in other projects fairly well. Today, Vitaly Friedman brings you a summary of observations and experiments made throughout the time. Tighten up your seat belts: in this new series of articles on SmashingMag, we’ll look into examples of everything from carousels to filters, calculators, charts, timelines, maps, multi-column tables, almighty pricing plans all the way to seating selection in airline and cinema websites.
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Humor is an important aspect of life. It has many positive benefits, like reducing stress, increasing psychological well being and increasing tolerance for pain. Humor is integral and inherent to human relationships. You can use humor in your design to create a positive user experience. We want to develop positive relationships with our users — humor can help make that happen. In this article, Victor Yocco will show you that you can incorporate humor in your design, maintain your brand identity and not look like you are trying too hard in the process.
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Recent analysis from VoiceLabs estimates that 24.5 million voice-driven devices will be shipped this year, almost four times as many as last year. As experience designers, we now have the opportunity to design voice experiences and interfaces! In this article, Lyndon Cerejo will look at how a typical genie in a bottle works, discuss the steps involved in designing voice experiences, and illustrate these steps by designing a voice app for Alexa.
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IoT is a vast topic, and there are many ways to approach it. In this article, Svetlin Denkov will introduce readers of different backgrounds to prototyping IoT experiences with minimum code knowledge. This article assumes you are using a Mac, but much of the content carries over to Windows systems as well. For the coding sections, he will be using Arduino’s integrated development environment (IDE) and the C/C++ programming language. There are different ways to get to the same result, so pick the board and programming language that you are most familiar with. There is a lot of ground to cover, so let’s jump right in!
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This two-article series will introduce readers of different backgrounds to prototyping IoT experiences with minimum code knowledge, starting with affordable proof of concept platforms, before moving to costly commercial offerings. Stay tuned! In this first article, Svetlin Denkov will identify the problem, the criteria for selecting hardware and, finally, show you a step-by-step guide on how to put together all of the hardware components into a working rig.
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In this article, Steve Benjamins shows you what he discovered after asking the owners of several websites built with e-commerce software, if they’d recommend a particular software. Typically, they’d reply and I’d record their response in a spreadsheet (and personally thank them). Occasionally, I would even go on the phone to speak with them directly (although I quickly found out that this took too much time). Steve created a guide to help others find the e-commerce software that suits them best.
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Due to its similarity to Sketch, Figma was easy for Chrstian Krammer to grasp right from the start, but it also has some unique features to differentiate it from its competitor, such as easy file-sharing, vector networks, “constraints” (for responsive design) and real-time collaboration. In this article, Chrstian would like to compare both apps in detail and highlight where each of them shines.
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While functional aspect of a design is key to product success, aesthetics and visual details are equally important — particularly how they can improve those functional elements. Shadows and blur effects provide visual cues that allow users to better and more easily understand what is occurring. When carefully applied, such elements can (and should) improve a functional aspect of design. In today’s article, Nick Babich will explain how visual elements, such as shadows and blur effects, can improve the functional elements of a design.
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Taking your first steps into VR as a UX or UI designer can be daunting. VR experiences range from the mundane to the wondrous, their complexity and utility varying greatly. In this article, Sam Applebee & Alex Deruette will share a process for designing VR apps that they hope you’ll use to start designing for VR yourself. You don’t need to be an expert in VR; you just need to be willing to apply your skills to a new domain. They’re building a rocketship, a joint effort by designers around the globe to boldly go where no designer has gone before. The sooner that producing VR apps make sense for companies, the sooner the whole ecosystem will blow up.
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Building a genuinely helpful and attractive chatbot is still a challenge from a UX standpoint. While chatbots can be a great tool for creating more personalized customer experience, conversational design still have certain limitations. There are clear cases when a conversation can help or hurt the UX. Before building a chatbot for your business, you should clearly define its purpose and the exact value it could bring to the user. Teach the bot to do one thing extremely good, such as delivering weather forecasts or introducing the company’s scope of service before experimenting further with more advanced features.
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