Jon Bolt explores how changing the discussion from "functionality" to "complexity" helps product owners and designers better evaluate the real impact new features have on a product.

User-friendliness is the inevitable result of a smart design approach, not the starting point. Here are three criteria to help you develop a useful design brief that will ultimately yield a great product.

When, why, and how should you go about designing a responsive website? Equator web designer and UX Booth contributor Elaine Simpson breaks down the basics of responsive web design.

This is an experiment in a slightly different format for Smashing Magazine – using a storytelling approach to convey the same lessons learned that a traditional article would have provided.

In flow, the experience is rich and deep, and helps users be productive and highly creative.

In flow, the experience is rich and deep, and helps users be productive and highly creative.

“The effective use of color and graphics in children’s media is one of the most important aspects of design to ensure that you deliver optimal content and a memorable user experience to young users.”

Web magazine about user experience matters, providing insights and inspiration for the user experience community

Developers can have profound impacts on the UX of the products they’re working on.

Keep signup forms simple and fast, and delegate as much as possible.

Translating Susan Weinschenk's UX psychology facts into usability heuristics.

Apps that are simple, intuitive, and have few features are well suited for enterprise tablet use.

… adapts your existing HTML images for mobile devices. No mark-up changes needed. Just drop it in and forget about it.

As I explained in my previous post, user experience design is a multidisciplinary activity which includes psychology, user research, information architecture, interaction design, graphic design and a host of other disciplines. Due to the complexity of the field a user experience team will typically be made up of individuals with a range of different specialisms.

«Digital news is broken. Actually, news itself is broken. Almost all news organizations have abandoned reporting in favor of editorial; have cultivated reader opinion in place of responsibility; and have traded ethical standards for misdirection and whatever consensus defines as forgivable. And this is before you even lay eyes on what passes for news design on a monitor or device screen these days. […]»

… makes it easy to quickly create high-quality custom controls for your iOS apps, Mac apps and for the web.

Designing websites and related media for kids presents plenty of opportunities for Web designers. Openings are available at many businesses and schools, as well as through parents and kids themselves, giving designers many ways to find work on electronic and print projects that appeal to kids. The types of work range from interface designs for video games to websites for birthday parties.

The input form is an essential element of almost any website or application these days. Input is a core method of interaction, and in many cases it represents the hard conversion point between success and failure. With the amount time and effort we put into bringing users to our sign-up and contact forms, it’s surprising that we tend not to spend a proportional amount of time on the forms themselves.

In this installment of my column, I’ll take a look at one of the most important visual design elements for graphic user interfaces: typography. I’ll concentrate on general guidelines for the effective use of typography in the design of applications for children between 3 and 10 years of age. What considerations do we need to take into account when working with digital typography when children are its primary interpreters?

Some tricks for non-pros to help make up for UX design weaknesses.

The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd Ed. Free textbooks written by more than 100 leading designers, bestselling authors, and Ivy League professor...

"Sometimes I put my log in information into the register fields." "Me too! I hate that not only do I feel stupid, I have to retype everything again." For one of my side projects, Leafy Chat, we have just added the concept of user accounts. This includes the need for registration and log in (as well as log out and forgot password and so on). Leafy Chat only requires an email address and a password for both registration and log in, so it would be great to have some clever way to have both forms on the homepage. Some things...

Interface Collection for Design Inspiration