Material Design is a new Google design language that Google hopes to port to everything from mobile phones and tablets to websites and desktop apps. Here are 7 hard-won insights from 4 Material Design workshops I recently facilitated with my top clients in Argentina, Abu Dhabi and United States.
C-Swipe: An Ergonomic Solution To Navigation Fragmentation On Android
There are 3,997 different Android devices. Your navigation should work with all of them. C-Swipe can help: It is an alternative navigation pattern for tablets and mobile devices that is novel, ergonomic and localized. This article provides a detailed walk-through of the design and code and provides a downloadable mini-app so that you can try out C-Swipe to see whether it’s right for your app.
Let Them Pee: Avoiding the Sign-Up/Sign-In Mobile Antipattern
Anything that slows down customers or gets in their way after they download your app is a bad thing. That includes sign-up/sign-in forms that show up even before potential customers can figure out if the app is actually worth using.
The Definitive Guide To The Android Carousel Design Pattern
We’ll use the analogy of a real-world amusement park carousel to explain what makes for an authentically mobile user experience, and we’ll give you the design, the complete source code and a downloadable mini-app, which you can use today to add an enjoyable and effective carousel to your own app on phones and tablets.
Three essentials of Android design DNA
For many years since its release, the Android OS has been behaving like a teenager in the grip of raging hormones. Growth has been nothing short of explosive and the changes have been sweeping and profound. With the release of Ice-Cream Sandwich OS, the UI standards and design elements have changed dramatically and the platform has really matured and even stabilized somewhat. Nevertheless, the OS has retained it’s rebellious hacker DNA with unique features that are authentically Android.
Mobile Welcome UX Antipattern: End User License Agreement (EULA)
Like the overzealous zombie cross-breed between a lawyer and a customs agent, End User License Agreements (EULAs) require multiple forms to be filled out in triplicate, while keeping the customers from enjoying the app they have so laboriously invested time and flash memory space to download.
Essential Design Patterns For Mobile Banking
Despite a great deal of mobile innovation, many creators of financial apps still copy their interface patterns from the desktop Web, even though these patterns are not as well suited to the mobile space. Small screens, custom controls, divided attention and fat fingers demand different thinking when designing for mobile: taking what works on the Web and converting it into authentically mobile flows using simple, effective design patterns.
Android, Siri and Tangible Future of Voice Search UX
Today, Apple announced a bunch of enhancements to Siri and voice search. How does Siri UX compare with Android 4.0? What’s just around the corner for Voice Search? Don’t tell your phone or tablet anything else until you’ve read the article.
Cross Channel UX Elements Framework
The Cross Channel UX Elements framework is a practical design tool you can use to create “Magic Moments†of flow and delight for your customers across the different channels in a more deliberate fashion, rather than arriving at great designs only through occasional happenstance.
Mobile Magic Moments: Transform the Trivial
When mobile or tablet design is executed well, the device feels like the extension of our bodies. Because interfaces respond even before we consciously give them a command. Often, the interface “dissolves in behavior†and we feel empowered, as though the device we hold in our hand is the equivalent of Iron Man’s suit of cybernetic armor, or Batman’s utility belt. I call this empowering experience a “Magic Momentâ€.
Virtual Seminar: Cross-Channel Design: Magic Mobile Moments
Why do some million-dollar apps fail, while simple apps like Instagram make billions? The answer is “Magic Moments”. And on May 16th, the author of best-selling book “Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success” will show you how to create “Magic Moments” in your own Mobile and Tablet apps.
NOTE: Not for beginners. The Expert Strategy(TM) Series is aimed at mastery of advanced design principles.
Why we don’t do mobile usability tests (and neither should you)
In my experience, mobile usability tests, as they are popularly conducted, are a waste of time and resources and in vast majority of cases fail to lead to creation a better mobile product. Instead, I conduct RITE (Rapid Iterative Testing and Evaluation) studies: the only methodology that I’ve actually experienced in the real life yielding more delightful, usable and successful mobile products in less time.
4 Ridiculously Simple Tips for Using QR Code to Connect 10 Times More Mobile Customers With your Social Media
Engaging with your customers through mobile social media is an excellent idea, and has the potential to add a lot of value and further enhance the relationship of your customers to your brand. Here are four simple tips that will help you make the most of the QR Code technology.
7 Ways to Whip Up Viral Value Through QR Codes: #6 Connect Through Social Networks (Part 1 of 2)
Installment #6 shows how to deliver QR code value by allowing your customers to connect to your company through social networks. As of the date of this writing, many companies have been implementing their social mobile engagement strategy by putting printed Facebook and Twitter “buttons†on everything from print advertising to packaging. We think QR codes offer a much better solution. This is Part 1 of the article: 6 Reasons Printed Buttons Must Die.
Mobile Websites, Tablet Apps and Hybrids: 7 Mobile Strategy Tips for 2012
Sites like YouTube and Facebook are already projecting mobile use to surpass desktop use as early as *this year*. What’s your mobile and tablet strategy? Allow me to humbly present the wisdom I got from the experience of walking the last 365 miles. Barefoot. In the snow. Uphill both ways.
7 Ways to Whip Up Viral Value Through QR Codes: #7 Offer More Info About Your Product
Your QR code is just the nail you need to engage the consumer. A chance to tell a story. A way to create the authentic, artesian, immersive product experience. An opportunity to give a service that extends the relationship with your brand well beyond the current moment of consumption.
Practical Agile Mobile Design
We help you look for success in the right place from the get go, with the right design patterns implemented through Agile and light-weight guerrilla user testing strategies that work. Faster. And with more confidence. “Start with questions and walk away with wireframes.”
Designing for Mobile & Tablet Workshop * October 21, 2011 * Milwaukee, WI
Today, mobile experiences are beginning to dominate our connection with technology. Stories we read. Places we go. Stuff we buy. Food we eat. Who we interact with. Mobile is increasingly becoming the platform, the operating system on which we run our digital lives. In this intensive hands-on full-day workshop, you will learn to design authentic mobile and tablet websites and apps that deliver experiences your customers will love to come back to again and again. And create a return on investment that will make your business people tremble with greed.
Designing for Kindle Fire and iPad? What you need to know now.
How would an experience on a 7-inch tablet (like Amazon’s Kindle Fire) differ from one on a 9.7-inch tablet like the iPad? How does the size of the tablet device play into the application design, and how the user interacts with the device? Do smaller 7-inch tablets have the potential to be as popular as the larger iPad, from a user experience perspective?
Practical Ecommerce Search: UX Strategies for Success
I wrote the definitive book on the subject: “Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Successâ€. In this workshop, I help you understand and create a cross-channel digital search strategy and show you how to improve the search experience through practical, intuitive interface design patterns that create 10X or more in ROI.
DrawCamp * June 12, 2010 * Milwaukee, WI
Storyboarding iPad Transitions
In this session we will dig deep together into the frame-by-frame analysis of popular iPad interface transitions and discuss the animation principles behind the secrets of industrial design magic that makes iPad transitions such a compelling experience. Then, I will demonstrate how to easily draw both existing transitions and any new design ideas in a fun storyboard format using post-it notes.
Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search: Part II
In Part I of Design Patterns for Mobile Faceted Search, I looked at Four Corners, Modal Overlay, Watermark, and Full-Page Refinement Options design patterns, which maximize the mobile screen real estate. This column covers strategies for making people aware of the filtering options and methods of improving transitions between the various states of a search user interface.