A user’s account on a website is like a house. The password is the key, and logging in is like walking through the front door. When a user can’t remember their password, it’s like losing their keys. When a user’s account is hacked, it’s like their house is getting broken into.
Nearly half of Americans (47%) have had their account hacked in the last year alone. Are web designers and developers taking enough measures to prevent these problems? Or do we need to rethink passwords?
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According to Ian Carrington, Google’s mobile and social advertising sales director, speaking at Mobile Marketing Live back in 2012, more people in the world have access to a smartphone than a toothbrush.
With that in mind, it’s perhaps not very surprising that there’s no shortage of information about how people interact with websites on mobile. From specific usability testing and scrutiny of Google Analytics data to more generalized but larger-scale projects, we can quite easily gain access to statistics that illustrate how users interact with our websites.
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The word anticipatory comes from the Latin anticipare, which means “taking care of ahead of time.” We normally associate it with something that happens, is performed or felt in anticipation of something.
In a way, most products contain at least one element of anticipation. Aaron Shapiro from HUGE defined anticipatory design as a method where it’s up to the designer to simplify processes as much as possible for users, minimizing difficulty by making decisions on their behalf.
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As creators of the web, we bring innovative, well-designed interfaces to life. We find satisfaction in improving our craft with each design or line of code. But this push to elevate our skills can be self-serving: Does a new CSS framework or JavaScript abstraction pattern serve our users or us as developers?
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There’s more to designing mobile apps than meets the eye. The task requires a deep knowledge of devices, and it often means changing the way we think — even if that means leaving behind much of what we’ve learned from designing for the web.
I started my career like many designers: working on print design projects. Shortly thereafter, I discovered the world of websites, which fascinated me and became the focus of my work for some time. Along the way I learned concepts related to interaction design and user experience, which I hardly knew existed until then.
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Imagine two futures of mobile technology: in one, we are distracted away from our real-world experiences, increasingly focused on technology and missing out on what is going on around us; in the other, technology enhances our life experiences by providing a needed boost at just the right time.
The first reality is with us already. When was the last time you enjoyed a meal with friends without it being interrupted by people paying attention to their smartphones instead of you? How many times have you had to watch out for pedestrians who are walking with their faces buried in a device, oblivious to their surroundings?
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A lot of people in the tech industry talk about “changing the world” and “making people’s lives better.” But bad design is excluding whole sections of the population from the benefits of technology. If you’re a designer, you can help change that.
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What you say in a user experience matters. How you say it matters equally. The way you frame communication, or how you say something, could be extremely effective at persuading people to start using your product (or to use it more).
So, how do you frame messages effectively? This article explains how design teams can do so in a way that resonates with their users.
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Today’s mobile users have increasing expectations, they are intolerant of faults in their mobile experiences, and they complain about bad mobile experiences on social media and through word of mouth. How do you make sure that your mobile experience meets or exceeds users’ expectations?
One quick way to identify potential problems is to conduct a user experience diagnostic, by having a few mobile specialists look for potential problems with a mobile presence. A diagnostic can be done during design and development to ensure that the mobile website or app adheres to best practices and guidelines. It also serves as a great starting point for a redesign to identify particular opportunities for improvement.
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Information architecture (IA) is one of those buzzwords you’ve probably heard before. It refers to the organization of the information on your website and how it all fits together.
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