What distinguishes a web application from a traditional, content-based website and what are some of the unique design challenges associated with web applications? A reasonable launching point is the more fundamental question, “What is an application?”
Design Principles
Visual designers working on the web need an understanding of the medium in which they work, so many have taken to code. Many have entered the usability lab. But what about the other side? Are developers and human factors professionals immersed in literature on gestalt and color theory?
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
Despite predictions to the contrary, it doesn’t seem that the advent of networked information sharing has reduced human consumption of paper. In fact, given the amount of printouts modern offices and homes produce, one is inclined to say that even MORE paper is generated today than ever before.
Printing the Web
How do you lead your business-to-business clients down the right path without sacrificing every design, usability, and information design principle you’ve ever learned? And how do you make these websites engaging for users? Nancy Carl offers advice for creating successful B2B websites.
Putting a Face on B2B Websites
Governments hire thousands of employees and spend millions of dollars on contractors to design, build, and operate websites. Chances are good that you will have some exposure to government work, and therefore, some exposure to the politics of user experience.
The Politics of User Experience
What happens when web designers really “get” designing for the web? Sarah Horton, co-author of the Web Style Guide, ponders the meaning of beauty and quality in the context of being a good web designer.
Beauty is Only Screen Deep
The world of mobile phones is a jungle of technologies with few established standards that, in some ways, resembles the early days of personal computing. Here the author presents an impressionistic landscape of this world, a glimpse of the near future, and thoughts on what it might mean for IAs.
Mobile: The State of the Art
S.R. Ranganathan was the greatest librarian of the 20th Century. His ideas influenced every aspect of library science, yet, as impressive as his accomplishments were, Ranganathan didn’t start out with the intention of becoming a librarian at all.
Ranganathan for IAs
At this point in experience design’s evolution, satisfaction ought to be the norm, and delight ought to be the goal. As design professionals, how do we create opportunities for customer delight?
From Satisfaction to Delight
As computers and digital devices increasingly insert themselves into our lives, they do so on an ever increasing social level. Designers need to understand the context of use and include the whole of a user’s experience into the solution when creating a computer interface.