Review of fresh materials, August 2011

This material continues a series of monthly reviews of fresh articles on the topic of interfaces, new tools and collections of patterns, interesting cases and historical stories. Of the tapes of several hundred thematic subscriptions, approximately 5% of the worthwhile publications are selected that are interesting to share. Previous materials: April 2010-July 2011 .

Methods and practices

Transforming Qualitative Data into Actionable Information
Joshua Ledwell from Autodesk offers a labeling system for high-quality user research results that will help you better navigate the bulk of the data.
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New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms
A fresh article by Luke Wroblewski about modern approaches to form design. Since the release of his popular book on this topic, much has changed, so new solutions are required.

Social design
Facebook has published the official design guidelines for social services. In addition to general recommendations, this guideline contains links to relevant FB platform technologies.

Video Personas - A New Approach
An interesting approach to character creation is offered by Get Elastic. They shoot accompanying videos showing a typical day in the life of each type of user.

3 Ideas for Capturing Feedback
Jakub Linowski shows three interesting ways to collect comments on wireframes - a separate area for the comments page, saving photos of marker boards with the results of discussions, a separate layer of the page with a list of improvements and accepted things.

Instruments

Designing for Windows Phone (PDF)
Microsoft has released a tutorial / guide for designing and developing applications for Windows Phone 7. The link is its PDF version.

Sharing Sketches Remotely
Nathan Curtis from EightShapes describes the process of interaction of a remote team when working on an interface concept. It offers excellent tools for quickly sharing sketches with a desktop webcam at the base.

OmniGraffle UX Template
New version of the universal template for design in OmniGraffle from Konigi. It includes the basics for several documents at once - wireframes, characters, site maps.

Free Full Layered Google+ GUI PSD Kit
A set of PSD templates for the new Google Plus service, including major pages and interactive elements. Direct download link - http://www.coolwebmasters.com/engine/download.php?id=163 (1.3 MB).

Touch Gesture Reference Cards
A set of reference and playing cards from Craig Villamor, Dan Willis and Luke Wroblewski, describing gestures for modern touch interfaces. Direct link to PDF .

Interactive Shortcuts Guide for InDesign CS5
An online reference for Adobe InDesign keyboard shortcuts, one of the most popular design tools. Direct link to the directory .

Patterns

Designing for Android Tablets
Dan McKenzie's most excellent review article, which describes the key features of the interface of Android-tablets. This is a very good reminder for those who are starting to design for the platform.

6 Epic Forces Battling Your Mega Menus
Jared Spool describes problems with the mega-menu interface pattern used in mainstream navigation. A clear indicator that you need to be careful with them is Amazon, which quickly abandoned this approach.

5 Big Usability Mistakes Designers Make on Carousels
A small but useful series of tips on creating and using carousel controls. The article has good and visual illustrations that can be used in the documentation and presentations.

The Fold Exists but Does It Matter?
Too much has already been written on the subject of the “first screen of the browser”, but this article successfully collects the history of the issue and statistics on the topic. Many of the numbers in it are rather sad - they confirm the presence of a dead advertising zone after scrolling.

Process

User Integration of User Experience into Software Development
A group of invited experts from UXMatters shares their experience in integrating design into the design process. By the way, this is my first mini-publication for publication before a series of autumn articles.

Act First, Do the Research Later
Donald Norman once again criticizes the key messages of the profession, often confirmed by him - serious user research is not so important when launching new products. It is much more important to constantly monitor the subject area in order to be an expert in it by the beginning of work on a product.

Client Reactions to User Research Findings
Jim Ross raised the topic of "selling" to the client the results of user research. Often, there are familiar questions and doubts on his part - “why spend so much time on it”, “yes, we already knew it all” - and the article offers answers to them.

Cases

Improvements in Windows Explorer
Microsoft launched another blog with an internal product kitchen, this time dedicated to Windows 8. As is the case with the legendary history of Office Ribbon, this article about the new Explorer contains a lot of interesting usage statistics and conclusions regarding the interface design.

Five Lessons from Tablet UX Research
Brennan Browne describes five key insights from a user’s annual study of how and how to use tablets. Some of them were known for a long time, but some are discussed for the first time.

Thumbnails, Titles, and URLs - How Users Recognize Representations of Websites
Jennifer Lynn Morrow from the Firefox interface command tells you about the results of researching user perception of various ways of displaying open sites in a browser — thumbnails of various sizes, headers and URLs.

Roaring, sweeping away everything in its path, simplicity
Vlad Golovach rightly criticizes a recent article by Andy Rutledge in which he redrawn the site The New York Times . This is another example of unnecessary simplification, when the essence of the product is lost for the sake of ghostly beauty.

Why Separate Mobile & Desktop Web Pages?
Luke Wroblewski talks about how to create a single page for the main and mobile version in his recently sold Twitter startup BagCheck. This is an excellent and detailed case study of the current responsive web design approach.

Theory

Judgment and Decision Making
Colleen Roller talks about the influence of the physical properties of the product on its perception. Although this information is not so important when designing computer interfaces, it improves the understanding of interaction features.

Social Interaction Models - From Google+ to Twitter
Adrian Chan compares the behavior of users in several social services - Facebook, Twitter, Turntable.fm, Empire Avenie, Google Plus. It describes the main components of such models as a whole and lists those used by a particular product.

Why Rounded Corners are Easier on the Eyes
Anthony T. describes the reasons why rounded corners of objects are more easily perceived by the eye. This short article shows several illustrative examples and features of perception.

Trends

UX Career Guide - User Experience Jobs, Salary, Market Information
Interesting infographic poster, describing the possible directions of development for a UX-specialist, as well as the status of the profession in the United States.

Responsive Web Design Techniques, Tools and Design Strategies
Extensive selection of articles and other useful materials about "adaptable" design. The topic is now particularly relevant and debatable, so there are many references in the article.

The Challenge of Targeting Late Adopters
Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain talk about how to work with the late adopters category of users - people who value technology, but are not ready to use it in the early stages.

Fresh links can also be tracked in the Facebook group of the same name .