Archive for month: September, 2017

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/1stwebdesigner/~3/RdTA5Hqbz0U/

Design portfolios are fairly easy to set up. You can build project grids or add visual case studies to showcase your work, and the quality is immediately visible.

With UX design, it’s a little tougher because it’s often about the process and the results on each project. To craft a great UX portfolio I recommend studying others to get ideas.

This collection is by no means a complete collection of UX designer portfolio sites. But it’s an excellent place to start looking for ideas and studying how other UX designers present their work.

1. Hanna Jung

Hanna’s portfolio site offers a minimalist style with a primary focus on the work. It uses plenty of visuals to sell projects but it doesn’t feel like “just” a UX portfolio.

The header and tagline clarify exactly what Hanna does, and this is probably the best way to grab attention. If you’re designing a portfolio site for yourself always try to share what you do early, so visitors know what they’re looking at.

Each project photo inside the grid links to an internal page with more info. You can turn this into a detailed photo gallery, a quick synopsis, or even a detailed case study. But offering more info about each project on a separate page is never a bad idea.

2. Adham Dannaway

Many people know Adham Dannaway’s site because it’s been featured in galleries across the web. And for good reason!

His homepage uses a brilliant graphic illustrating the type of work he does: both design and code.

There’s a significant overlap between UI designers and UX designers, so a lot of freelancers position themselves in this overlap. It makes you more valuable to a client who may want to hire for both skills, or just one knowing both skills worth off each other.

But the real reason Adham’s portfolio works so well is the internal structure of his portfolio project pages. Check out this one as an example. Notice how it reads in a linear fashion and helps sell the work done on that project.

Definitely the best choice for anyone launching a UX portfolio site from scratch.

3. Val Head

Val Head is a well-known designer with a specialty in UI/UX animations along with interaction design. Her portfolio site is a testament to all the work she does.

And you’ll notice the homepage doesn’t use a single image beyond her logo.

The structure immediately grabs your attention whether it’s focused on Val’s newsletter, her speaking engagements, or her recent blog articles. A fantastic design showing how you can sell your UX work without many visuals at all.

4. Paul Lapkin

Some designers don’t feel comfortable adding their personal photos onto their portfolio. Others like it because it adds personality and gives visitors a chance to see who they are.

Paul Lapkin uses a fullscreen header background portrait that immediately grabs attention. The heading text describes his work as a UI+UX designer along with further details underneath.

This intro text is meant to grab your attention and leave you wanting more. The “view work” link is pretty clear, and if you can write copy that also grabs attention this style might work for you too.

5. Nick Finck

Nick Finck has a much more traditional website with a clear header, navigation, and footer area. Not all modern portfolios look like this but this layout works well and has for years.

One thing I really like on the homepage is the header section with Nick’s photo. This includes two CTAs that encourage you to dig deeper into Nick’s work.

A lot of his portfolio’s essence is in the writing and in his past project work for companies like Adobe and Google. This means it’s less about selling and more about building connections with potential clients.

6. Christina Richardson

A while back I was browsing through portfolios and found Christina Richardson’s site.

This has always been a favorite of mine for a few reasons. It naturally has a sense of personality, but it doesn’t feel too cluttered or heavily customized. The whole site runs as a single-page design so it’s super easy to navigate too.

But I also really like the UX timeline feature since it’s a visual representation of work experience.

This feels a lot more user-friendly than a boring resume, but it gets the same message across. Very UX-y if I do say so myself.

7. Ionut Zamfir

Split-page designs work well if you have the right photos. Ionut Zamfir follows this trend brilliantly in his UX design portfolio.

Background images litter each section of the page and you’ll even find a slideshow featuring pics of his work.

It’s definitely a simple website, but sometimes that’s all you need. Some visuals to help sell, information about the designer and a contact form.

8. Kevin M. Hoffman

Other than photos you can also use contrast and colors to grab attention. That’s what you’ll find on Kevin Hoffman’s site which also breaks the page up with horizontal block sections.

Text is pretty easy to read and it doesn’t follow any particular formula. Not to mention the colors don’t exactly match, but they also don’t clash either.

I’d call this an experimental portfolio layout, but it does serve its purpose.

9. Simon Pan

The portfolio site of Simon Pan is one of the best places for case study layouts. You can learn so much just going through his portfolio and reading through his case studies.

With UX design it’s more about selling your knowledge through the process. Clients want to know what you did on a project and how you solved problems for past clients.

Simon’s copywriting is exquisite, and it helps sell his work well. This is one of the best skills you can pick up if you’re pushing towards a case study mentality.

10. Adrian Zumbrunnen

With a unique combination of minimalism and dynamic effects, this portfolio is certainly eye-catching.

Adrian Zumbrunnen uses a dark + light color scheme that feels typical of many design portfolios.

But he includes other elements like bold CTA buttons, links to video recordings of his talks, and even an illustration of himself. Pretty unique!

11. Ramin Nasibov

Ramin Nasibov follows a typical grid layout that works well on visual designer’s portfolios. This site is real easy to browse and it works nicely on mobile too(along with other grid-style layouts!)

One thing I would like to see on Ramin’s homepage is more info about himself. But he does so much work in the design space that it makes sense to focus solely on the work.

If you’re trying to draw more attention to your work instead of yourself I recommend a grid-style layout just like this.

12. Nishtha Mehrotra

On Nishtha Mehrotra’s site you’ll find a nice mix of everything. It uses a custom hero header with animations, a visual portfolio grid, and a clean contact section with an email and a phone number.

The site feels incredibly professional, and it has been designed with the user in mind. Single page portfolios are often better if you can fit everything you want to say onto one page.

I also like the resume section which feels a lot easier to browse than a PDF doc. Overall a really clean site, and well worth studying if you’re going for the single-page portfolio look.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/-wbHtg9nFpI/perfect-office-8bitdo-sn30-retro-controller-bose-soundwear-speaker-office-ideas-and-more

The Perfect Office – 8Bitdo SN30 Retro Controller, Bose Soundwear Speaker, Office Ideas and More

PauloGabriel
Sep 26, 2017

We’ve seen some great gadgets and equipment for designers. There are so many cool stuff out there that we could assemble infinite perfect office spaces every week! So we’ll assemble some, and we’d like you to help us. What equipment would the perfect office have?

This week we’ve found some super nice items for you, beginning with the beautiful retro game controller 8Bitdo SN30. There’s also the professional LCD monitors made by Philips, and an amazing work desk with a touchscreen built-in! But there’s more!

8Bitdo SN30 Universal Retro Game Controller

Got a flashy new Nintendo Switch, but yearn for the true Nintendo experience? Look no further! (at Gear Patrol)

Philips Professional LCD Monitors

The first of the new P-series displays to arrive is the Philips 328P6AU (pictured). The monitor is based on an IPS-ADS panel with a 2560×1440 resolution and can hit 400 nits in brightness. Philips says that the 328P6AU display can reproduce 98% of the AdobeRGB color gamut (and therefore it is safe to say that it can cover 100% of the sRGB), but it does not reveal anything beyond that. The firm also is not disclosing the refresh rate of the panel, but given how the monitor is being positioned, it is likely that it is set at 60 Hz. Since the 328P6AU is a professional display, its stand can set the monitor in portrait mode and allows all kinds of other adjustments (height, rotate, tilt). (at AnandTech)

SmartDesk 3 AI Standing Desk

This SmartDesk’s ‘AI’ standing desk really just has a touchscreen tablet built-in. The company also says the built-in display syncs with Google’s software suite to notify users when they have meetings. There’s also an Uber button so you can request a ride from your desk. So basically, Autonomous built a touchscreen tablet into a desk and preloaded some apps. That seven-inch display has a 400×800 resolution and connects to Wi-Fi, by the way.The SmartDesk has an activity log that tells you how long you have been working, sitting or standing and suggests when you should sit or stand. (at Like Cool)

Bose Soundwear Companion Speaker

Typically, there are two ways to listen to music: through speakers that other people can hear, or via ear- or headphones that make your listening private but keep you isolated from the world around you. The Bose SoundWear Companion Speaker is meant to fill that gap. It wraps around your neck, resting on your shoulders and using the company’s waveguide technology to deliver full, rich sound to your ears while minimizing noise for those around you. A built-in microphone pairs with an on-device button for taking calls and using Siri or Google Assistant and a series of custom designed covers let you change its looks to suit your taste. (at Uncrate)

August Smart Lock

Now on its third generation, the August Smart Lock has gotten an all-new design as well as some new features. Notably, the round look of the original — still available in the new Pro model — is gone, replaced with a taller unit that has an actual thumb turn for manual operation. Battery life has doubled, and the new DoorSense feature can tell if the door is open or closed, so you can set it to automatically lock when the door shuts, providing added peace of mind. While it uses Bluetooth to let you control the lock with your phone, remote operation is possible with the addition of an August Connect module or Doorbell Cam Pro, which also add support for Alexa and Google Assistant. (at Uncrate)

Office Ideas!

Here are some office ideas for you! How do you like these? Don’t forget that you may suggest gadgets or ideas via twitter: @paulogabriel – Also, if you’d like to sponsor this post, drop me a line! I hope you enjoy these! Cheers. 😉

perfect office
home office
office ideas
gadgets

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/sharing-react-components-easily-bit/

This is the age of components. Frameworks built for UI components, such as React, enable us to split our UI into individual, reusable pieces that can be worked with in isolation.

In many ways, React components are not that different from other encapsulated code functionalities. They can get defined inputs (usually “props” or ES6 classes) and return UI-oriented elements that will appear as part of your UI.

Individual components are often used across different parts of our UI. The problem is, organizing and sharing our components across teams and applications often presents a real challenge. Sharing components can give us fast and simple access to components written and used by our team, and help make sure our codebase is made of nothing but what we actually need.

Bit is an open-source project that enables us to instantly share components from our existing source code with our team, and use them across our different projects without changing our source code, file structure or the tools we work with. Let’s see how.

Sharing Components: It’s Not That Simple

Three major issues stand in the way of easily organizing and sharing source-code components: discoverability, maintainability, and the overhead of sharing.

Discoverability is a major issue. A developer working on my team on or a different team has no way of easily discovering and browsing the components available throughout our source code when choosing, upgrading or installing the ones they need with the tools of their choice.

Maintainability is another problem while sharing common components across different parts of our application. Maintainability problems range from simple duplications, to the complexity of maintaining multiple repos and packages and keeping control over the dependency chain. This can quickly get out of hand.

Up until now, sharing our components was a bit of a challenge. It forced us to either duplicate code or invest a lot of time and effort maintaining large packages — which also weigh down our build and install time.

When trying to find and use an individual React component (Slider, Spinner etc.) we usually ended up installing vast static libraries containing a whole bunch of stuff we didn’t need. It also made it next to impossible to discover or use individual components created by our team or the community.

In some ways, this is very much like using a CD-ROM just to listen to a single song. Using Bit, we can easily share any set of components, making them individually available to anyone on our team.

Sharing Components with Bit

If you haven’t heard of Bit’s latest release, it’s an open-source project that allows us to share components from our existing source code with our team and across projects.

By decoupling the representation of components from our actual file structure, Bit tracks the components within our source code and enables us to quickly turn any file or subset of files into a reusable component. Using simple glob patterns (see below), the components within an entire library or project can be instantly shared without changing our source code itself or our file structure.

Any component (installed with Bit, and very soon with NPM or Yarn) can be individually shared, discovered and used in any application or project. It can also be modified and updated from any project environment, choosing if and how to let our friends update our components from their own projects (and vice versa).

Components can be grouped together into “Scopes”, which are collections that can be thought of as “playlists” of individual components sharing common attributes. When using the free Bit community site, each component is presented along with its rendered visuals, test results, semi-automatically generated docs and more.

Regardless of the tools we use to install our components, we can gain full control over our dependency graph and get a clear picture of the components used across our projects. Sharing code can also help keep our UI aligned with our design principles, as we can avoid changes when implementing the same components again and again in different projects.

Let’s try an example.

Continue reading %Sharing React Components Easily with Bit%

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/c85IhY91LbQ/seattle-aquarium-redesign-adobe-creative-resident-natalie-lew

Seattle Aquarium Redesign by Adobe Creative Resident Natalie Lew

ibby
Sep 25, 2017

It’s our final day posting about the Adobe Creative Resident Class of 2017 and we’re thrilled to feature the work of Seattle-based interaction designer, Natalie Lew. A designer with a passion for thinking of ways future technologies like augmented reality and artificial intelligence can be used in the classroom to teach intangible concepts, we were particularly captured by Natalie’s work for the Seattle Aquarium Redesign. The project entailed attracting those who have visited the Seattle Aquarium before to see the site in a new light, and for those yet to go to the attraction to see aquariums themselves in a unique way. Natalie created a beautiful new visual identity for the aquarium, applied that identity to the branding of the design, and designed a new service application to aid those visiting the site. Check out Natalie’s journey for the aquarium redesign below and learn more about this rising star and what inspires her here. 

Designing the App Experience

This is an application intended for a user about to visit the exhibit or already within the exhibit. It does not intend for the aquarium to offer more than it already does; rather, it simply facilitates the activities and exhibits and the aquarium in current existence.

Wireframes and Navigation

Further Branding

As the identity of the Seattle Aquarium relies on far more than just visual UI, Natalie created mockups of what Out of Home advertising might look like, as well as their website and catalogue for print viewing.

MORE ABOUT ADOBE CREATIVE RESIDENT NATALIE LEW

An interaction designer and recent graduate, Natalie Lew of Seattle is passionate about the intersections of design and philosophy. Her interdisciplinary background in design inspires her residency project, in which she’ll create a toolkit of resources to make user experience design more accessible and available to the creative community.  She plans to start a design studio in the future, so she’ll challenge herself to learn more about working in individual and group settings while constantly receiving and improving based on feedback. 
 

Natalie Lew
interaction design
Adobe Creative Resident

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2017/09/when-slower-ux-is-better-ux/

When it comes to technology, faster isn’t always better. 

It’s true that 47 percent of people want web pages to load in two seconds or less (and 40 percent abandon sites that take three seconds to load). But when load times drop significantly below that two-second threshold, users start to get skeptical.

To understand why, put yourself in the shoes of someone checking his credit score. In the past, he may have spent hours on the phone to get even one bureau’s credit report. Now, using an app, he can get all three reports in mere seconds with just a few taps.

Yes, the app is fast, and yes, from an objective perspective, it’s user-friendly. Its designers clearly did their homework. But does he trust the app’s results? Is it a scam? Did the program really gather all three reports, check them for errors, and present them in a matter of seconds?

No way, he might think. Given his past experience, he’d be perfectly reasonable in thinking that the app couldn’t possibly have done it that quickly.

When Slower Software Works

In most cases, a speedy user experience makes sense. Optimization is important, and frankly, most sites need more of it, not less.

But there are certain situations in which a slower UX can actually increase user trust and engagement. Consider slowing your software in order to:

1. Create Security Theater

When you fly, the Transportation Security Administration’s job isn’t just to make you safer; it’s also to make you feel safer. This same labor of illusion is what made you confident when filing your taxes with TurboTax earlier this year. Intuit created fake animated loading bars that show that it triple-checking your returns for errors even though it actually does so along the way.

Slowing down this stressful process tells users that TurboTax is working hard for them and that they can trust it with sensitive information. Facebook provides random security checks for a similar reason: By drawing attention to something that’s already happening behind the scenes, Facebook gives users confidence that their data is secure.

When, exactly, should you provide a security-show slowdown? One might be in order if the user has provided sensitive information (such as a social security number or home address), paid money to use your service, or engaged deeply with it.

For example, imagine a home-finding startup. Rather than you doing the legwork of finding the perfect home, the startup’s app handles it for you. Because it costs money and requires personal information, it’s imperative that it slow the process down. In order to build trust, the app should explain why it needs your sensitive data, how it will use that information, and assure you that it will keep your information safe. A free messaging app, on the other hand, needs no such slowdown. Its goal is merely to gain and keep its users through a seamless experience with the least number of barriers.

2. Educate Users About Modern Tech Speeds

Thanks to Moore’s Law and the maturation of connected devices, many modern technology products are fast and efficient with little perceived latency. Mobile computing and network speeds are remarkably quick compared to even five years ago.

But with so many users accustomed to spotty internet service, old technologies, and buggy software, fast operating speeds can cause them to worry about whether your product is working correctly. Wells Fargo’s eye scan technology, for example, was so quick that users didn’t believe it was doing what it said it was. The developers artificially slowed the process by strategically including scanning and authenticating progress bars. 

Slowing your product to match user expectations should, however, be a stopgap solution. Look for opportunities to educate users on today’s software speeds. Within the product itself, explain how your software is faster than ever. 

Facebook, again, provides an illustrative example. Ever notice how it pushes temporary notifications into your newsfeed following a product update? Each update mentions how Facebook is constantly working hard to improve the platform’s speed.

In your own product, take it one step further and include a call to action to allow users to provide feedback. Have an FAQ ready (or, even better, live support) to respond to this feedback and help users understand what’s really happening behind the scenes of your software.

3. Work Within System Constraints

Keep in mind that not all devices are connected to fast internet providers. Your product’s users might be of modest means or live in rural areas, or your own server infrastructure might not be up to snuff.

Either way, progress indicators such as loading bars can remind users that your product is still working on their request. For example, FirstRand Bank Limited of South Africa baked an artificial progress bar into its web interface. Because its infrastructure is outdated and slow, information can’t be displayed as quickly as it could, say, in Wells Fargo’s app.

Again, consider the user’s experience. If you’re a FirstRand customer staring at a blank screen for 15 seconds after clicking a button, wouldn’t you try checking your connection and refreshing the request? Unfortunately, these actions only make the bottleneck worse.

A fake loading bar might not be the ideal solution, but it’s better than providing no feedback at all. Animation to show that your software is handling the user’s request provides relief for both your servers and your users.

Speeding Up or Slowing Down?

All this talk of slowing down software requires some historical context. System limitations and users’ past experiences may be slowing things down, but on the whole, technology is pushing toward faster user experiences.

The more time that elapses, the more long-term tech users we’ll have. The more long-term tech users become accustomed to instantaneous results, the less UX designers will need to slow down their technologies. The faster technologies work — and, importantly, work correctly — the more users will trust them. Meanwhile, younger generations without the preconceived notions of their parents will grow into adults who are accustomed to seamless technological experiences.

Older generations who aren’t comfortable with technology still exist, however, and two people of different demographics rarely have the same comfort levels with the same technologies. Today, intentionally slowing down certain product scenarios can help older users feel comfortable with what’s happening to their data.

When slow systems (by today’s standards) are gone and people are used to instantaneous results, how much systems reveal to us about their back-end operations may become a question of personal freedom. As humans, we want to feel in control. Choices are comforting.

Ultimately, speed is important, but so is matching users’ expectations. No matter how fast we move into the future, slowing down will never go out of style.

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