Archive for category: Random Stories

Original Source: https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2018/04/8-ways-to-emotionally-reward-your-users/

As sometimes happens, I was thinking the other day. In this case, I was doing my thinking after finishing a long video game: Far Cry 5. It occurred to me that video game creators are the masters of emotional payoff, when everything goes right. The world of that game is in itself rewarding and fun to run around in.

It’s actually enough fun, that I’m more than willing to ignore how the game’s story was an unrewarding, steaming pile of sadness. They made this digital faux-Montana delightful enough that I don’t want to leave. At least I intend to have a few more gaming sessions there, in any case.

That’s actually kind of impressive, when you think about it. The experience has enough emotional payoff to keep me around when I absolutely despised the central narrative. Imagine if a website (Facebook) could (Twitter) do (LinkedIn?) that (Amazon). Well they can, and they do. It’s actually not great, sometimes. But hey, you can use these powers for good.

Anyway, my point is that people want payoff for the effort they put into things, and that includes the websites they browse. You might think receiving the product or service you’re selling is the payoff, and it certainly can be. But you can build emotional rewards into just about any aspect of a website or app.

Here then, are some examples of emotional rewards that can keep people coming back:

1. Connection

Well this is the big and obvious one; it’s the entire foundation for “Web 2.0”. (Remember when everyone and their dog was writing about that? Good times.) People want to connect with other people, or failing that, fuzzy animals. You can do both on just about any site with social features, these days.

The popularity of tools designed to help us engage other human beings is staggering when compared to pretty much anything else on the Internet. And now, we can connect with people who share our interests no matter the distance. For better or worse, this is our world now.

2. Popularity & Recognition

After connection, popularity is often regarded as the second best thing. Many of the same platforms that offer a chance to connect also offer us a chance to get “Internet famous”. Offering people the chance to feel recognized isn’t just an emotional reward, it’s a business model. Again, for better or worse, this is our world, now.

3. Competition

Lastly for the social section of this article, we have competition. It’s human nature: we like kicking both metaphorical and physical butt. Offering your users a friendly way to compete with each other can drive all kinds of interaction. Just be warned: social competition often turns into a simple popularity contest, and those aren’t always great for an online community.

social competition often turns into a simple popularity contest, and those aren’t always great for an online community

4. Progress

There’s a programmer’s joke that goes something like, “Programmers love video games so much because they offer a fictional world where people give you a task, and then you complete the task, and no one changes the spec.”

In a world where life itself often feels like a Sisyphean endeavor, the feeling of making progress in any way is not to be under-valued. The mere existence of progress bars as a UI element has probably saved many a device from being smashed out of frustration.

5. Achievement

Closely related to progress is achievement: the emotion you get when you actually finish something. A sense of achievement can come from completing just about any task in this hectic day and age, with so many distractions all around. Still, the emotion is made stronger by the recognition of one’s achievements.

Even offering a quick “Hurray, you did it” after completing something annoying like a long form is a nice touch. It lets your users know that you recognize the time and effort they put into their interaction with your site, and that they could have just as easily spent that time and effort elsewhere.

6. Exclusivity

Another thing people like is having things that other people don’t have. That actually doesn’t have to be as awful as it sounds.

After all, all kinds of products come with collector’s editions, exclusive branded merchandise, and so on. Exclusive rewards are, at their best, a way of showing appreciation for the people who invest the most in you, and your product. Showing appreciation in this way can score you some life-long fans.

7. Discovery

Discovery is a tricky one. There is definitely a sense of delight in discovering new and hidden (or semi-hidden) things; but as web designers, we usually want stuff to be pretty obvious. In other words, you don’t want people to have to “discover” the “buy” button. Discovery is usually implemented with things like Easter eggs in the design, semi-obscure cultural references in the copy, and other small touches.

8. Surprises

Last, but not least, who doesn’t love a pleasant surprise? You might think this is the same as “Discovery”, but no. The surprises I’m talking about here are things you don’t have to go looking for. They’re big, they’re noticeable, and they leave users feeling like they just got something extra for free.

People love getting random extra stuff for free, be it a pixel-art “badge” on their favorite streaming site, temporary access to “premium” features on an app they use every day, a free delivery from their shopping app, or what-have-you. As the artists formerly known as Blink 182 once put it:

She left me roses by the stairs
Surprises let me know she cares

And really, that’s what rewarding your users emotionally should be about: letting them know you care, and appreciate their business. I appreciate you. You’re fantastic. I lov… ahem. It’s nice to have you around.

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Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/CreativeBloq/~3/PEnAxPghu4I/the-best-new-tech-of-2018

With so much consumer tech released throughout the year, it can be difficult to spot the hardware products that offer creatives in particular something to get excited about.

Thankfully, more technology companies than ever are eager to please designers, illustrators and digital artists of all types with their inspirational wares.

So whether you're just looking to upgrade your workstation with a useful bit of kit, or fancy taking your creativity in a new direction entirely, keep reading to find out what's currently got our attention on the market.

Apple's latest 9.7-inch iPad may not be the company's thinnest or fastest ever tablet, but at £319 it's surely the most affordable. The sixth-generation iPad has the same 9.7-inch Retina display as last year's model, but its higher-resolution touch sensor presents a significant bonus – it now supports the Apple Pencil, just like the £619 iPad Pro. Digital illustration on an iOS device just got a whole lot cheaper.

Also read: The best iPad deals

The higher-res your creative assets, the longer your file transfers take, which is why OWC have released this super-fast, silent-running external storage solution. The company reckons its new ThunderBlade SSD is the fastest external drive on the market, thanks to reported 2,800MB/s read and 2,450MB/s write speeds. Two thunderbolt ports at the rear mean up to six of the drives can be daisy-chained when plugged into the mains. They're currently not cheap though, starting at $1,200 for the 1TB model.

US: Buy OWC ThunderBlade v4 SSD for $1,199UK: Buy OWC ThunderBlade v4 SSD for £810.51

Also read: 8 best external hard drives and SSDs for Mac and PC users

Taking cues from Microsoft's Surface Studio, Logitech's advanced wireless CRAFT keyboard incorporates a creative input dial into its layout for controlling configurable, app-specific functions. 

The Crown, as it's called, is touch sensitive, so you can tap or turn it to adjust various settings depending on the application you're using. With custom profiles for all Adobe's Creative Cloud apps – including Photoshop CC, Illustrator, Premiere Pro, and InDesign, it's ready to go out of the box.

The CRAFT can pair with up to three devices over Bluetooth, and also features backlighting that detects hand movement and automatically adjusts illumination based on lighting conditions.

Also read: The best keyboards for creatives

In response to criticism that it was failing to cater to creative professionals, Apple launched perhaps the fastest Mac ever in December with the slick-looking space grey iMac Pro. 

The iMac Pro can be configured with a mammoth 18-core Intel Xeon processor. To put that power in perspective, consider that a 10-core iMac Pro is almost twice as fast as a high-end 5K iMac and up to 45 percent faster than a 'trash can' 2013 Mac Pro. 

Hidden behind that beautiful 5K display is up to 4TB of SSD storage, up to 128GB of ECC RAM, and 16GB AMD Radeon Pro Vega 64 graphics. With four Thunderbolt 3 ports, the iMac Pro can power two external 5K displays or four 4K displays at 60Hz simultaneously. There's also a 10 Gigabit Ethernet port, an SD card slot, four USB-A 3.0 ports, and a 3.5mm headphone jack lined up on the rear. 

Also read: The best computers for designers 2018

Looking to marry a monitor or two to a brand new Apple Mac? Then consider one of StarTech's freshly launched bus-powered Thunderbolt 3 Mini Docking Stations with additional Ethernet and USB connectivity. 

The dual HDMI dock supports two HDMI monitors running in 4K resolution, whereas the DisplayPort version can power two 4K DisplayPort monitors or one 5K monitor. Best of all, there's no need for a separate power cord because the included Thunderbolt 3 cable supplies all the charge your monitors need. 

US: Buy the StarTech Mini Thunderbolt 3 Dock for $123.99UK: Buy the StarTech Mini Thunderbolt 3 Dock for £144.50

The Surface Pro 4 was introduced back in October 2015 and has been superseded by the Surface Pro, which offers support for the Surface Dial right out of the box. Microsoft has long promised the earlier tablet PC would eventually support the Surface Dial. That was almost a year ago, so this update is definitely worth shouting about. For £76, now SP4 owners can finally dial into the onscreen creative action, controlling radial menus and selecting functions more intuitively.

Typical mobile workstations focus on offering powerful internal components capable of running demanding creative applications, but that all too often leads to an inelegant exterior. Not so with Dell's Precision 5520, which manages to pack the power of a workstation-class machine into a sleek space-age chassis with a luxurious feel.

Apart from its solid-looking Full HD 15.6-inch display, the 5520 is powered by an Intel Xeon processor and includes two USB 3.0 ports, a single USB-C port with Thunderbolt 3, an SD card reader, and an HDMI connection around the side.

Wacom refreshed its Intuos tablet line in 2017 with an updated version of the Intuos Pro, available in two highly portable medium and large sizes. Both tablet sizes feature eight customisable ExpressKeys and offer over 8,000 levels of pressure, 5,080 lines of resolution, 60 levels of pen tilt, 200 points per second reporting, USB and Bluetooth connectivity, and a multi-function touch ring. 

Wacom has also reworked the pen to make it more comfortable to use. It now sports a slightly less tapered design and side buttons that sit flush with the body.

Also read: The best graphics tablets for 2018

Apple's Cinema Display didn't get a look in last year and instead Apple surprised users by partnering with LG to come up with this UltraFine 5K monitor. While the first units unfortunately had a glitch, LG has since fixed the issue, allowing this display to sneak into our 2018 recommended list.

USB-C Thunderbolt 3 provides performance connectivity, while the display outshines even Apple's Retina MacBook screens, thanks to its native 5,120 x 2,880 resolution (don't worry – it downscales just fine). Fonts and icons look pristine on its exceedingly wide aspect, making this UltraFine display a multitasker's dream.

Upload your digital artwork to this reversible-ink pen-wielding robot and it will reproduce it on a vertical surface in minutes. Now, robot-powered art isn't new, but Scribit is designed with ease of use in mind. It requires just two nails and a power outlet, and its suspending cables can be installed in under five minutes, while the integrated motors allow the device to move, draw, erase, and re-draw content on pretty much any flat surface, whether it's made of glass, plaster, or whiteboard.

Scribit's crowd-funding campaign will start on 5 June.

As well as the high price, Apple's 2017 refresh of its flagship notebook retained the same remarkably slim chassis and controversial Touch Bar, but brought in much-anticipated seventh-generation Kaby Lake processors and improved graphics under the hood.

The 2880 x 1800 resolution Retina display looks as impressive as we've come to expect from Apple, which also decided to bump the speed of the onboard memory to 2,133MHz, up from 1,866MHz last year (although it still tops out at 16GB RAM). Add to that a new Radeon Pro 560 GPU with 4GB of GDDR5 memory and integrated Intel HD Graphics 630, and creative pros should be good to go.

Early in 2017, Wacom and Microsoft put their heads together and came up with the Bamboo Ink, a smart stylus for Windows Ink Workspace that lets idea-makers capture notes, sketch ideas or mark documents across most Windows 10 platforms.

Designed to provide a customised, natural writing and sketching experience, the Bamboo Ink comes with three nibs – soft, medium and firm – allowing sketchers and scribblers to switch up the feel. The pen can also be used to navigate windows in Edge browser, write in text boxes, and plenty more besides.

The impressive two-in-one Surface Book 2 sits at the top of Microsoft’s hardware line up. Two models are available: 13-inch and 15-inch, although the 15-inch likely won’t be available in the UK or Australia until 2018.

With Core i7 and i5 processors, both models are more powerful, thinner and lighter versions of the original Surface Book – our laptop of 2017. The smaller 13.5-inch PixelSense LCD touch display is stunning, with bright, accurate colours – and its compromise on power means it can have a fanless design, so it runs practically silently.

Both models boast brilliant battery life and the docking mechanism is significantly more stable, too. An updated stylus with quadruple the pressure sensitivity of the last pen is also available, just be aware it's $100 extra.

Need a recap? Here's all the best tech for 2018 – and the best prices…

Related articles:

The best video editing laptopsThe best monitor calibrators for designers 2018The 6 best smartphones for designers in 2018

Original Source: https://www.sitepoint.com/fusebox-faster-webpack-alternative/

webpack has arguably become the de facto JavaScript module bundler, but it has a reputation for being confusing and difficult to learn. In this article, I want to present a faster, simpler webpack alternative — FuseBox.

In today’s rapidly evolving front-end landscape, it’s vital to have a solid grasp of the JavaScript module system. Modules can help organize your code, make it more maintainable and increase its reusability. Unfortunately, browser support for ES modules isn’t quite there yet, so you’ll invariably need a module bundler to stitch them together into a single file which can be delivered to the browser.

FuseBox is a next generation ecosystem of tools that provides for all of the requirements of the development lifecycle. It enables developers to bundle any file format, it’s a module loader, a transpiler, a task runner and much more.

In this article, we’re going to use FuseBox to walk you through the common tasks involved in developing a JavaScript application. These are as follows:

bundling: define an entry point and a bundle name
transpiling: write in TypeScript and target ES5
module loading: combine your modules into one single file
handling other assets: use a FuseBox plugin to compile Sass
hot module reloading (HMR): see your project automatically update to reflect your changes
task running: an introduction to Sparky, FuseBox’s built-in task runner
unit testing: an introduction to FuseBox’s built-in test runner
targeting production: produce a minified, uglified bundle for deployment.

Once you’ve finished reading, you’ll be able to drop FuseBox into your next project and benefit from its speed, simplicity and flexibility.

Bundling — a Basic Example

Disclaimer: I’m one of the core contributors to the project.

Projects are becoming larger — that’s a fact. If we were to include all the files required by the page one by one, this would make things considerably slower, as the browser would have to make a bunch of blocking HTTP requests. Bundling solves this issue and reduces the number of files requested and FuseBox makes this process as easy as possible.

To start bundling, we need to teach FuseBox about what we want. FuseBox doesn’t require much in the way of configuration to bundle heavy projects. In fact, ten lines of configuration are usually enough for most use cases. However, before we start getting into some real-world examples, let’s create something simple.

First, create a new folder. Then, from your command line, navigate to it and enter the following: npm init -y. This will initialize your project. Then type npm install fuse-box -D, which will install FuseBox as a development dependency.

Next create a folder called src which is where all your code will go. Also, create an index.js file in your src folder and add the following content into it:

console.log(‘Hello world’);

Next, create a fuse.js file in the root of your project. This file will contain all your FuseBox configuration.

At this point, our folder structure should look something like this:

MyProject
├── node_modules
├── src
│ └── index.js
├── fuse.js
└── package.json

Add the code below to fuse.js:

const { FuseBox } = require(“fuse-box”);

const fuse = FuseBox.init({
homeDir: “src”,
output: “dist/$name.js”
});

fuse.bundle(“app”)
.instructions(“> index.js”);

fuse.run();

Let’s break this code down section by section.

First, we require FuseBox. Then we initialize a new instance of FuseBox with the init method. This is also called the Producer in FuseBox terms. It’s where we define global configuration for all bundles.

The homeDir option points FuseBox to the home directory of our files. This is because FuseBox creates a virtual file structure that mimics the physical one. The output option tells FuseBox where our output bundle should reside. Notice the $name.js: this is a placeholder that will be replaced with the name you provide to your bundle.

The command fuse.bundle(“app”) is where we tell FuseBox about our bundle. We’re telling FuseBox to create a bundle with the name app.js that will reside in the dist folder in your project. The end file will be project/dist/app.js.

The instructions(‘>index.js’) part is where we tell FuseBox what we want to bundle. The symbol > is what we call an arithmetic instruction: it’s the language FuseBox uses to learn what files need to be bundled.

The command fuse.run() tells FuseBox to start the bundling process.

Now from your command line enter node fuse.js — and that’s it, you’re done! FuseBox will now start its bundling magic and create the bundle at dist/app.js.

The full example is available here.

Transpiling TypeScript and ES6

What we’ve done so far is nice, but this is not how many modern JavaScript projects are developed. Applications today are developed using ES6, which is the sixth major release of the ECMAScript language specification. ES6 is great: it enables new language features like classes, arrow functions and much more. The problem, though, is that it’s not fully supported by all browser or Node.js versions yet. So we need to transpile our code into a more common supported version of JavaScript, ES5.

There are two major tools to achieve this: Typescript and Babel. FuseBox supports both. In fact, FuseBox is built with Typescript, thus supporting it natively.

To get started with FuseBox and Typescript, do the following:

create a new project
using the command line, navigate to the root of this project and do npm init -y
create a src folder
inside src folder, add index.ts
create fuse.js in the root of the project
install FuseBox and TypeScript as dependencies: npm install fuse-box typescript -D.

In index.ts, add the following:

const name: string = “FuseBox”;
console.log(name);

You may be wondering what :string means. It’s an example of Typescript’s type system, telling the compiler that the variable name is of type string. To learn more about Typescript, check the official site.

Add the following to fuse.js:

const { FuseBox } = require(“fuse-box”);

const fuse = FuseBox.init({
homeDir: “src”,
output: “dist/$name.js”
});

fuse.bundle(“app”)
.instructions(“> index.ts”);

fuse.run();

Notice that things are still the same as before, the only difference being that we use the .ts file format instead of .js in instructions(‘>index.ts’). Now that the prerequisites are in place, from your command line enter node fuse.js and FuseBox will start bundling.

The full example is available here.

Note: When using ES6 syntax, FuseBox will automatically detect the module type and transpile the code seamlessly. No need for Babel. FuseBox rocks!

Continue reading %Introduction to FuseBox — a Faster, Simpler webpack Alternative%

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Designrfix/~3/-bu_2tG4czw/best-websites-for-gmat-test-prep

The GMAT test is an essential prerequisite for many MBA students to enroll in their chosen institution. The exam is made up of four distinct sections focusing on literacy and numeracy questions. Earning the perfect scores in the test requires an intensive study and preparation. Of course, due to the importance of this exam, there […]

The post Best Websites for GMAT Test Prep appeared first on designrfix.com.

Original Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/abduzeedo/~3/eg2qPoY0QI8/84676

Super Elegant Business Card Designs Printed by MOO

abduzeedo
May 01, 2018

You probably have noticed that we are fans of minimalist brand identity and design work. We believe in the saying “if I had more time I would have written a shorter letter” applies really well to design. Not only design but pretty much everything could be summarized to its core. Business cards have been a major tool for networking and still play a huge role. It’s also awesome to see how designers translate the brand into such a small format and yet transmit the same message.

For this post I would like to share some awesome business cards and brand identity composition examples designed by MOO customers and printed by MOO. I have been a fan and a client of MOO, have printed all my wedding material with them. It’s awesome to see how much they have grown, and the quality of the print material they deliver is second to none. Here are some examples of how MOO customers have utilized their printing services.

We love great design and believe it can work wonders for every business. That’s why we make it simple to create beautiful, expertly crafted business stationery and promotional materials that’ll help you start conversations, open doors and strengthen relationships.  – MOO

Brand Identity and Business Card Designs

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