Interactive Design articles

A lot of very smart people have said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Other people say that nostalgia bait…ahem…“retrospectives” get a lot of clicks. They’re both right, and I thought it might be both fun and educational to take a look at some of the dead UI conventions of yesteryear. It’s good to remember why they ever lived, and how and why they died. It gives us insight into how best practices were born,...

The somewhat controversial topic of the usefulness of gamification in business has been sparking debates recently. One claim is that it’s a great business tool that helps engage and retain clients, as well as lead them in the right direction. The opposite view holds that there are few real successes in gamification. Today we’re going to the consider the case for gamification in interactive design, and illustrate it with some great examples....

It’s all in the title, really. I am no stranger to dogmatic thinking. I was once a very religious missionary, and currently am an open source enthusiast, a web designer, and a gamer. Of all the dogmatic thinkers I’ve encountered in each of those fields, I’m not actually sure which scare me the most. Some are easily identified from a distance, but you never know who compiles their own UNIX-based OS from scratch until it’s too late. No, it’s...

Your target market has gone mobile. Mobile users spend up to 12% of their time browsing on their device, which works out to 87 hours a month or 1,044 hours a year spent on their phone; 90% of that time is spent using mobile apps. Which is why having a mobile app can be so valuable for your business. No wonder everyone seems to be jumping on the bandwagon. Even 67% of small businesses now have a mobile app. The problem is, many apps are just awful extensions...

Contact forms are a necessity for websites. Without them, your clients would be relegated to handling website- or business-related matters over the phone or email. Worse, they’d have absolutely no context for the call or message, which would increase the amount of time they’d have to spend responding to it. Contact forms, instead, gather essential details from visitors so that your clients can go into each conversation better prepared....

Ahoy Mateys! You’ve probably noticed lately that your website is looking a little worse for wear. What she needs is a bit more than fair skies and wind in her sails. She needs a redesign, something that’ll bring her into the modern age and truly make her a jewel of the digital sea. But how do you even get started? The last thing you want to do is try and navigate a redesign without a plan in place. There are countless articles out there telling you...

In January 2018 alone, consumers conducted over 1 billion voice searches. By 2020, it’s estimated that 30% of all online searches will take place without the use of a screen. Needless to say, voice search is set to make serious waves in the not-so-distant future. As more users seek out the convenience of using their voice to search online, you have to consider how this will impact mobile websites. As of now, your main concern doesn’t need...

I’m a big fan of templates. They’re an essential part of any productive designer’s workflow and they can also be really helpful in boosting your brand’s identity through greater consistency and professionalism. Project management templates are one such example of templates that definitely belong in the workflow of a web designer. They free you from having to handle tedious project and time management tasks and, consequently,...

Web designers have typically always been big-picture people, in that they like having really big screens in front of them. It’s convenient, and it makes you feel very professional. At this point in my life, I don’t think I could go back to having just one monitor, either. And yet, I find that many websites don’t live up to the potential promised by big darned screens, or even that presented by phones with HD resolutions. This is because we...

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” (Maya Angelou) Today when we think about what product we want to use, we have a lot of options to choose from. But there’s one thing that plays a crucial role in this decisions making process: emotions. Humans are emotion-driven species. We evaluate products not only based on utility but also on the feelings they evoke....

Content management is design. I usually try to start an article with some sort of joke or metaphor for flavor, but I’m not going to do that this time. Content management is design, and that’s an important enough concept that it warrants a simple, clear statement, and needs no warm-up time. I’ll say it again for the people at the back: content management is design, and everyone who does it is a designer. In fact, it is the biggest factor in any...

Researchers have known for some time that human behavior happens in patterns. Rather than seek out new ways to interact with technology, humans default to the familiar. Evidence to support people’s love of patterns is abundant. The architect Christopher Alexander recognized, and wrote extensively about, design patterns as early as the 1960s. More recently, Charles Duhigg examined how the majority of our day to day lives are the product...

At its core, the concept of interaction was always about communication. Human-Computer Interaction has never been about graphical user interfaces, which is why Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) are the future of user interface design. An interface is just a medium people use to interact with a system—whether it’s a GUI, VUI or something else. So Why is VUI So Important? Two reasons: Firstly, conversational interfaces are so fascinating...

Okay, how in the heck do you make something “cute”? Now maybe you’ve grown up in an environment where getting in touch with your feelings was anathema. Maybe you just naturally gravitated to Max Steel over Hello Kitty. Maybe you’ve never had a problem with any of this, and freely make high-pitched noises whenever there’s a puppy in sight (as is appropriate). Whatever your background, attempting to turn a web design into “something...