End-users are the ultimate arbiters of a site or application's success. No matter how skillful or gifted the design and development team, neglecting user perspectives puts our projects in great peril.
Instead, through extensive analysis, usability testing and personas, I seek to understand user needs and goals in such a way that I can advocate for them.
Read MoreIf you've done any Web or UI design, or even thought about it much, you should say, "Oh, right, I know what that is" to most of these patterns. But a few of them might be new to you, and some of the familiar ones may not be part of your usual design repertoire.
Each of these patterns (which are more general) and techniques (more specific) are intended to help you solve design problems. They're common problems, and there's no point in reinventing the wheel every time you need, say, a sortable table -- plenty of folks have already done it, and learned how to do it well. Some of that knowledge is written up here, in an easily-digestible format.
Read MoreRobert Hoekman Jr asked some questions about the "left-versus-right" placement of content and controls on the Caledon Bank account finder... [I] guess the first idea, is the concept of "Separation of Content and Control". By creating pods (using the Flex Panel) and grouping controls into control bars within the pods, we help to focus the controls as the principal subject for manipulation. The idea of content/control separation is one of "perceived affordance", or setting the expectation of the user before they even reach for their mouse, what is to be manipulated, and what is to be interpreted.
Read MoreA decent resource of links, loaded with UI testing options, applications, and resources.
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