Tag: web design
Refresh Detroit’s fourth annual Global Accessibility Awareness Day event was a smashing success!
We were fortunate to have two speakers from event sponsor Deque Systems, a leader in accessibility software and testing. UX designer Caitlin Geier started us off with her five keys to designing for accessibility. Continue reading “Recap: Global Accessibility Awareness Day 2017”
I love this time of year when my favorite websites post advent calendars for people who work on the web. It’s like Christmas comes early with all the tips and resources!
If you missed it earlier this week, .netMagazine published eight advent calendars for web designers and developers, leading off with the well-known 24ways site and including UXMas, a new advent calendar for user experience professionals.
Here’s a few more web-focused advent calendars you might enjoy:
The Online Marketing Advent Calendar shares a digital marketing tip each day, focusing on SEO and content strategy.
With tips and resources written by fellow sysadmins, the Systems Administration Advent Calendar has been publishing their calendar since 2008.
For illustrators, the It’s a Shape Christmas interactive advent calendar features 25 downloadable shapes from illustrators around the world.
The Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) Calendar offers a puzzle-interface for demos and to learn about new resources.
Though written in German, it’s easy to use Google Translate on the WebKrauts Advent Calendar 2012 which features web topics including CSS, wireframes, SASS, tools, and mobile web.
After reading Susan Weinschenk’s 100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, I found it a great reference for solving design problems. Susan breaks the book out into 10 self-contained sections that discuss the psychology of how people see, read, remember, think, and feel.
Susan does a great job of keeping each topic very digestible, with simple language, while still going deeper with a more scientific approach to things.
This book promises to answer questions every designer has had over the course of his or her career. I know I’ve asked a few of these questions myself:
Each section is packed full of valuable information about how and why we humans think the way we do. One of my favorite sections was about how people see. A lot of the things in this section were basic reminders, like how red and blue colors are hard on the eyes when used together. Others were more in depth, like the various meanings of colors throughout different cultures, and how people see cues that tell them what to do with objects. The latter is especially important in user interface design, because if you want your user to click a button, it should look like a tactile button.
For web and user interface designers, I would recommend the sections about how people see, read, focus their attention, and decide. The takeaways from these sections were especially helpful in designing interfaces.
Overall I found this book a staple during my work day, I often refer to it when trying to solve an issue when I have to ask “what would the user do?” I would recommend this book to all of my fellow designer friends or to friends who are just interested in learning about how people interact with things in general.
You can purchase Susan’s book online at Peachpit in paperback and ebook format. Use our Peachpit User Group coupon code (UE-23AA-PEUF) to get 35% off your purchase.
Refresh Detroit 