Design: Responsive Design

The decade is half over—so it’s as good a time as any to reflect on what’s important in UX design. We are fast approaching 2020, the year corporations are holding up as the finish line for the promised land of a digital revolution. What trends are signposts toward the future as we approach 2020? After reflecting on my experiences, working as a designer of corporate Web sites over the past five years, I’ve decided to write a series of articles about trends I think will still be relevant in 2020.

Plenty of trends have hit since 2010: Responsive Web Design (RWD), Big Data, and wearable technology to name just a few. Five years ago, the focus was on adapting Web designs to iPhones and Android smartphones. Since then, we’ve learned to design for tablets, HD wide-screen monitors, and now, the miniature screens of wearables such as Apple Watch, which was introduced in 2015. Technology and device trends will come and go, but simple, clean, well-tested, Web user interfaces, provide the best user experience across platforms. Read More

One of the best ways to make your mobile app or Web site pretty—but also inconsistent and unusable—is to begin by drawing the user interface (UI).

However, starting with problems, user needs, and audience definitions, then defining the data structure and information architecture is a pretty well-defined approach that many UX designers and product teams believe in and try to follow. Still, too many go from there straight to user-interface designs. That’s still too big a jump and leaves too much to chance, gut instinct, default framework behaviors, and nitpicking reviews.

Instead, to understand and define an app or Web site’s information design, we first need to create a box diagram, or box model. Read More

This is a sample chapter from Luke Wroblewski’s book Mobile First. 2011, A Book Apart.

Chapter 7: Layout

Appropriate adaptations of how we think about organization, actions, and input on the desktop take what we know about Web design and make it usable on mobile. But how do we ensure it’s also usable across the wide range of mobile devices available now and in the coming months—not to mention years?

• Come to terms with the fact that mobile is going to change at a breakneck pace for the foreseeable future.
• Let mobile browsers know you are creating designs that fit them.
• Be flexible, fluid, and responsive in your layouts.
• Know where to sketch the lines between device experiences.
• Reduce to the minimum amount necessary. Read More