Our world is getting louder. Consider all the beeps and bops from your smartphone that alert you that something is happening, and all the feedback from your appliances when your toast is ready or your oven is heated, and when Siri responds to a question you’ve posed. Today our technology is expressing itself with sound, and, as interaction designers, we need to consider how to deliberately design with audio to create harmony rather than cacophony. The cacophony is beautifully captured in Chris Crutchfield’s video, in which he interprets the experience of...

   For those of us in the business of designing the web, one area of resources that always prove invaluable to have in our design arsenals is tutorials. Learning how other web designers have crafted their designs, and which tools they always rely on can always help to guide us as we are either developing or honing our own skills. So we search the web for useful tutorials. Well today we have done the searching for you. Given that Photoshop is one of the most powerful and popular graphics programs for web design related projects, we decided to turn our focus in that...

   As technology evolves, so does the art and craft of Web design. New technology creates new challenges, which require new solutions. Often we’re working in uncharted territory, where the solutions demanded really are new. Other times, we’re faced with problems of a more universal nature, problems that have a history. Given the limited history of Web design, we have to look beyond our immediate domain for answers to the more challenging questions. We do this all the time when we draw on the rich history of graphic design and visual arts. But we’re not limited...

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   For many of us, logging into websites is a part of our daily routine. In fact, we probably do it so often that we’ve stopped having to think about how it’s done… that is, until something goes wrong: we forget our password, our user name, the email address we signed up with, how we signed up, or even if we ever signed up at all. These experiences are not just frustrating for us, but are bad for businesses as well. How bad? User Interface Engineering’s analysis of a major online retailer found that 45% of all customers had multiple registrations in the...

   More than ever, designers are being asked to create experiences for a variety of mobile devices. As tablet adoption increases and we move into the post-PC world, companies will compete for users’ attention with the quality of their experience. Designing successful apps for Android tablets requires not only a great concept that will encourage downloads, usage and retention, but also an experience that Android users will find intuitive and native to the environment. The following will help designers become familiar with Android tablet app design by understanding...

   Designing websites and related media for kids presents plenty of opportunities for Web designers. Openings are available at many businesses and schools, as well as through parents and kids themselves, giving designers many ways to find work on electronic and print projects that appeal to kids. The types of work range from interface designs for video games to websites for birthday parties. There was a time when kids’ websites were brash and busy, packed with colors and cartoon typography. Fortunately, the scale of the children’s market across most product ranges...

   For designers, Android is the elephant in the room when it comes to app design. As much as designers would like to think it’s an iOS world in which all anyones cares about are iPhones, iPads and the App Store, nobody can ignore that Android currently has the majority of smartphone market share and that it is being used on everything from tablets to e-readers. In short, the Google Android platform is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and brands are starting to notice. But let’s face it. Android’s multiple devices and form factors make it feel like designing for it...