When conducting user research, we all know that asking the right questions is just as important as how you ask them, but how do you know exactly what questions to ask? What if the discussion topic is very personal? How do you get a complete stranger to open up? There is a better way to conduct an in-depth interview, and it doesn’t involve a clipboard. Just imagine what you could discover if the participant’s answers weren’t limited to a predetermined set of questions. This is where collaging can help. Collaging is a projective technique by which participants...

   Javascript is one of a web designer’s best friends. Learning how to use this powerful tool to its fullest potential can prove invaluable to our work and our clients. jQuery helps make JS more accessible. jQuery is a free, fast, and concise JavaScript library that allows you to efficiently write cross-browser javascript code to make Ajax requests, animate elements, manipulate the DOM, and do a variety of user interface manipulations. So today we are going to look at getting started with jQuery. This is the most popular javascript library available and has an...

    Getting into Android development can be quite a challenge, particularly if you’re new to Java or Eclipse or both. Whatever your past experience, you might feel tempted to start working away without checking that you’re making the best use of the IDE. In this article, we’ll go over a few tips, tools and resources that can maximize Eclipse’s usefulness and hopefully save you a few headaches. You might of course already be familiar with some (or all) of them...

   “I am interested in graphic design as art,” Ed Fella says. “This is a kind of art practice that uses forms that come out of graphic design, decorative illustration, and lettering, all mixed together-forms that come out of Twentieth Century art, out of Miró and Picasso — all of it has a genealogy and a certain look — in the same way that artists today use comic books and graphic novels. I was an illustrator, so you see endless styles popping in and out of the books. The drawings are an unconscious discharge of all the styles and forms...

   According to Brandweek, “brands are the express checkout for people living their lives at ever increasing speed. This article shows you how, and why, to add “app”-like icons to your sites for several mobile and desktop browser displays, to clearly and elegantly identify your site with an icon that stands out from the crowd. Logo Presentation And The Nine Basic Ballet Movements When I was a lad growing up in rural America, we only got four channels on television, all local affiliates of the four national networks (yes, four; you’re forgetting PBS, which I only watched...

   User experience design for the Web (and its siblings, interaction design, UI design, et al) has traditionally been a deliverables-based practice. Wireframes, site maps, flow diagrams, content inventories, taxonomies, mockups and the ever-sacred specifications document (aka “The Spec”) helped define the practice in its infancy. These deliverables crystallized the value that the UX discipline brought to an organization. Over time, though, this deliverables-heavy process has put UX designers in the deliverables business — measured and compensated for the depth and breadth of...

   by Justin Johnson As web designers and/or developers we have a certain luxury afforded to us with the location and times; where and when we work. Ours is an industry that allows us to sit at home and work at whatever times (and in whatever conditions) are convenient to us. However, in today’s economic times it can be harder to find enough contract work to support a comfortable lifestyle. If you’re a recent college graduate or a freelancer looking to transition into work as a full-time designer/developer at a company, the following tips in...

by Stuck in Customs Getting The Best Out Of A Photo Shop Tutorial Because of the pace of technology’s evolution, many people have resorted to different tutorials and classes to catch up. Different companies offer these tutorials in order to make their software more user-friendly. A lot of people today are taking photo shop tutorials because they want to learn how to make their pictures look better. However, you should know that just because you have access to a photo shop tutorial doesn’t make you an expert. A huge part of learning depends on your reception of the tutorial. Here are...