A design pattern is a recurring solution to a common problem. A solution for a problem that has been found to work well over and over. Such a solution over time becomes a convention. Continue reading 0 comments
It is a proven fact that 80 percent of the effects in a system are generated by 20 percent of the its variables. Use this to prioritize your design efforts. Continue reading 11 comments
As your web application become increasingly more complicated and deal with increasingly larger chunks of data it is possibly also going towards the path of being more unresponsive. Viewing a flash video in HD, Uploading a 300 MB file, or even ordering a physical product in a web shop will possibly leave your user on hold. Regardless of the waiting time being 10 seconds, 10 minutes, or 10 days, the user will be left in a state of not knowing. Continue reading 1 comment
Having a good descriptive metaphor to guide your design will help you immensely! Abstracting your thoughts into a metaphor provides an already thought out solution to solving a design problem, and thus also hints to which paradigm solutions to unexpected challenges might be found in. Continue reading 1 comment
Instead of just watching for established patterns in web design, why not try to go to the edge and search for emerging patterns that might just make it into the web application world in the near future? How about searching for new UI patterns outside the web world? Continue reading 5 comments
How welcome do your users feel when using your product for the first time? How do you welcome them? Do you go out of your way to make people using your product feel comfortable and welcomed? Continue reading 0 comments
One of the basic challenges of building software is the lack of knowledge. We never know it all. Creating a new innovative product is hard to plan for, as we do not know where to look. Likewise, a perfectly rational decision is impossible as we will never know everything needed to make one. Even worse – at project start we often know next to nothing! Continue reading 2 comments
Too often, I see programmers who just want to program, designers who just want to design, sales people who just want to sell, and researchers who just want to research. I believe that this lack of motivation to cross functional boundaries hinders smooth integrated work processes and provokes the phase-separated workflow much like the waterfall model that we have tried to escape from for so long. Perhaps most important of all, the functional separation hinders the kind of innovation that spurs from having a common tacit understanding across functional groups and having two or more fields being combined and exposed to one another. Continue reading 2 comments
The product-life-cycle is a well known phenomenon that explains users’ adoption of new technology and by that also your product. The early adaptors are willing to pay a high price to be the first to play with new technology while the price is forced down when your product hits the mainstream due to fierce competition from the companies that lured on your product for new pray. Continue reading 1 comment
UI-Patterns.com is the work of Anders Toxboe – a Danish web developer seeking to categorize what has before seemed like ad hoc approaches to developing web applications.
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