Designing The Perfect Feature Comparison Table
Not all products are created equal. While we repeatedly buy some products almost mindlessly, for others, we take a lot of time to make a purchasing decis…
Designing The Perfect Slider
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When we think about a slider, we usually imagine an image gallery slider, or the infamous carousel, or perhaps off-canvas navigation, with the overlay sliding in from the side. However, this article is not about those kinds of sliders. Instead, we’ll look into the fine details of designing better slider controls for selecting a value or a range of values. Think of price range sliders, 360-degree-view sliders, timeline sliders, health insurance quote calculators, or build-your-own-mobile-plan features.
In all of these use cases, a slider is helpful because it allows users to explore a wide range of options quickly. For precise input, a slider can never beat a regular input field, but we can use a slider to nudge our customers to explore available options and, hence, aid them in making an informed decision.
After a close look at perfect accordions and date and time pickers, let’s turn our attention to sliders, with do’s and don’ts and things to keep in mind when designing one. But first, we need to figure out when a slider makes sense in the first place. (Please note: that article is quite large, and contains many animations and videos.)
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Designing The Perfect Date And Time Picker
What could be so difficult about designing a decent date picker? Basically, we just need an input field and an icon that represents a calendar clearly en…
Designing The Perfect Accordion
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Design patterns. An almost mythical phrase that often inspires either awe or resentment. As designers, we tend to think of design patterns as generic off-the-shelf solutions that can be applied to various contexts almost mechanically, often without proper consideration. Navigation? Off-canvas! Deals of the day? Carousel! You get the idea.
Sometimes we use these patterns without even thinking about them, and there is a good reason for it: Coming up with a brand new solution every time we encounter an interface problem is time-consuming and risky, because we just don’t know how much time will be needed to implement a new solution and whether it will gracefully succeed or miserably fail in usability tests.
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How To Build Honest UIs And Help Users Make Better Decisions
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Many apps today, such as Google Now, Spotify and Amazon, make assumptions about user preferences based on personal data. They may even use this information to make decisions on our behalf, without any direct input from us. For example, Facebook tailors your news feed and Amazon recommends products — both hiding “irrelevant” information and only showing what they think you will like.
This type of design pattern, where user choice is removed, has recently been coined “anticipatory design”. Its aim is to leverage data on user behavior to automate the decision-making process in user interfaces. The outcome lowers the excessive number of decisions people currently make, thereby reducing decision fatigue and improving decisions overall.
The post How To Build Honest UIs And Help Users Make Better Decisions appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
p2p web application, terms and icons to distinguish caller from callee?
I’m working on a web application which uses web rtc. Peers can connect to other peers. The interface will change quite a bit depending on who is the caller vs. callee.
What are appropriate terms and/or icons to notify the current user…