Product Management
UX/UI & Interacion Design
Thoughts and Links
Google likes to move things around :) While in Gmail you can find the new link in the bottom right, in Gmail for Google Apps you can find it in the right top corner.I made a screenshot, so you won't miss it.
#Google #Gmail #design
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How many times have I heard a co-designer expess their desire to find a better [...] (insert external resource who delivers goods by specification of a designer - aka Developer, Printer or Print Shop, Media Buyer, ...). Not because the current service provider or vendor does a bad job, but the main reasoning goes like this: "They should get back to us with suggestions how we could make the [...] (brochure, website, catalog, mobile app) better, faster, smoother or more interactive by using the latest technologies - after all they are the experts of their fields." And in that reasoning lies already the answer - they are the experts in THEIR fields. An external service provider will always try to deliver your project with solutions they know well - therefore with the least amount of effort. They are not interested in making your project "more" anything - unless they have a ready solution to sell you at high margin for them - thus making it "more costly".
And this is rightly so - this is their business. It's not their business to find great solutions for the communication challenges of your client. So stop looking for this kind of vendor because you know them already - they are your competitors.
It's part of the job of a designer to research the latest technologies and materials to adapt them for the communication needs of their clients. It's important as a designer to know what is possible and what not - you don't have to know exactly how it is done, but at least now what there is. You have to push your vendor into new fields or find the right vendor for a specific job. You are the one who should know, because your client relies on you to get the best solution to his problem. Don't try to outsource your competence.
#design #workflow #outsourcing
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Every serious web designers nows about the 960 Pixel Grid - it was the solution for designers who wanted to improve their design with a grid layout optimized for a standard screen resolution of 1024x768. It is still very popular, but with the advent of responsive/adaptive design and the need for designers to make designs on various screen sizes the 960 grid helps only with one size and the standard 12 pt web ssafe fonts. To calculate grids is a pain and is time consuming - making more than one for a project was not possible until now. Designers Bookshop has updated their Grid Calculator Basic Edition - which has now a focus on setting up Document Grids for Photoshop and Illustrator.
This means in short that you can make an optimized grid for your web project based on screen sizes, resolution and the font you are using in minutes - and even better, you can maintain gutter and leadings etc. through the whole project for different devices.
I'm a great fan of the Grid Calculator Tools (also have a look at the Pro Version for Indesign) and for only 29.99 it's a bargain and well worth a try.
#GridCalculator #grids #layout #webdesign #responsive
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Designers Bookshop – Grid Calculator Basic Edition The ultimate resource in grid systems.
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The world on typography is on fire - new fresh and great fonts are released every day. Just like the new Pluto Italics. Even better when you can get the fonts at a bargain price - say $49 for 16 fonts. And yes it is worth paying, because it's full featured Opentype with alternatives etc.
The only thing I disliked is the buying process - because the website states on the cart that the font package costs $299 - even though it shows you the right price once you click on the button. I head to try it out because on first sight even though the slider image tells me it's $49 the button does not - confusing.
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Pluto Italics™ - Webfont & Desktop font « MyFonts Type designer Hannes von Döhren has created Pluto, a sweet type family consisting of 16 Uprights and 16 Italics; 32 fonts in all. The fonts are informal and friendly at first sight and lend themselves...
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[update]Myfonts has corrected the issue and the price is now shown correctly. Good for you.[/update]
Achtung baby is not my favorite U2 Album, but it might have inspired more musicians than the others. The free cover album released a couple of days ago is filled with great and popular artists. And as a preview some of the tracks are available to listen at Consequence of Sound. Nice
#nin #u2 #killers #cover #music
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Check Out: Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode, The Killers cover U2 « Consequence of Sound Consequence of Sound is a New York- and Chicago-based, worldly influenced music blog that seeks to cover the music world as it has never has been covered before. Features news, reviews, mp3, and festi...
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Nice Update for Google Plus of requested features (Google Apps Integration) and some other goodies. The Photo Editing has been seen a great improvement to before and has all the tools for basic photo retouching - so now you can pimp you smartphone pictures. But even nicer in my opinion is the Google Plus Ripples feature. How often have we looked at visualizations of Twitter and Facebook shares. Most of the times you couldn't really have the same tool for your own posts as none of the tools had access to all the users. The new tool from Google is build into the social network and therefore has full access.
When comparing it to the statistics you get from Facebook you can clearly see the different approach of this social network. While Facebook claims to be people centric, the stats are mostly advertising driven. Since Advertising is not yet possible in Google Plus, the statistics are more people centric. I'm really interested to see how this will evolve in the future.
#GooglePlus #update #Apps #Visualization #data #photography
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Official Google Blog: Google+: Popular posts, eye-catching analytics, photo fun and... Google+: Popular posts, eye-catching analytics, photo fun and... 10/27/2011 10:07:00 AM. We think Google+ should get better every time you use it. It's not enough to obsess over community feedback...
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It's good practice to have a dedicated download section if a website is for a business that provides a lot of technical information for download. Especially B2B websites use the websites as a resource for providing access to brochures, drawings, etc. But in this mobile first times even B2B sites get accessed by mobile devices and downloading a file to that device is not always the best experience. Here are 5 tips for a better User Experience
1) Include a "Send Brochure to Email" Button I often find information I want to read later when I'm at my computer - the ability to send it to my email account is an easy way to remember me to read it and I know where i can find the brochure - in the email.
2) Provide links to PDF-readers Adobe has extended it's free Acrobat Reader series to mobile devices, but unlike the desktops not all smart phones users have installed them. It's much like a years ago where every website had a link to the download section of Adobe Acrobat - just now the links are for the app stores. Here are the links to the current versions: - Adobe Reader for Android - Access PDF files on the go: https://market.android.com/details?id=com.adobe.reader - Adobe Reader X for iOS - Access PDF files on the go: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=469337564&mt=8
3) Use a third party service like Isuuu I used Isuuu on many websites. Mostly where the business had a publication or catalog they wanted to make readable on the web without transferring all the content to the website. The causes might be workflow related or just because it was just cheaper.
Issue has redesigned it's online reading experience beyond their flash player to HTML5 and makes it accessible this way to mobile devices and tablets.
4) Give an alternative URL If the brochures just are other versions of the content already present on the website you might just publish a link and a note to direct them to that page.
5) Don't get rid of the download section If none of the above solutions work for you don't just get rid of the section. Visitors might know your site from the desktop version and expect to find the download section. Just have the section with some copy stating that you don't provide downloads in the mobile version with a link to the full website. I people really want to get to the downloads they can reach it.
This are just a couple of examples and it would be great to hear other ideas - what are your solutions? #UX #mobile #webdesign
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Every time I change phone I hope I can forget about my point&shoot. I hoped it in 2005 when I've got the Sony Ericcson K750i (K is for Kamera = Camera) - and later with the first Nexus One. The improvements where there, but slow and I couldn't really see why the evolution was so slow and the quality so bad even compared to a $50 Point&Shoot from the electronic gadget store around the corner. My main problem is that the shots don't live up to the memories. If we take the pictures to keep on the memories, I want them to be on par with my memories - or even better. I want them to be the aid to remember more vividly how beautiful, fun or dull that moment was. I don't want them to distort my memory or change it.
Within the latest releases of smartphones I've seen (at least from the publicized shots) that the technology is going to be there - soon. This video is an example of the images you can shoot with the latest Google Galaxy Nexus Phone (with some technical help to make it more engaging). It really looks promising, just like the Samsung Galaxy SII and the new iPhone 4s. Maybe this time we can really forget about our Point and Shoots.
#photography #smartphone #memory
Reshared post from +Romain Guy
Rockaway Beach, by Galaxy Nexus #android #galaxynexus #timelapse
This is a slightly longer version of the video showed during the Galaxy Nexus and Android 4.0 launch event.
You can also watch the video on YouTube: Rockaway Beach by Galaxy Nexus
The video was shot on Rockaway Beach, near Pacifica, California. The final video is a compilation of video and time-lapse clips shot with a Galaxy Nexus phone. Everything was shot in 1080p and the final video was edited in Adobe After Effects CS5. The only processing done on the original footage was to speed it up in the first clip.
The video clips were shot without the help of a tripod and shake a little bit. The time-lapse clips were shot using a Stage Zero Dolly from Dynamic Perception (www.dynamicperception.com). If you haven't seen them before, check out the photos of the rig I used by opening the album linked below.
This video was my very first try at shooting video (including time-lapses) with a phone. It is also not what I had planned on doing when I went to Rockaway Beach that night! My Canon 5D Mk II remained untouched as soon as I got the idea of using the Galaxy Nexus. This first experiment was very interesting and I already have many ideas of other videos and time-lapses I would like to shoot with this phone.
You can watch the video in full 1080p resolution and I highly recommend you do so on... a Galaxy Nexus! The gorgeous 720p screen at 315 dpi is amazing.
Enjoy!
In album Photo Gear (5 photos)
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Mapmaker is the the tool from Google Maps where you can add information - much like you can in Open Streetmaps. By looking at the list of countires and regions where this tool is available I can see a pattern - regions with low density of population or available data. But to be honest - there are areas even in high population density countries like Italy and Germany where Google Maps still lacks. While I hope they will release this tools for those areas as well I will try to make the map of Canada better :)
Reshared post from +Daniel Mabasa
Woohoo! The magic of Google Map Maker is now available in Canada!
Read about it here: http://goo.gl/RG7Gl
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CSS3 has introduced easy animations to webdesign ... but what if you are new to animating and don't know what looks good or want to see a couple of examples? Here is a cross-browser CSS Animations that look really good and will help you make you website look more animated. I can already see them in use on forms and sliders.
#CSS3 #Animation #Free #Resource
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Animate.css - a bunch of plug-and-play CSS animations
Animate.css. animate.css is a bunch of cool, fun, and cross-browser animations for you to use in your projects. Great for emphasis, home pages, sliders, and general just-add-water-awesomeness. Create ...
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Looking at the Keywords of your site statistics are one of the first things web designers/owners do to see, what people are looking for on the site. The latest changes in Google's Policy to encrypt searches will impact this key measure - but how much?
Check out this cool tutorial on how to see the impact or just click directly on the link of the custom report and add it to your Google Analytics Account.
#Analytics #Encryption #Google #SEO
Reshared post from +Avinash Kaushik
Estimate the impact of recent Google http > https change for logged in users on your search keywords.
Step 1. Open Google Analytics (or any tool you have access to).
Step 2: Go to Traffic Source > Sources > Search > Organic
Step 3: Change the Date Range (top right) to Oct 19th - Oct 20th (yes real time! :).
Step 4: Look for a keyword called: (not provided)
Step 5: Compare the total Visits (in the scorecard under the word Explorer on top) with the Visits you see in the row called (not provided).
Step 6: Use your own data, rather than FUD to: A. Worry a lot. B. Not worry at all. C. Wonder if you are suddenly hungry.
Screenshot for my blog attached.
#datadrivenfreakingout :)
PS: You should be able to do this with every web analytics tools including the main ones like Omniture, WebTrends, Yahoo! Web Analytics, CoreMetrics, Baidu Analytics et al.
PPS: Inspired by Thomas's comment below I've created a special custom report in Google Analytics that you can use to keep track of the impact of this change over time. Log into Google Analytics first, then click on this link to download the report: http://goo.gl/UuKY0 .
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Great insight to the Startup Genome Project - which tries to discover what makes a startup successful. With all the startup hype going on it's really interesting to see the light a data driven approach can bring into this complex topic. While many startups struggle to even get their first customers, it seems that scaling to fast is the neck breaker...
Enjoy this interview brought to you through Dormroom Tycoon Podcast.
#podcast #startup #data #analysis #audio
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Max Marmer: Startup Genome Project – Reasons why Startups Succeed or Fail – Business Interview In this interview, Max Marmer founder of Startup Genome Project gives reasons why some startups succeed whilst others fail.
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I love that the Swiss rail is embracing the new technology instead of demonizing it (like it was in Germany). I love StreetView to check out a neighbourhood before renting a place and get an idea how a certain area looks like before I book a vacation, but sometimes then when I get there I have a feeling of Deja-Vue. Have I've been here? Yes - virtually. There is still a difference in experiencing the real thing - especially nature, but still sometimes I wonder if I should scale down on my peaking before travelling.
On the other side I'm deeply related to the Swiss Alps, because I grew up exactly next to them in the italian Alps and the Dolomites. Seeing them in Google Streetview makes me feel a little bit closer to home whenever I want.
#StreetView #Switzerland
Reshared post from +Vanessa Schneider
Too, too cool.
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This is definitely great news and I wonder if this will also coincide with the launch of Brand Pages - as many Google Apps Accounts are actually small to medium businesses. #google #apps #GooglePlus #integration
Reshared post from +Ben Parr
Yup, Google Apps Support. Finally.
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Google+ To Support Google Apps in Next Few Days Google has announced that Google+ will support Google Apps accounts within the next few days.
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This website aims to build the visual language for the 99% movement, also known as Occupy Wallstreet. I find the idea interesting, and the icons are functional and the designs clear. But it also conveys that the 99% is a dull nameless mass - which is in my opinion in conflict with the diversity of opinions and goals of this heterogenous movement.
The website states that they try to unite the movement with an unified graphic language - but at the moment the language is not very unique. I think that the lowest denominator is not the best approach and there might be need for more thought and variety.
#OWS #design #Identity #style
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OccupyDesign Building a visual language for the 99%, grassroots style. Infographic + other protest signs, logistical signage, and universal icons to support the Occupy Together movement.
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Google's Analytics tool provides many insights - if you know what to look for. The new visualization reports should help people to understand more easily what is going on. It's basically a revamped path visualization like the one found in funnels, but available to all pages. Looking forward in using this tool. Reshared post from +Danny Sullivan
If you do graphics, you'll know about the famous Napoleon's March illustration from 1869 that shows how his army was wiped out. Now, Google Analytics lets you do the same charts for your own site, but hopefully with a better ending!
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Google Analytics Gains "Napoleon's March" Flow Visualization Charts Google Analytics announced a new set of reports that should help marketers and website owners to understand how users behave on their websites. The feature was presented this morning during Web 2.0 Su...
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A Book Apart, the excellent publishing company started by +Jeffrey Zeldman has published 2 new books today. They are inexpensive and always a great read - and for the first time also available as a bundle. This books are also a great read not only for designers and developers, but also for project managers and clients who want to understand what all the fuzz is about the latest trends in web design is ... they might skip the technical parts but grasp a broad view what to expect and what not.
#book #abookapart #epub #design #suggestion
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A Book Apart, Designing for Emotion & Mobile First Bundle Designing for Emotion & Mobile First Bundle. Designing for Emotion & Mobile First Bundle Designing for Emotion. View more images. Paperback bundle $30.00 + shipping + Add. ebook bundle $15.00 ...
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Designers might want to add layout templates for Google Presentations to the brand standards they deliver to their clients. I find myself helping clients move to Google Apps for their Email and basic Office needs - the only part missing until now was a valid Powerpoint alternative.
I will have to try the new functions and see if it has offline capabilities ... that would be killer - especially for client presentations with a tablet.
Does anyone else have alternatives to Google Presentations?
#Google #Apps #Presentation #Powerpoint
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Official Google Blog: A fresh start for Google presentations A fresh start for Google presentations. 10/18/2011 08:00:00 AM. A year and a half ago, we released completely new document, spreadsheet and drawing editors. Google Docs has been picking up speed ever ...
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While there are enough Families with problems in their own household finances, the US Government really is in bad shape if you apply a "normal" view. #government #spending #data #visualization
Reshared post from +Joseph Pred
Here is why S&P downgraded the US credit rating.
• U.S. Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000 • Fed budget: $3,820,000,000,000 • New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000 • National debt: $14,271,000,000,000 • Recent budget cut: $ 38,500,000,000
Now let’s remove 8 zeros and pretend it’s a household budget.
• Annual family income: $21,700 • Money the family spent: $38,200 • New debt on the credit card: $16,500 • Outstanding balance on the credit card: $142,710 • Total budget cuts: $385
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I read a lot about the importance of "less" features and better experience. The mobile first movement comes to mind and I can totally see that it makes sense to not get caught in a Featuremania, but sometimes one feature is more than important, even though it's small. Example: How Remember the Milk (a popular Todo-List App) got me back to their service
Remember the Milk has a lot of features, actually it had all the features I needed - Super Easy Task property input through shortcodes, Locations, Web Interface, Mobile App with Widgets, Automatic Syncing etc. but one ... You couldn't create a new task with the Android Share Menu from another App. This feature would have been super easy to implement and a small update would have fixed this.
The developer preferred to make a complete overhaul of the Android App (without telling anyone) and didn't update the App for months.
This made me look for other solutions and try about 10 other services and get really frustrated. Not only because the user experience was different with other services, but mostly because they where lacking one or another feature I used to love on RTM (Remember The Milk).
I settled for Google Tasks and a nice Mobile App to manage them, even though it lacked a nice web interface and the ease of adding Task properties with shortcodes - but it had the feature I was looking for - the Add Task through the "share menu" in Android.
And here comes the update to the Android App of RTM today ... a lot of bells and whistles and improved use experience, but more important for me ... the share functionality is included.
So I'm back on my favourite Todo-List App/Web Service ...
What I learned Designers are often focused on the experience and try to simplify the functionality to make a slick web/mobile app - but sometimes the little bit more on functionality is more important than the updated icon or slicker dashboard screens
#RTM #UX #Design #Development
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The ginormous Remember The Milk for Android update - Remember The Milk Blog ARCHIVES. October 2011; September 2011; August 2011; July 2011; June 2011; May 2011; April 2011; March 2011; February 2011; January 2011; December 2010; November 2010. View all archives, October 2011,...
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