How can you convince your clients to make a faster (and easier) buy-in? Better serving citizens means improving a frustrating website experience — the primary way Californians access necessary services. With the help of a guided design exercise, Kelly Schummer explains how the Design Shopping workflow can help guide you throughout the design phases. Regardless […]

2020 was anything but normal. The world has changed, and so has our role as designers. We never know what the future will bring, but ultimately we shape it, and we can contribute more positive change to the world than we often think we can. Consumers had their lives shaken up and many businesses experienced

For large-scale and e-commerce sites, the search experience is an increasingly critical tool. You can vastly improve the experience for users with thoughtful microcopy and the right contextualization. Users who favor searches tend to move quickly, scanning the page for that familiar-looking rectangle, and bouncing quickly when they don’t find what they’re looking for. Communicating

Before the home page, there was the front page. From the Gutenberg Principle to grid systems to above the fold, newspapers teach us much about the foundations of web design. In this article, Frederick O’Brien will examine several tenets of newspaper design and show their connection to best practice online. At the core of that

No frills, or flashing neon frills with sprinklers attached? ‘Brutalist’ websites have flourished in recent years, but their guiding philosophy remains unclear. Brutalist web design has grown so quickly that there does not seem to be a clear consensus on what the style actually is. To some it means practicality, to others audacity. Love it or

By now, you’re probably used to seeing design trends come and go. But have you ever given any thought to what passing trends do to a website when left there for too long? As a web designer, you have a few choices. You can ignore popular design trends altogether; you can adopt them, but pull

Arguing that dark patterns are unethical is not enough on its own. We will also need to make the case to clients and colleagues that they are damaging to business. That’s what Paul Boag has also written in his new Smashing book, “Click”. In this post, he will put together a compelling argument you can

Tooltips are powerful design patterns implemented to enhance the design experience by providing additional information precisely when users need it. The key to designing tooltips that fit seamlessly into the overall design is to plan for them early in the design process. Specifically, designing useful tooltips requires proper timing and proper implementation. In this article,

Where to put the label in a web form? In the early days, we talked about left-aligned labels versus top-aligned labels. These days we talk about floating labels. Let’s explore why they aren’t a very good idea, and what to use instead. Some people assume float labels are best because Google’s Material Design uses them. But in

As designers, we are often burdened by the responsibility of producing and managing website content. It’s not our job to write it, but it’s not the client’s either. In many cases a vacuum emerges which ultimately gets filled with poor content. In this article, Matt Saunders will show you that you can avert disaster by