Six thinking hats in web design process

Stumbled upon this good page which explains how Applying Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats method can greatly improve our web design process. Thinking in these hats, we can be more objective, focused and productive.

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Apple’s design process

Wondering what is the secret behind the Fantastic Apple’s Designs and the process followed by Apple Designers. Here it is. Click on the following link to read Apple’s Design Process

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2008/03/apples_design_p.html

Five designs that changed the world

“You know a design is good when you want to lick it,” says Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computer. But a truly iconic design must do more than make you salivate. It must have social impact too.

Great design should marry aesthetics with practicality, providing solutions to everyday problems – even if you didn’t know you had them before they came along.

CNN has picked out five great designs from the last 100 years. They are all products which have fundamentally changed the lives of millions of people.
• Volkwagen ‘Beetle’
• The Leica camera’
• The ballpoint pen
• The iPod
• The London Underground map

Source 

The 5 Types of Prototypes

Prototypes can serve a number of purposes. Here’s the five primary roles a prototype can take on. Keep in mind that a prototype can take one more than one of these roles at a time.

1. As a common communication platform–using them to get everyone on the same page, avoiding misinterpretation of ideas, using them as a method to show and tell.
2. Work through a design–for designers and developers, prototypes act as a way to work through your design solution, giving you the ability to evaluate a few different options, tweak them, and come up with the best one.
3. Sell your idea internally–using them to sell your design solution to internal stake holders like senior management, other designers, or the engineering team.
4. Gauge technical feasibility–designers want to do X, but can engineering do it? Do we have the resources? Is it worth the effort?
5. As a marketing tool–while similar to number 3, this is for an external audience.

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10 Principles for UI Design

These are ten general principles for user interface design. They are called “heuristics” because they are more in the nature of rules of the thumb than specific usability guidelines.

Visibility of system status:
The system should always keep users informed about what is goin on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.

Match between system and the real world:
The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.

User control and freedom:
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.

Consistency and standards:
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Error Prevention:
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Recognition rather than recall:
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Flexibility and efficiency of use:
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

Aesthetic and minimalist design:
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors:
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Help and documentation:
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

By Jacob Nielsen

source

At 17, she has built a million-dollar web site

Here is an amazing and inspiring story of a teenager Ashley Qualls, Founder Whateverlife. She may not have an MBA, a high-school diploma, or even a driver’s license yet, but Ashley Qualls already has an influential and lucrative Web site. Whateverlife.com attracts more than 7 million visitors a month — mostly teen girls, a valuable but typically elusive niche audience. In just two years it has generated more than $1 million in ad revenue.
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World’s Highest Website

Trek the World’s highest website which is currently 18,939 kilometers high. Guys who are tired of trekking can take elevator too. Here you go World’s highest website.

Create your own Video Sharing Social Applicaton

You can build your own video community Social Application using lighttpd with its mod_flv_streaming module (for streaming .flv videos, the format used by most major video communities such as YouTube) and its mod_secdownload module (for preventing hotlinking of the videos). I will use FlowPlayer as the video player, a free Flash video player with support for lighttpd’s mod_flv_streaming module. I will also show how you can encode videos (.mp4 .mov .mpg .3gp .mpeg .wmv .avi) to the FLV format supported by Adobe Flash.

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Web Trend Map 2007 Version 2.0

“Information Design/Architecture to the core” thats what I thought after seeing this Web Trend Map 2007 which consists of 200 most successful websites on the web ordered by category, proximity, success, popularity and perspective . This Trend Map is presented in the form of a tube map. I have really enjoyed browsing this link. So I thought it is worth to put on my blog

Here is the resized and smaller version of the Web Trend Map

5 reasons to have a wiki at work

1. Operations Guides
2. Dashboard
3. Posting Ads and stuff
4. Fact and Faq List
5. Making Plans

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