Agile: The Right Way to Build Innovative Digital Products

Agile, both as a methodology and a mindset, can accelerate growth by increasing quality and speed to market. In addition, it can dramatically improve workflows. But what about innovation? Can agile methods foster innovation as well?

Company-wide adoption is recommended for taking full advantage of this way of building digital products. Basically, everyone from developers to the C-suite should rely on agile techniques in all of their endeavors.
Continue Reading “Agile: The Right Way to Build Innovative Digital Products”

Best practices in mobile UX design: Creating error messages!

‘Errors’ happen. They happen in our apps and they happen in our life. Sometimes they happen because we made mistakes. Sometimes because a system failed. Whatever the cause, these errors — and how they are handled — can have a huge impact on the way a user experiences your app.

Often overlooked, a lazy error handling and ill-constructed error messages can fill users with frustration, and make them stop using your app. A well-crafted error handling, on the other hand, can turn a moment of failure into a moment of delight.

In this article, we’ll examine how the design of apps can be optimized to prevent excessive user errors and how to create good error messages.
Continue Reading “Best practices in mobile UX design: Creating error messages!”

Web design is dead. Long live experience design.

In the realm of the design world today, the term “web design” has become something of an understatement, especially when we look at where web design has come from compared to 20 years ago.

The traditional idea of web design has evolved tremendously, especially in the last couple of years. The web is all around us, no matter if we think about smart bubbles, glasses, or other IoT devices. I guess the pioneers of the web, would be surprised in which devices web design can be found nowadays.

Continue Reading “Web design is dead. Long live experience design.”

The Best Redmine Plugins to Boost Your Project Management

Redmine is used by many web teams around the globe. It’s flexible, web-based and runs open source. In this article, we are going to show you how to get more out of your Redmine projects by integrating it with some great Redmine plugins.

But before we dig into the Redmine, we do cover some basics of Redmine.

Continue Reading “The Best Redmine Plugins to Boost Your Project Management”

Why Windows 98’s User Onboarding is Better Than Yours

Reading through Microsoft’s 1995 Interface Guidelines is like unearthing a lost relic. The 381-page tome — for designers creating Windows apps — got me thinking about how much has changed, not only with Microsoft but with software overall. The guidelines are ahead of their time.

They’re concerned with helping the user get to grips with the OS, and there’s a focus on empathy and a hint Microsoft is starting to think about UX. That’s which isn’t something Windows 3.1 makes any effort to do. On first run, you’re thrown into this jumble:
Continue Reading “Why Windows 98’s User Onboarding is Better Than Yours”

How to set up a blog without WordPress

WordPress is a great tool. In fact, about 50% of all websites out there use WordPress. So, it’s no wonder that when you’re thinking of starting a blog for your company or simply develop a new website, WordPress is one of the first things that comes to mind.

But it isn’t all sunshine and rainbows and sometimes, you’re better off looking elsewhere. At least you should consider other alternatives to WordPress before getting starting without losing even a thought.
Continue Reading “How to set up a blog without WordPress”

Interested in learning web development and design? Check out these top 10 YouTubers.

Want to learn web development but don’t know where to start?

We all know that the Internet these days provides tons of opportunities for self-starters to do just that; get started. Gone are the days where you are required to pay an exorbitant amount of money to learn the skills needed to succeed.

There are countless amazing developers who are generous with their knowledge posting tutorials online.

Nowhere is this more prominent than YouTube – the world’s second largest search engine.

In this collection, you’ll find the top 10 YouTubers who publish web development tutorials on their channels. Check out the list below to help you accelerate your dev & design game today.
Continue Reading “Interested in learning web development and design? Check out these top 10 YouTubers.”

The art of error: 17 software companies with creative 404 pages

We at Usersnap love 404 pages. Don’t get me wrong. We don’t want our website visitors, customers, and users to see our 404 page. Because it would mean that something went wrong. A broken link or some other mixup.

But if someone happens to see our 404 page, she should get at least some fun out of it. And luckily we’re not alone here. More and more software companies are putting fantastic 404 pages out there.
Continue Reading “The art of error: 17 software companies with creative 404 pages”

7 unexpected lessons learned from writing 200+ articles

I love to write. For me, writing is a special place where I feel good and happy.

Writing is so much more for me than just the process of writing. It motivates me, it educates me, it inspires me, it connects me with like-minded people.

Just recently, I discovered something pretty awesome. In the last 18 months, I have written 200+ articles. That’s 11 articles per month or 2,75 articles per week. It might not sound a lot for some people, but for me it definitely is.

These are the top 7 things I’ve learned about writing design articles, development tutorials, and reviews on tools and frameworks. I’m grateful for each lesson, and I’m excited to learn more as I continue my journey.
Continue Reading “7 unexpected lessons learned from writing 200+ articles”

Emotional Design: For products we remember

Today, it is no longer sufficient to design a product that just works. Products need to have an amazing user experience to stand out from the crowd, to be successful, and to have a user base, who enjoys using them. In a nutshell: products need to be more than mere functional.

The designers Don Norman and Aarron Walter are asking this question for decades: How can design evoke positive and memorable experiences?

In this post, I want to explore the topic of emotional design. I will draw on research by Norman and Walter, and will ask why we enjoy using some products and others not. Hope you enjoy reading this post!

Continue Reading “Emotional Design: For products we remember”