Improving the UX of Progress Indicators and Feedback Notifications

Visibility of system status is one of the most important rules of UI/UX design. The goal behind this rule is pretty obvious — to minimize user tension you should provide feedback to the user about what is happening with the app within a reasonable amount of time. Don’t keep the users guessing — tell the user what’s happening. And one of the most common forms of such feedback is a progress indicator.

In this article, we’ll give you an overview of the main types of progress indicators and the use cases for them.

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15+ unknown & free WordPress plugins for developers!

WordPress is the leading content management system out there in basically any industry. Emerged as a basic CMS for blogging, it evolved to a powerful publishing tool for any kind of website or web app. Whether you’re working on company websites, online shops, or social communities. Everything’s possible with WordPress. Indeed, there are many great and mighty WordPress plugins out there for improving your websites.

In this article, I’m going to show you 15+ unknown and free WordPress plugins every WordPress developer should know when building up his/her WordPress portfolio.

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“I didn’t know Atom could do that!”

This article is brought to you by Usersnap, a bug reporting solution with visual annotation features the perfect sidekick for your Github, GitLab, Jira, Azure DevOps etc etc. Get a 15-day free trial here

Atom, the code editor from GitHub, was initially released in May 2014 by the team of GitHub. As an open-source editor Atom became hugely popular over the last two years. And for some, it’s the Sublime killer. And I’m not exaggerating.

Today, I’m going to show you the best tips, tricks, and shortcuts while using Atom. So better go pro with Atom.
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How to Use Design Thinking Principles for Your Dev Project

In 2009, Tim Brown published his now famous book “Change by Design”. His idea: Design strategies and techniques can be used at every level of business. In 2018, Design Thinking has become a methodology and is used for innovative activities by project teams around the world.

We explore: How can design thinking help you when you are building new products? What strategies can you use? And how can you integrate Design Thinking into agile software development?

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Sprint: How to test new ideas with your dev team

Jake Knapp’s sprint concept and his book “Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in just Five Days” are used in teams all over the world and has become a staple in agile process management. The idea is to explore new ideas, prototype, and get new things off the ground in a limited time and without making huge investments.

We take a look at Jake Knapp’s famous sprint concept and take you through his design of a sprint week, from planning to prototyping and testing.

Ready for a sprint? 🙂

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What your dev team can learn from Greg McKeown’s principle of essentialism

Everyone wants to get more done in less time. However, that is not what Greg McKeown’s New York Times bestseller book “Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less” is about. It is rather a book about getting the right things done and focusing on the things that are essential while eliminating the clutter.

In the last few weeks, we covered productivity and communication topics here on our blog and asked how they can be applied to working together with your dev team.

In this article, we want to take a look at the tipsMcKeown’s is suggesting and ask how they can work when you are building digital products with your dev team.

Happy reading!

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4 reasons why you should integrate visual communication into your workflow

Our communication is becoming more visual every day. We send emojis, gifs, pictures. We Instagram, Snapchat, or use the latest Facebook Filters to add some visual elements to our video chats. Visual communication is everywhere – and it’s faster, more effective, and fun.

Business communication is not exempt from integrating visual elements and giving everyone more and more opportunities to communicate visually. From Trello boards to Basecamp organization to our very own Usersnap (a visual communication tool for web developers – check it out!), visual communication is everywhere!

Why should you care? And why should you make sure to integrate visual communication into your daily work? We have 4 reasons for you to make you love visual communication even more!?
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