As the year ends I find myself thinking about what happened in 2012 (and it was a lot for my taste). In order to sum up some of the things I learned and to get some kind of overview of the things I worked on apart from client work, here is the list of the projects I launched and some of the lesson I learned on the way...
This is not an article about a new, intelligent solution to a common technological problem. Neither is this a post how I used best practices to create code that is easily maintainable, reusable code.
Rather this is the story of a little project I wrote for myself during which I left out anything that did not directly lead me to a usable product.
Pitching to people I know is easier for me because... I know them. But today I learned a lesson that this might not always be true. And you know what, that's good. Honest feedback is what we need to hear. Even if this is tough sometimes...
I recently stumbled open an interesting css problem: When I set the body tag's height to 100% scrollbars appeared. Here are some possible solutions and explanations why this happens...
My first project myWishlist went online today, here's my story...
I'm a fan of lists. I write and update lists multiple times per week. And though I love putting stuff on paper very often I loose them, throw them away or in one way or another get rid of them.
Listing things gives me a feeling of control over things that happen (or should happen) around me. Without lists I'm a bit lost, tend to forget what I have to do, what I will have to do in the next days and so on.
Searching and finding good domain names is a tough job today, as almost all simple word combinations have been grabbed registered at least for .com top level domains (tlds).
As buying already registered domain names is often too expensive, I regularly look for ways around that.
Here's what I learned...
In his recent post So you're making good money. STFU Jacques Mattheij argues that writing about your successful app/website/whatever and providing information how you did it is bad for you as someone will copy it.
Reading his post and the heated discussion on Hacker News gave me quite a strong feeling in my gut, which is the reason why I'm writing this.
If you develop facebook apps, this is for you: Adding an app to a page is a pain in the ass.
So this is kind of a negative example of UX with a happy ending, as you will find an easy way of adding facebook apps to your pages in this post.
Let's face it, we want more: More readers, more users, more signups, more app downloads, more page views,... more sales.
Guessing anticipating which problems users have when they use software may help us to get a step closer to our goals and make our users happier.
This is a list of little concerns I think many users experience when using websites. Ok, most of them are little fears I experienced myself, but don't tell anyone!
Following up after Empathy is Key this post covers concerns and fears that users might experience when using sign up forms.
Addressing those will make your users feel valued and understood and can improve your product's conversion rates.
In the first part I wrote about user concerns over immediate consequences of signing up to a service.
In this second post we'll discuss consequences (of singing up) which may stop users from filling out a form that reach a little further into the future which play a big role in the users experience.
Apps on Facebook, Android, iPhones,... they're everywhere and if you look at people in buses in Vienna, it's interesting how many people use their phones.
But if you ask me, there are still many little obstacles in our users ways which could prevent them from actually using them.
Let's see what some of those obstacles are and what we can do about them...
While designing this blog and for the first time applying worshipping vertical rhythm I came to the point where I wished I knew how big a font would be displayed given a specific font size.
So I set out to find out which part of my 15px Verdana is actually 15px in width or height. The only problem was that I could't find any part because there was none.
So you have a product. The users are coming every day, but your sales and conversion funnel make it clear that in the last steps before the 'thank you!' message most of your users get lost somewhere.
Sounds familiar? Maybe this collection of questions can point you in the right direction...