In the beginning of my professional career, I often struggled with status meetings. They regularly turned into back-and-forth conversation with a client who was making weird design suggestions. I often left these meetings feeling very confused, uncertain and demotivated after weeks of passionate effort.
How To Streamline Creative Dialogue

It took me a while to figure out what was happening and how I could improve my workflow. With this article, I want to share my learnings after years of streamlining creative dialogue.
Read more…
Designing For The Elderly: Ways Older People Use Digital Technology Differently

By Ollie Campbell
February 5th, 2015
User ExperienceUser InteractionUser Research
21 Comments

If you work in the tech industry, it’s easy to forget that older people exist. Most tech workers are really young, so it’s easy to see why most technology is designed for young people. But consider this: By 2030, around 19% of people in the US will be over 65. Doesn’t sound like a lot? Well it happens to be about the same number of people in the US who own an iPhone today. Which of these two groups do you think Silicon Valley spends more time thinking about?
Designing For The Elderly: Ways Older People Use Digital Technology Differently

This seems unfortunate when you consider all of the things technology has to offer older people. A great example is Speaking Exchange, an initiative that connects retirees in the US with kids who are learning English in Brazil.
Read more…
AdvertisementAdvertise with us!
Product Design Unification Case Study: Mobile Web Framework

By Yury Vetrov
February 4th, 2015
Case StudiesProcessProduct Strategy
11 Comments

Big companies are always trying to simplify the support and development of their large product portfolios. Mail.Ru Group (one of the two largest Internet companies in Russia, with more than 100 million monthly users), has about 40 products — even more if you add mobile and tablet websites and apps, promo websites, etc. My team deals with almost half of them — that’s about 100 ongoing projects at different stages. Our goal is to update these products and unify them around several guidelines.
Product Design Unification Case Study: Mobile Web Framework

This article will discuss the transformation of our design process from the classic Prototype → Design Mockup → HTML → Implement approach for every screen to a modern and more efficient framework-based approach.
Read more…
Redefining Lazy Loading With Lazy Load XT

By Denis Ryabov & Ugur Kaner
February 3rd, 2015
jQueryPerformanceTechniques
12 Comments

Lazy loading is a common software design pattern that defers the initialization of objects until they are needed. Lazy loading images started to become popular on the web back in 2007, when Mika Tuupola drew inspiration from the YUI ImageLoader utility and released a jQuery plugin. Since then, it’s become a popular technique to optimize page loading and the user experience. In this article I will discuss why we should and shouldn’t use Lazy Load, and how to implement it.
Redefining Lazy Loading With Lazy Load XT

Images make up over 60% of an average page’s size, according to HTTP Archive. Images on a web page would be rendered once they are available. Without lazy loading, this could lead to a lot of data traffic that is not immediately necessary (such as images outside of the viewport) and longer waiting times. The problem? Visitors are not patient at all. By lazy loading, images outside of the viewport are loaded only when they would be visible to the user, thus saving valuable data and time.
Read more…
The Mystery Is Resolved: Northern Lights, Windmills And The Game Of The Century

By Vitaly Friedman
February 2nd, 2015
MysteryRiddles
14 Comments

So you find yourself somewhere in a little tourist station in Northern Sweden — with a few adventurous tourists, 86 surprisingly happy inhabitants, and a remarkably good Internet connection. There is nothing but breathtaking nature around you, with blueish mountains and bright red skyline blurring endless horizon — and Northern Lights dancing in the sky right above you. What do you do? Obviously, you come up with an idea for those sneaky ‘lil Smashing Mystery riddles.
The Mystery Is Resolved: Northern Lights, Windmills And The Game Of The Century

In our previous riddles, we turned our little challenges into quests for creative solutions quickly. However, as we try to level up every new Mystery to keep it quite difficult to solve, with a new riddle this time we decided to turn it into an exercise of patience and stubbornness — beyond problem solving, of course.
Read more…
Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: February 2015

By The Smashing Editorial
January 31st, 2015
Wallpapers
50 Comments

We always try our best to challenge your artistic abilities and produce some interesting, beautiful and creative artwork, and as designers we usually turn to different sources of inspiration. As a matter of fact, we’ve discovered the best one—desktop wallpapers that are a little more distinctive than the usual crowd.

Desktop Wallpaper Calendars: February 2015

This creativity mission has been going on for almost seven years now, and we are very thankful to all designers who have contributed and are still diligently contributing each month. This post features free desktop wallpapers created by artists across the globe for February 2015. Both versions with a calendar and without a calendar can be downloaded for free. It’s time to freshen up your wallpaper!
Read more…
Prototyping iOS And Android Apps With Sketch (With A Freebie!)

By Joshua Mauldin
January 30th, 2015
PrototypingTechniquesTools
18 Comments

After the untimely (and still kind of sad) demise of Fireworks, I found myself looking for other ways to design apps and websites. I also had the desire to produce something more interactive for when I talk about my work with stakeholders. It turned out that Sketch, when paired with some other neat tools, would be a big part of this workflow.
Prototyping iOS And Android Apps With Sketch (With A Freebie!)

In this article, I’ll talk you through why you should prototype and how you can do it with Sketch and prototyping tools such as Flinto and InVision. You’ll also get a nicely documented freebie Sketch file to help you.
Read more…
123456
next »

↑ Back to top
Search on Smashing Magazine
Advertisement Advertise with us!

Easy front-end development
Easy front-end development
Form Theme Store
Form Theme Store
Form Theme Store
Form Theme Store
Study completely online
Study completely online
THEME.CO/X/ – See It Live!
THEME.CO/X/ – See It Live!
Free + Royalty Free Vector Art
Free + Royalty Free Vector Art
Tools & best practices for website management
Enhance your websites

Smashing Newsletter Smashing Newsletter

Subscribe to our email newsletter for useful tips and valuable resources, sent out every second Tuesday.