Latest articles

Empathy and web design

25 August 2010 · 20 Comments Many web designers lack empathy, an essential characteristic needed for good design. Seems as if they are focused on beauty and satisfying clients' needs - where the client is often mistakenly considered to be an actual user. A premise for good design is becoming an advocate for the users.

Rethinking form validation

21 July 2010 · 40 Comments We all know how important form validation is. Users must provide required information, users must provide information in specific format, user must... Right. But imagine the scenario in which user saves a form even if validation fails. That is, when inappropriate formats are provided or required fields are left blank. Sounds ridiculous?

Issues with modal overlays on the web

17 June 2010 · 24 Comments Seems as if modal overlays are quite popular on the Web lately. They became a common way to show forms, feedback and other content. But despite the fact that overlays are popular and easy to implement they should be used carefully.

Autosave my work, please

02 June 2010 · 47 Comments I was in the middle of writing a long text in one online web application (made in Silverlight) when my browser crashed. I lost the most of what I wrote just because the Silverlight application didn't have one simple function - autosave.

Why and how to create Microsoft Office Minibar with jQuery and CSS3

23 May 2010 · 43 Comments Although many will argue that Microsoft products are an example of a good design, Minibar was one of design refreshments that came out with the Office 2007. It is a variation of a toolbar that exposes context-related functionality. See how to create it.

Poka-Yoke in UI design

10 May 2010 · 7 Comments As I mentioned before, forgiveness is very important principle in UI design. But error prevention is even more important - whenever possible try to prevent an error instead of recovering from it. Preventing an error to happen is known as Poka-Yoke principle.

You must also read these