Learn – Strange House Themes Built with Pride Themes Thu, 03 Aug 2017 23:36:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.7.4 /wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cropped-sh-ds-1-32x32.png Learn – Strange House Themes 32 32 108323278 Free Website Template – Webflow /free-website-template-webflow/ /free-website-template-webflow/#respond Tue, 21 Mar 2017 22:11:54 +0000 /?p=920 Today I have my personal website to give away as a free website template. This is a designer portfolio made from scratch in Webflow. I used it as my main web page for a few years. The template is responsive, has pretty unique structure and is easy to use, simply place your content. Format: Webflow...

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Today I have my personal website to give away as a free website template. This is a designer portfolio made from scratch in . I used it as my main web page for a few years. The template is responsive, has pretty unique structure and is easy to use, simply place your content.

Free Website Template

Format: Webflow Template
Author:

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Loading Animation – After Effects Free /loading-animation-after-effects-free/ /loading-animation-after-effects-free/#respond Fri, 10 Jun 2016 18:13:51 +0000 /?p=569 Hey everyone! Todays freebie is a super special and useful for anyone willing to learn some After Effects animation. Jakub Čentík shared his amazing results as a AE source files here. Check this out! Format: After Effects, .aep Size: 300 Kb Download

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Hey everyone! Todays freebie is a super special and useful for anyone willing to learn some After Effects animation.  shared his amazing results as a AE source files here. Check this out!

After Effects Free

Format: After Effects, .aep
Size: 300 Kb

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Google Fonts Combinations /google-fonts-combinations/ /google-fonts-combinations/#respond Thu, 05 May 2016 20:58:34 +0000 /?p=551 Today we’re featuring the work of Milo Themes. This is a specially designed set of Google Fonts Combinations. This should be useful for anyone involved in design and interface development. View Portfolio of PSD / HTML5 & CSS3 / WordPress Themes on Themeforest View Portfolio of Plugins on Codecanyon Follow Milo Themes on Dribbble | Facebook | Twitter | Creative Market | Pinterest

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Today we’re featuring the work of . This is a specially designed set of Google Fonts Combinations. This should be useful for anyone involved in design and interface development.

Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations
Google Fonts Combinations

View Portfolio of PSD / HTML5 & CSS3 / WordPress Themes on 
View Portfolio of Plugins on 
Follow on
|  || | 

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Beginner’s Guide to WordPress File and Directory Structure /beginners-guide-wordpress-file-directory-structure/ /beginners-guide-wordpress-file-directory-structure/#respond Wed, 27 Apr 2016 18:02:08 +0000 /?p=525 Do you want to learn about WordPress file and directory structure? The core WordPress software, themes, plugins, and user uploads are all stored on your website. In this beginner’s guide, we will explain the WordPress file and directory structure. Why You Should Learn About WordPress File and Directory Structure? Most users can run their WordPress...

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Do you want to learn about WordPress file and directory structure? The core WordPress software, themes, plugins, and user uploads are all stored on your website. In this beginner’s guide, we will explain the WordPress file and directory structure.

Why You Should Learn About WordPress File and Directory Structure?

Most users can run their WordPress site without ever learning about WordPress files or directories. However, understanding how WordPress stores files and directories can help you solve many common WordPress problems on your own.

This guide will help you:

  • Learn which WordPress files and folders are core files.
  • Understand how WordPress stores your images and media uploads.
  • Where WordPress stores your themes and plugins.
  • Where configuration files are stored on your WordPress install.

This information also helps you learn .

You will also be able to perform troubleshooting tasks like , switching to a default theme, or fix other .

Having said that, let’s take a look at WordPress file and directory structure.

Accessing WordPress Files and Directories

First, you will need a to connect to your WordPress server. See our guide on for detailed instructions.

An easier alternative to FTP is File Manager. It is a web based application that comes built into cPanel dashboard of your account.

Once you have connected to your WordPress site either using FTP or File Manager, you will see a file and directory structure that looks like this:

Guide to WordPress

Files and folders in the red squares are the core WordPress files. These are the files and folders that run your WordPress site. You are not supposed to edit those files on your own.

Here is a list of core WordPress files and folders you would see in your WordPress site’s root directory.

  • [dir] wp-admin
  • [dir] wp-includes
  • index.php
  • license.txt
  • readme.html
  • wp-activate.php
  • wp-blog-header.php
  • wp-comments-post.php
  • wp-config-sample.php
  • wp-cron.php
  • wp-links-opml.php
  • wp-load.php
  • wp-login.php
  • wp-mail.php
  • wp-settings.php
  • wp-signup.php
  • wp-trackback.php
  • xmlrpc.php

WordPress Configuration Files

Your WordPress root directory contains some special configuration files. These files contain important settings specific to your WordPress site.

  • – A server configuration file, WordPress uses it to manage and .
  • – This file tells WordPress how to connect to your database. It also sets some global settings for your WordPress site.
  • index.php – The index file basically loads and initializes all your WordPress files when a page is requested by a user.

You may need to edit wp-config.php or .htaccess file sometimes. Be extra careful when editing these two files. A slight mistake can make your site inaccessible. When editing these two files, always create backup copies on your computer before making any changes.

If you don’t see .htaccess file in your root directory, then checkout our guide on why you in your WordPress root directory.

Depending on how your WordPress site is setup, you may or may not have the following files in your root directory.

  • robots.txt – Contains instructions for search engines crawlers
  • Favicon.ico – A favicon file is sometimes generated by WordPress hosts.

Inside wp-content Folder

WordPress stores all uploads, plugins, and themes in wp-content folder.

It is generally assumed that you can edit files and folders inside wp-content folder. However, this is not entirely true.

Let’s take a look inside wp-content folder to understand how it works and what you can do here.

The contents of wp-content folder may differ from one WordPress site to another. But all WordPress sites usually have these:

  • [dir] themes
  • [dir] plugins
  • [dir] uploads
  • index.php

WordPress stores your theme files in /wp-content/themes/ folder. You can edit a theme file, but it is generally not recommended. As soon as you update your theme to a newer version, your changes will be overwritten during the update.

This is why it is recommended to for WordPress theme customization.

All WordPress plugins you download and install on your site are stored in /wp-content/plugins/ folder. You are not supposed to edit plugin files directly, unless you wrote the plugin just for your own WordPress site.

In many , you will see code snippets that you can add to your WordPress site. The best way to add custom code to your WordPress site is by adding it to file of your child theme or by creating a .

WordPress stores all your image and media uploads in the /wp-content/uploads/ folder. By default, uploads are organized in /year/month/ folders. Whenever you are creating a WordPress backup, you should include uploads folder.

You can download fresh copies of WordPress core, your theme, and installed plugins from their sources. But if you lose your uploads folder, then it would be very hard to restore it without a backup.

Some other default folders you may see in your wp-content directory.

  • languages – WordPress stores language files for in this folder.
  • upgrade – This is a temporary folder created by WordPress during upgrade to a

Many WordPress plugins may also create their own folders inside your wp-content folder. For example, in the screenshot above we have a gallery folder created by plugin.

Some of these folders may contain important files. Like the gallery folder may contain your gallery images. You should always backup such folders to avoid losing important data.

Other folders may contain files that you can safely delete. For example your caching plugins like or may store cached files in their own folders.

That’s all, we hope this article helped you understand WordPress file and directory structure. You may also want to see our beginner’s guide to .

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on and .

Original atricle on 

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Wyre – Web Free Wireframing UI Kit /wyre-web-free-wireframing-ui-kit/ /wyre-web-free-wireframing-ui-kit/#respond Mon, 18 Apr 2016 22:08:59 +0000 /?p=510 Today’s freebie is incredible useful for any UX designer. It is a tool for creating sitemaps, user flows and interaction design schemes. Wyre Dark is a Free Wireframing UI Kit of 126 cards. Get a complete pack of vector web layout cards, arrows, action tiles and badges that will help you with sketching your sitemaps. All assets come...

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Today’s freebie is incredible useful for any UX designer. It is a tool for creating sitemaps, user flows and interaction design schemes. Wyre Dark is a Free Wireframing UI Kit of 126 cards. Get a complete pack of vector web layout cards, arrows, action tiles and badges that will help you with sketching your sitemaps. All assets come in AI, EPS, and SVG formats. We thank for providing us with this wonderful freebie.

Free Wireframing UI Kit

Format: AI, EPS, SVG
Size: 3 mb

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What’s New in WordPress 4.5 /whats-new-in-wordpress-4-5/ /whats-new-in-wordpress-4-5/#respond Fri, 15 Apr 2016 17:28:18 +0000 /?p=487 WordPress 4.5 has just been officially released, named ‘Coleman’ to honor the jazz musician Coleman Hawkins. We have a quick list of what’s in that release. Site Logo For experienced developers or power users, this feature might not seem like a big deal, but for a lot of users, the simple process of adding a logo...

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WordPress 4.5 has just been officially released, named ‘Coleman’ to honor the jazz musician Coleman Hawkins. We have a quick list of what’s in that release.

For experienced developers or power users, this feature might not seem like a big deal, but for a lot of users, the simple process of adding a logo hasn’t always been an option.
site logo

You can now find the logo setting in Site Identity > Logo.

Responsive Preview Display

As of WordPress 4.5, you’ll have the ability to preview your website on different device screen sizes via the Customizer in your dashboard.

WordPress 4.5 Customizer Responsive Preview

Previously, you may have used an extension, your browser developer tools, or even just resizing your window – but now this handy feature is in easy reach in the customizer.

The linking process within the Visual Editor for your pages and posts has been streamlined further. Now when you click the standard link button within the WYSIWYG editor, a field will now automatically appear below the text to allow you to either paste the link or search for the link on your site.

editing-shortcuts-big

If you wanted to bring up the old link screen functionality that used to appear when you clicked this button, simply hit the cog icon.

New Shortcuts

If you write a lot of content inside of WordPress, there are a few new handy shortcuts will help further streamline your writing:

` a backtick before and after the content to display code

 for a horizontal rule

Here’s what using the backtick to insert code looks like:

Inserting Code by Backticks in Editor

Comment Moderation Improvement

WordPress 4.5 features a refreshed comment moderation screen styling to make it easier to manage comments. Comments can also now be viewed in an editor.

Image Optimization Improvements

Image optimisation has been enhanced even further to create up to 50% smaller files while retaining the image quality.

Login as Username and Email

As of 4.5, you can now login by username and email. You could always use your email address as a username, but now the login accepts your account email address and username. It will come in handy, users are much less likely to forget their email address!

Developer Features WordPress 4.5

There are also a few new features for developers:

  • JavaScript Library Updates (jQuery 1.12.3, jQuery Migrate 1.4.0, Backbone 1.2.3, and Underscore 1.8.3)
  • Embedded Templates
  • Term Edit Page Changes (the addition of wp-admin/term.php)
  • Selective Refresh

The has a detailed list of all of the recent changes relevant for developers, as well as some lively discussions.

More wordpress updates:

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Dribbble Invites Giveaway /dribbble-invites-giveaway/ /dribbble-invites-giveaway/#respond Sat, 09 Apr 2016 18:20:02 +0000 /?p=451 Dribbble, as almost any designer knows, is a place to show and tell, promote, discover, and explore design. This week I’m giving away 2 dribbble invites. For a chance to get one you gotta follow me as a prospect on dribbble provide a link to your portfolio in the dribble profile or shoot over Twitter. Get Ivited

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Dribbble, as almost any designer knows, is a place to show and tell, promote, discover, and explore design. This week I’m giving away 2 dribbble invites. For a chance to get one you gotta follow me as a prospect on dribbble provide a or shoot over .

Dribbble Invite

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How to Recover a Hacked WordPress Site /how-to-recover-a-hacked-wordpress-site/ /how-to-recover-a-hacked-wordpress-site/#respond Tue, 05 Apr 2016 21:00:51 +0000 /?p=437 There is a myth that WordPress sites are generally not secure. It may be one of the reasons why government agencies usually steer clear of the WordPress platform. However, WordPress core security is good and kept so by consistent upgrades and security patches on a regular basis (one might say that WordPress runs their software updates more often than any other...

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There is a myth that WordPress sites are generally not secure. It may be one of the reasons why government agencies usually steer clear of the WordPress platform. However, WordPress core security is good and kept so by consistent upgrades and security patches on a regular basis (one might say that WordPress runs their software updates more often than any other open source CMS developer out there). It is the casual attitude (or outright unawareness) of site owners towards security that is making the WordPress security problem so prominent.

If you look at the stats and previous security disasters in WordPress history, you will see a pattern. By 2013 WordPress websites had been hacked through one or a combination of the following:

  • weak passwords
  • server level breach
  • dodgy plugins/themes and their vulnerabilities
  • or simply running a vastly outdated version of WordPress (which, by the way, is heavily discouraged by every sane techie in the community).

 

WordPress Hacking Statistics

Image credit: www.wptemplate.com

Three years later we are still seeing the same patterns.

Have You Been Hacked? Look For Tell-tale Signs…

Your website may be compromised with you being none the wiser about it.

“50% site owners admitted they only discovered the hack when they attempted to visit their own site and received a browser or search engine warning.”

“Over 90 percent didn’t notice any strange activity, despite the fact that their sites were being abused to send spam, host phishing pages, or distribute malware.”

– Zero Day Security Blog

So apart from losing everything you’ve worked for, you now have to contend with the fact that your website is probably being used for nefarious purposes: hosting (and spreading) malware and spam, automatic redirects, phishing, displaying vulgar content, etc… some of these will be obvious, but others (like injected links or spam) will continue to fester without drawing your attention and will get your website banned (by Google) if left unattended.

To prevent this, keep an eye out for unusual activity on your site like:

  • Modal (popups) that you didn’t add
  • Unknown links or text in your content, footer or source
  • Immediate redirect to an unknown URL when you try to visit your website
  • Sudden spikes in traffic or server bandwidth usage

You can also use simple, everyday tools to look out for any security breaches. For instance,  will send you (the site owner) an email alert to notify you of bad activity. Similarly, tools like  or scanner will search your website for infection.

Use them to confirm that your site is compromised and then recover your hacked WordPress website using one of the steps below:

1. Restore From Backup

This is the time when a ‘constant vigilance’ pays off. If you’ve maintained your WordPress website properly and stuck by a consistent backup schedule, you’ll have a backup file which you can use to restore your website. Make sure to use a backup copy before the hack took hold of your website.

Bonus tip: remember to make separate backups for database, core files, and wp-content directory.

Our Recommended Hosting for WordPress Sites

If you are building a WordPress site, WpEngine web hosting has proven to be a great option for WordPress, as it provides a good security, excellent backup functionality as well as good technical support. And you are welcome to use the promo below to get 2 months free:

2. Re-install WordPress

It’s the simplest, shortest route to replace the core files, which might have been the point of breach, especially if you were running an outdated version of WordPress.

Go to  and download the latest stable version available.

It is also a good idea to delete all plugins, widgets, and themes (except the default ones of course) before re-installing WordPress. Once that’s done, check your installation directory (especially wp-content) for any leftover files. Make sure it’s empty before re-installing plugins and themes.

Bonus tip: update your plugins and themes at the first opportunity, and get them from your trusted sources only!

3. Change All Login Credentials… ALL of Them

This isn’t just about your wp-admin login anymore. If the breach originated in the server, you need to change those passwords too.

This time, do it right. Create new passwords for every login/access point you can think of: server management, SSH, FTP/cPanel wp-admin users, etc.

Now go to , copy-paste the random sequences you see there. These are called salts or security keys. They are for encryption. Open wp-config.php and paste these as directed .

WordPress security keys

Bonus tip: create good, strong usernames and passwords AND DON’T WORRY ABOUT NOT REMEMBERING THEM. Use a password manager tool and relax.

4. Enforce SSL Security

That little ‘s’ after ‘http’ you may have noticed in some websites’ URLs stands for ‘secure’. SSL protects data during a transmission (to-and-from) between a user and server.

You can go online, buy an SSL certificate, and ask your hosting provider to implement it. You will also have to enforce this via WordPress as directed .

Bonus tip: if you are not on a secure server already, consider .

Conclusion

That’s it. You’ve recovered your website. Now all you have to do is keep it safe!

Switch to a good quality, reputed web host, install a powerful WordPress security plugin (WordFence premium or Sucuri are really good ones) and commit yourself to maintaining your website and hardening your WordPress security on a regular basis. Stay on the latest WordPress core, themes and plugins’ versions and spend as much time as you can learning as much as possible about the platform.

The post was originally published at .

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The Little Black Book of Intuitive Web Application Design /intuitive-web-application-design/ /intuitive-web-application-design/#respond Tue, 05 Apr 2016 17:33:05 +0000 /?p=429 A web app that isn’t easy to use will not win many hearts. But designing a user-friendly interface is no joke either. What do my users want? How will they discover all the awesome features I have? How can I manage to convert them from casual browsers into product evangelists? Which colors should I pick?...

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A web app that isn’t easy to use will not win many hearts.

But designing a user-friendly interface is no joke either.

What do my users want? How will they discover all the awesome features I have? How can I manage to convert them from casual browsers into product evangelists? Which colors should I pick? And fonts? And the list goes on…

In today’s guide we’ll address all of these questions (and more!), share the common principles of efficient, highly-adopted apps and explain all the secrets behind the “intuitive” component.

Before going into design specs and best practices lets dig into the core of the matter.

What Actually Makes Design “Feel” Intuitive

Here’s the deal: there are no two users alike.

Everyone has different expectations of how your app should function and present information. When users ask for intuitive interface they actually want the one, which meets their specific expectations.

You have two main problems to solve:

  • Understand what the user already knows and stash the design with familiar elements.
  • Make the act of learning anything new bluntly straightforward.

In case with web application that stands for knowing exactly where to click, double-click or tap to get the desired outcome.

But how does brand new products can leverage “the familiarity” factor?

One option is to use the common design patterns a.k.a. schemas.

Allow me to explain.

The human’s brain is similar to computer. Everything you do and encounter gets stored in your working memory before it’s transferred to other parts of your brain for processing. The problem is – your working memory capacity is very limited (around one headline or six numbers).

So, when you have to process a lot of new information at once, a cognitive overload happens – bam, you get lost in options available, feeling frustrated with what action to take and abandon the app eventually.

How do you minimize cognitive load or “brain power” required to use the app? There are a few very actionable practices, which I’ll get to just in minute.

But first, let’s understand what “schemas” have to do with all of this.

A schema is a certain pattern created in your brains after you encounter similar situations or information multiple times. Here are a few simple examples:

  • Most people think buttons are clickable.
  • You expect to find your profile/login at the top right close to the search field.
  • Envelope is recognized as an email/contact icon etc.

By using common schemas in your design you make the user experience feel more familiar and intuitive as your audience does not need to figure out what to do.

Bottom line: creativity is important, but don’t go too out-of-the-box with your designs for the sake of keeping the user content.

Timeless Rules and Secret Strategies for Building Better Designs

Okay, so now you understand what makes a design seem intuitive and how your users action decisions are made.

But you need more than that, do you?

You want the secret sauce to creating irresistibly attractive interfaces users instantly fell in love with.

I’ve teamed up with our UX/UI gurus and made them spill a few valuable the trade secrets.

How To Add Simplicity To Your Website

Remember the earlier talk about our working memory capacity and the information overload, which ruins user-experience?

Schemas are the first step towards minimizing the pressure and making the app easier to figure out. Here are some more essential recommendations to send the familiarity vibe to your users:

Group related elements. Ideally, your users should easily guess where to find certain information and controls. The optimal way to ensure this is to group similar elements together. For instance, features like login, profile information, custom settings, payment information etc. usually belong together and should not be hidden in different locations. You can either put them all in the same box or unite with color or styles.

Change the color of visited links to avoid navigation confusion and users moving in circles as they forgot which link they’ve already clicked. This rule is based on the existing schema as  use different colors for visited and unvisited links.

Layout the information based on existing web reading patterns. The vast majority of users use F-pattern to read web content.

For you that transfers into the following:

  • People are trained to pay attention to bold type, bold colors and contrasts first.
  • Break up long columns of texts into shorter bits to keep your readers focused. Use bullet points, subheads and different styles to structure your content efficiently.
  • The first two paragraphs gain the most attention. Use them to impress straight off the bat with relevant call-to-actions and keywords describing your services.

Speed is everything: We live in the high-pace world. According to published by Nielsen Norman Group a 10-second delay will often make users leave a site immediately. And for the newly arrived generation Z the timespan decreased to 6-8 seconds.

Nothing can beat the frustration created by a sluggish web app. Nor the intuitive component, nor the aesthetics can fix it. Or can it?

Why Aesthetics Is The Key Element of Better Usability

So, design and psychology come hand in hand. The creative part of the process does play an important role, however when it comes to user experience – the common schemas and bias often govern our decisions.

According to the  published by Donald Norman – we believe that attractive things work better. In fact, we want the beautiful things we find pleasing to succeed. We are more willing to give them a second, third, twenty-third chance to do so and feel more tolerate of the problems within the attractive stuff.

Another  made a step further and asked volunteers to make a series of search tasks on four different health-related websites. Each of the four offered a different mix of aesthetics (high vs. low) and usability (great vs. poor).

Did you know what happened?

Visual aesthetics compensated for poor usability, reducing the amount of errors and improving task completion time.

Caveats: Some biases are just too strong. Beautiful designs do create a sense of perceived usability and actually influence the performance.

“Ugly, but usable” isn’t the best product design strategy to adopt. So how do you make your smart kid a pretty kid?

How To Leverage The “Attractiveness” Factor With Gestalt Principles

The term Gestalt stands for “unified whole” – an urge to group and organize visual elements based on certain principles.

Introduced by Rudolf Arnheim in “”, these six principles can make your designs appear more coherent, connected and unified. Here’s how:

Similarity: When different object look similar (e.g. shape, size, color etc.), views often group individual elements into a pattern or a new larger picture. The more similarities individual elements have, the greater sense of coherence arises. In this case it’s easy to make one element “pop” by slightly modifying it, thus breaking the pattern.

 by  // Flickr Creative Commons

Continuation: we prefer to spot a single continuous figure (a line, path, curve) rather than separate lines.

Closure: Our brains don’t like unfinished business, so we tend to see closed shapes even if the object is incomplete or the element is not fully closed. This principle is often used in logos:

Proximity makes us create to create a group association between the closely arranged elements. When individual elements look similar, we tend to perceive them as a whole:

Figure/Ground principle makes us spot and separate objects from the surrounding background. We can see the foreground and the background as two different planes of focus at the same time. The example everyone knows is this picture of a two faces/vase:

The lack of Symmetry and Order is what makes users abandon certain websites and applications. The layout should not create a sense of disorder or imbalance as otherwise the user will mindlessly focus on locating the missing elements or trying to fill in the imbalance gap, rather than paying attention to your message or instructions.

Your design should radiate harmony and offer a good balance of symmetry, especially at the key screens like payment forms, landing pages and so on.

Remember, our brainpower is limited after all.

How To Make Your Product Even More Intuitive

Ever heard of the Hick’s Law? In short it states – people need more time to make a decision when the number of alternatives increases.

Making a choice between two things is hard. Making a choice between twenty alternatives is even harder.

Okay, so less is more when it comes to efficient usability, conversion and higher ROI? Well, it’s not that simple.

Will you buy from an e-store accepting only one type of credit cards e.g. Visa? Or from an online T-shirt store having one size for all clothes? Nope.

But when you offer too many options, another problem rolls out – the choice paralysis.

The problem of choice paralysis was addresses by the scientist from Columbia and Stanford University. As part of , they’ve conducted the “jam experiment”.

Researches set up two displays featuring a collection of exotic jams. Each customer, who came to sample the product, got a dollar-off discount for a jar. In the first case, there were 6 varieties of jams available. In the second – 24.

What were the top findings?

Out of 242 customers who passed the bigger selection display, 60% actually stopped to sample the jam. In contrast, only 40% of the 260 customers who passed the limited-selection display stopped.

Yet, almost 30% of consumers who stopped at the limited display subsequently bought a jar of jam, compared to only 3% of the consumers in the extensive-choice condition.

Here’s how you can apply the principles of Hick’s law and decision paralysis to web design:

  • Curate content into appropriate categories. Don’t puzzle the user with multiple choices immediately. Squeeze the overall choice into bite-sized chunks.
  • Prompt the right choice e.g. by highlighting the most popular payment plan or making the sign up button more prominent compared to “learn more” link.
  • Keep only the essential elements in your navigation. Break a list of 9 places to go into three branches with further sub-branches. For homepages/landing pages you may even want to reduce it to the essential minimum e.g. login/sign up/learn more/prices.
  • Power up your website with effective search, but don’t offer multiple complicated filter options immediately. If you want your customers to discover the app’s full functionality themselves, let them do it! Curiosity often drives most decisions in your lives.

The Most Important Rule of Web Design

There are a lot more rules, laws and best practices that can help you build better designs e.g. , the  and  and more.

Yet, there’s also one supreme rule to guide them all.

Ready for it?

Don’t Listen to Your Users.

Yes, you’ve read it right – do not listen to the users, as they don’t know what kind of experience they actually want.

Instead, watch closely what they do.

The secret to creating an efficient product UX and UI is closely observing the users as they attempt to perform a task with a certain interface. As , the whole process boils down to three simple steps:

  • Observe what users actually do.
  • Do not believe what they say they do.
  • Definitely don’t believe what people predict they may do in the future.

Here’s a  from Gillian Morris perfectly illustrating this point based on her personal product experience. In short – completely changing the app design and UI, which users adored, resulted into a few frustrated emails….and a major growth spike!

Simplicity and satisfaction of our common physiological bias make designs appear intuitive (or not). There’s no voodoo magic involved – just some common laws of how we tend to perceive and render information.

You now know what are schemas and how you should take advantage of those in your designs; the common best practices and some juicy laws and mental principles that facilitate in creating a better, more attractive and usable product design.

The post was originally published at .

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Learn UI Animation – Travel app /learn-ui-animation-travel-app/ /learn-ui-animation-travel-app/#respond Wed, 30 Mar 2016 18:36:19 +0000 /?p=371 Another great freebie in our Learn UI Animation category. This time Roman Gordienko shared his work progress on some Travel App.  Don’t forget to give him some love on dribbble though.       Format: Prd, SKETCH Size: 4.5 mb Download Principal Download Sketch

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Another great freebie in our Learn UI Animation category. This time  shared his work progress on some Travel App.  Don’t forget to give him some love on dribbble though.

Learn UI Animation

 

 

 

Format: Prd, SKETCH
Size: 4.5 mb


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Learn UI Animation – Sketch & Principle Freebie /learn-ui-animation-sketch-principle-freebie/ /learn-ui-animation-sketch-principle-freebie/#respond Mon, 28 Mar 2016 18:42:19 +0000 /?p=349 Want to learn UI Animation? Alexander Boychenko decided to share his work on Dualshock 4 animation. He gives away his source flies for free as Sketch & Principle freebie. Hope you’ll like it) Find attached the results – sketch and principle files. Feel free to use it for personal or commercial projects. Format: PRD, SKETCH Size: 4 mb Download Principle...

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Want to learn UI Animation?  decided to share his work on Dualshock 4 animation. He gives away his source flies for free as Sketch & Principle freebie. Hope you’ll like it) Find attached the results – sketch and principle files. Feel free to use it for personal or commercial projects.

Sketch & Principle Freebie

Sketch & Principle Freebie

 Sketch & Principle Freebie

Sketch & Principle Freebie

Format: PRD, SKETCH
Size: 4 mb


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10 Tech Myths You Need To Stop Believing /10-tech-myths-need-stop-believing/ /10-tech-myths-need-stop-believing/#respond Thu, 10 Mar 2016 21:20:41 +0000 /?p=78 Should you always be closing your apps on your phone? Are more network bars equal to better signal? Here are 10 Tech Myths that need to stop being thought of as true. If you know of any more myths that need to be debunked, let us know in the comments. Leaving your phone plugged in...

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Should you always be closing your apps on your phone? Are more network bars equal to better signal? Here are 10 Tech Myths that need to stop being thought of as true. If you know of any more myths that need to be debunked, let us know in the comments.

Leaving your phone plugged in at night hurts your battery.

Most people charge their phone overnight and it’s not uncommon to hear “You shouldn’t leave your phone charging for that long, it hurts your battery.” Well this isn’t true, phones nowadays are too clever for this to happen, as the battery level fills up it automatically slows the rate of charging and once it’s full . For the best battery life, charging your phone every now and then throughout the day is great, but if you want to charge it overnight, that’s absolutely fine.

You can’t always take tech specs for face value.

When searching for your next phone, tablet or computer, it’s a natural thing to go straight to specs to see what will run better and what has the better tech inside of it. But tech specs aren’t all the same. Look at any fastest phone comparison online at the moment, on paper the Galaxy S6 with its 8 cores should wipe away the competition with the iPhone only having 2, but in reality the .

The same thing goes for megapixels, iPhone’s have never has the highest megapixel counts on their latest phones, but the results speak for themselves, the quality you can get from an iPhone 6 is , but the tech specs say otherwise.

Always close apps on your phone, it helps battery.

The chances are that if you open up your multitasking on your phone you’re going to see a bunch of open apps, everyones first thought (including mine) is to kill them, they must be wasting battery and RAM, right? . Like I mentioned about battery life, phones are too clever now for this to impact on battery or RAM, mobile OS’s nowadays are really good about managing memory, unlike a computer that will always slow down with more things open.

Don’t jailbreak your iPhone, it’s illegal.

My personal favourite. As a jailbreaker myself I hear all the time that I shouldn’t do it because it’s illegal, granted, the name ‘jailbreak’ doesn’t exactly help the matter, but . Jailbreaking your phone will void your warranty and that’s about the extent of the risk involved.

Never let your computer run hot.

It’s not uncommon to hear that your computer should never run hot, and although it shouldn’t run too hot computers nowadays are more than capable of running at temperatures a lot hotter than we would assume. Running warm can actually be a good thing, the hotter the CPU is allowed to be, the more freedom it has to run at a higher clock speed, in turn giving you . Generally cooler is better, but running warm isn’t a bad thing at all. Tech Myths are always work on fear 😉

An expensive HDMI cable equals better video quality.

We’ve all been in PC World and seen these super gold-plated, diamond-encrusted HDMI cables that will transform the way we see HD forever, and because they’re more expensive they must be a ton better, right? . HDMI is a digital signal, so whether you’re using a £4 or £400 cable the signal is going to be identical. Don’t fall for the marketing.

Your eyes can’t see more than 60fps.

This one is the craziest of them all, and it’s widely believed. The have been many reports from different reaction tests that people can react to visual signals in less than 1ms, this is equivalent to 1000fps. So where did this myth come from? Well in truth most of what we see on , most monitors and TV’s are only capable at outputting a 60Hz refresh rate which only shows 60 fps. So if anyone says to you “I cannot see anything beyond 60 FPS”, make sure to let them know that they need to try viewing scenes that are able to deliver more than 60fps in the first place.

Macs don’t get viruses.

Well the fact is Macs do get viruses, and it’s crazy to think that it’s common opinion that they don’t. But why is this? First of all  so the viruses that affect PCs, won’t affect Macs. Secondly, there are far fewer Macs than what there are PCs, therefore hackers generally make viruses that are going to affect more population.

More bars = better signal.

This is a myth that is understandably believed, but it’s a myth none the less. The network bars on your phone indicate the signal strength from the mobile tower that is closest to you. However the  at the same time as you.

Don’t charge your phone until it’s completely dead.

This one’s infuriating because we hear it all the time. The truth is it’s better to charge your phone every day than to do a ‘‘ from time to time. Lithium-ion batteries that are in most gadgets nowadays fare better when they’re charged. If you constantly  to 0%, they become unstable.

If you know of any other debunked tech myths, let us know in the comments below.

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