IT Solutions Blog

Another week of fantastic articles! A little digging (or reading my blog ) will save you time and buying books hehe.

• 15 Desktop & Online Wireframing Tools (by Tom Walker) – I use Balsamiq Mockups, what about you?
• User Experience Books Free to Read Online (by Simon Whatley) – yes, free
• The Future of Wireframes (by Nishant Kothary) – in Nishant’s words: holy guacamole!
• Do’s and Don’ts of Usability Testing (by Demetrius Madrigal and Bryan McClain) – my take-away: don’t jump to conclusions, that truly is a beginner mistake.
• How to Increase Conversions on any Website in 45 Minutes (by Andrew Follett) – improvement can happen in less than an hour, keep it down to the top 3 items!
• 43 Essential Controls for Web Applications (by Theresa Neil) – just being able to name them properly (not to mention program them) is a huge communication plus.
• How to Choose Right CSS Frameworks (by Joel Reyes) – a must read for any web programmer. Know at least one css framework really well.
• Why you only need to test with five users (explained) (by Jeff Sauro) – I mean, really well explained.
• Email verification – is your call-to-action strong enough? (by Harry Brignull) – it’s tough to lose customers that WANT to be customers. Consider lazy registration as well!
• “Call to Action” Buttons: Guidelines, Best Practices and Examples (by hongkiat) – Another really important article. Talks about size, color, labels etc.

I know this might be a little off-topic but nevertheless useful to many of us. The book ‘The Principles of Successful Freelancing‘ of Miles Burke is available for free to download (only valid for the next 10 days starting today), so get it now!

Contents

1. Considering Freelancing?
2. Prepare for the Transition
3. Manage Your Money
4. Set Yourself Up
5. Win the Work
6. Give Great Service
7. Achieve Work–Life Balance
8. Where to from Here?

About the author

Miles Burke has been creating web sites since 1994. In 2002, Miles founded Bam Creative, an award-winning Western Australian web company. Miles serves as Chairperson of the Australian Web Industry Association, and has been awarded for his entrepreneurship in recent years; he’s a recipient of the Contribution to the Web Industry award in 2005, winner of the WA Business News’ 40under40 award in 2007, and appears in the 2008 edition of Who’s Who in Western Australia. Miles can also be found writing at Miles’ Blog.

Links for freelancers

• 85+ Tools & Resources for Freelancers and Web Workers by Sean P. Aune
• 7 Productivity Tips, Plus Tools for Freelancers and Web Workers by Elliott Kosmicki

Have more useful links? Post them in the comments section.

Suggested reading:

The Principles of Successful Freelancing

Miles Burke. SitePoint 2008, Paperback, 200 pages, $21.37

Marti Hearst generously made her upcoming book “Search User Interfaces” available for reading online. She is definitely not a newcomer to the scene and the book for sure not a Best-Of compilation, moreover the book is written in an academic fashion that backs up its theses usability studies, log studies, or some other form of proof (like it!) – like Harry Brignull states: “Caution: actual thought may be required when reading this book.”

Contents: Search User Interfaces

The book has two main parts: search fundamentals (Chapters 1-7) and advanced topics (Chapters 8-12).

0: Preface
1: Design of Search User Interfaces
2: Evaluation of Search User Interfaces
3: Models of the Information Seeking Process
4: Query Specification
5: Presentation of Search Results
6: Query Reformulation
7: Supporting the Search Process
8: Integrating Navigation with Search
9: Personalization in Search
10: Information Visualization for Search Interfaces
11: Information Visualization for Text Analysis
12: Emerging Trends in Search Interfaces
References
Index

Suggested reading:

Search User Interfaces

Marti A. Hearst. Cambridge University Press 2009, Hardcover, 408 pages, $31.99

The last couple of weeks were pretty busy for me. We were trying to design an application that has potential to grow beyond national importance and get high visibility. Needless to say expectations are high. Time constraints aside, my focus was to extract the goal of the application and streamline the user experience, do I sound like a marketing person yet?

Powerpoint Wireframes

In order to get quick and accurate feedback from our client I wanted to create visuals as early as possible. That’s when Microsoft Powerpoint came in handy. I created wireframe mockups and iterated through the slides via video conference which turned out to be not only useful but essential to the mutual understanding. The client was able to adjust their process, our project managers increased their knowledge about the domain and our developers identified potential issues with integrating our mapping software.

Free Download

Download Powerpoint Wireframe Stencils

During the process of designing the wireframes I created my own set of Powerpoint stencils that covers all common interface elements as well as a set of small icons.

Powerpoint Wireframe Stencils

Example Usage

Just recently I started to redesign www.actress.at, the website of my sister who is an actress currently located in Berlin, Germany.
What better opportunity than this to put the wireframe stencils into work. After talking with her for some time over the phone I got a good sense of what her vision is based on the needs of job. Together with some photos from her agency and videos from youtube I created the following three mockups:

Mockup for the Homepage of Eva Gaigg's redesigned webpage actress.at

Mockup for a page inside the navigation architecture, in this case videos but also applicable for photos and other presentation items.

Mockup for the response form, probably a critical part of the application since this will be the butter on the bread.

Next Step: XHMTL Prototype

Following the wireframes exercise we created a color palette and implemented an XHTML prototype which roughly took us 3 days. Screen snapshots fed another set of Powerpoint slides for the big demo and will eventually go into the design doc as well. So far, so good.

Help me to improve the stencils

I really hope the wireframe stencils will be helpful for your work (as they made my life easier). I am interested in your opinion. What is missing? What can be improved? Send me your suggestions, ideas, updates