The market is full of all-in-one tools that not only let’s you prototype but also let’s you create wireframes, do full-fledged UI design and also let’s you collaborate with your team members. It’s important to find a tool that matches all these needs, is fast to use and saves you time.

So to help you out with your search, I have curated a list of some of the best prototyping tools in the market to help you comprehensively determine which tool best suits your needs.

Best Prototyping Tools For UI/UX Designers

#1 Adobe XD

Adobe XD is the leader in everything it has to offer. With XD, you can do wireframing, designing and prototyping of websites as well as mobile applications.

Collaboration is real easy and it integrates with its family apps like Photoshop, Illustrator, and you can also choose from more than 200 integrations to help you to get more out of your Adobe Experience Cloud investment. It’s fully integrated with Adobe’s Creative Cloud which which means you get a full fledged suit of design tools for your prototyping needs.

Also it’s super easy to hand-off the designs to your developer for code conversion with sharable design URLs.

It offers apps for all major operating systems like OS X, Windows, Android, and IOS. Adobe XD is everything that a designer needs to build high-end prototypes. It cost starts at FREE pricing with limited functionalities to around $23 a month per user if you want more features. You can check their full pricing here.

#2 Sketch

The Sketch app is well-known for its rich features and user-friendly interface. Design-focused features like Grids and Layouts, Resizing Constraints, Variable, and OpenType Fonts make it easier for you to work at your best.

Features like Reusable Components, Smart Layout, and Shared Libraries help you to scale your projects. Also Sketch has made the process of getting feedback and testing ideas painless, by offering features like Cloud Sharing, and Developer Handoffs. You can now share designs directly with your developers to convert them to code.

It also supports hundreds of plugins such as Plants, Overflow, and Chart to name a few. I’ve covered a bunch of them on this post.

Sketch comes with a 30-day free trial and you can then upgrade to a $99 lifetime license, which is perfect if you are a solo designer. If you have a team of contributors, you can go with their monthly plan of $9 per month per user.

#3 Figma

Figma is another popular option for you to explore. It lets teams create, test, and ship better designs from scratch to end. It’s a great tool where multiple designers can work together to make designs in a fully collaborative manner. With Figma, you can prototype while you design, and vice versa.

Figma comes with a lot of handy features to help you build a prototype. Some of the features are Intuitive build, Interactions, Mobile-optimized, Animated GIFs, Dynamic overlays, and much more.

Figma Integrations include Maze, Slack, Dropbox, Dribble, Jira, and more. It’s free for up to 3 projects and then $12 per editor/month for professionals.

#4 InVision

InVision provides you with everything you need for digital product design, all in one place, with tools for ideation, prototyping, and design management. You can streamline your workflow by using various integrations such as Slack, Dropbox, Jira, Basecamp, Trello, Microsoft Teams etc.

With InVision Cloud, you can draw, wireframe, and present your team’s best ideas on a shared digital whiteboard. You can also create powerful screen designs with fast vector-based drawing and flexible layer, add transitions, and micro-interactions to turn static screens into working prototypes, through InVision Studio.

With InVision DSM, you can create and maintain a shared visual language for design and development, push and pull library changes with Studio and Sketch plugin. It free to use for individuals and small teams, and starts at $9.95 a month for professionals.

#5 Framer

Framer is one of the best and simple to use prototyping tools to create interactive designs for designers, engineers, product managers, and teams.

It’s relatively new and has come into existence just few years ago, and already have a full-blown interactive design, prototyping, and collaboration set of tools trusted by teams at Dropbox, Twitter, Pinterest, and others.

Designers can start from scratch in Framer or import from their Sketch or Figma designs. The output is near-native prototypes that can be tested on real users with real-world constraints, so design decisions can be stress-tested from the start and no development resources are needed.

It’s free for up to 2 editors and 3 projects, then you have two premium plans starting $12 a month.

#6 Marvel

Marvel offers a wide range of features including wireframing, designing, prototyping, handoff, user testing and collaboration. You can instantly generate design specifications and connect integrations that power up your workflow.

Marvel provides integrations with Sketch, Trella, Jira, Slack,, G Suite, Maze, etc. You can make designs interactive with dynamic transitions, interactivity, and gestures to bring your prototypes to life.

User testing feature allows you to take feedback from your target audience, customers, and stakeholders before you send the designs for development. Marvel’s collaborative features let team members add notes, and share ideas in real-time.

It’s free for upto one project for individuals and $84/month for teams.

#7 Axure RP

Axure RP is the most powerful way to plan, prototype, and handoff to developers, all using one app. Axure RP lets you quickly make rich, functional prototypes so you can make informed choices with the help of dynamic content, conditional logic, and adaptive views.

It allows you to import Sketch, Figma, Adobe XD and other design files and allows high-quality prototyping so you can amaze your stakeholders and customers. You can bridge the gap with the development team by utilizing their documentation, Automated Redlines, and Code Export.

Axure RP is trusted by companies like Amazon, BBC, Verizon, Microsoft, Target, and other. It costs $29/month for individuals and team plan costs around $49/month.

#8 Origami Studio

Origami Studio is a product from Facebook. It is built and used by designers at Facebook for prototyping and designing modern design interfaces for mobile apps.

With Origami Live you can view the mockups live on mobile phones in real-time. You can use your device’s camera, microphone, accelerator, and haptics in your prototype, even send and open prototypes directly on your other devices. It’s an excellent tool for creating mobile app prototypes.

It allows you to easily create prototypes with layers, save time with pre-built Material and iOS components, quickly explore and iterate visually with patches, and see changes immediately in the Viewer as you make them.

This prototyping tool is best for freelancers and individuals starting out as designers. It’s a free service.

#9 Webflow

Webflow helps you build business websites without coding. Webflow’s interactions and animations tools bring all the power of CSS and JavaScript into a completely visual tool, empowering designers to build complex, rich websites and animations.

You can create scroll-based parallax animations, build micro-interactions, create hover animations, and more. With it’s CMS, you can define your own content structure and design with real data.

If you quickly want to prototype a website or even make an end product irrespective of your skills, Webflow is the right choice for you. It’s free to try and the most basic plan starts at $12/mon.

#10 Balsamiq

Since 2008, Balsamiq‘s mission has been to help rid the world of bad user interfaces, and Balsamiq prototyping tool is the best way to do that. UX professionals from across the globe use it to create wireframes as it’s a very focused, low-fidelity tool for wire-framing.

It is easy to collaborate and get feedback on your wireframes with this tool. They claim their wireframes are the gold standard in low-cost wire framing tools. The main focus of this tool is on the ideation phase, which provides you with a clean tool that helps you get in the flow and stay focused on structure rather than colors and icons.

Companies like Apple, eBay, Cisco, Skype, and Tesla use Balsamiq for creating wireframes and usability test. It costs anywhere between $9 per month to $199 per month depending on the number of projects.

#11 JustInMind

JustInMind is a great prototyping tool that lets you create wireframes for websites and web apps that adapt to multiple screen resolutions for desktop and mobile, the UI elements in your screen will also adapt automatically.

You can create your own UI kits, personalize them with your own style and interactions. You get seamless collaboration with features like User Management, Reviewers and Developers, On-Premise Collaboration, and LDAP Integration.

JustInMind’s usability testing tool integrations include Peek, Loop, CrazyEgg, UserZoom, and Validately. It cost $19/month for professionals and $39/month per user for enterprises.

There you go!

These are some of the best prototyping tools used by professionals around the world. Prototyping has never been this easy and these tools have made it much more easier and efficient for even people who are just starting out in the UX/UI world.

As most of them offer a free trial, try each of them yourself to get a taste of what each of them have to offer and choose the tool that you feel the most apt for your work. Goodluck!

The post 11 Best Prototyping Tools For UI/UX Designers appeared first on Fantastech.co!.

Today, I’m delighted to share with you some of the best UX blogs out there which I personally follow and can assure you that they’ll be fruitful for you as well. 

So, further ado, here’s the list of top 30 UX blogs for you:

30 Best UX Blogs

#1 UX Blog

The UX Blog was started as a resource for User Experience Design, User Research, and the UX strategy. They create each article, podcast episode, and resource relevant to the modern UX professional. You can also listen to their podcast on iTunes. 

#2 Career Foundry

CareerFoundry offers programs for you to become a UI/UX designer, Data Analyst, Web Developer, “from scratch” as they like to say. The blog has various articles on UI/UX Design, Career Change, Data Analytics, Web Development, and more. 

#3 UX Planet

UX Planet defines itself as “a one-stop resource for everything related to the user experience”. The best thing about this blog is that it focuses on UX for beginners and also has a career section giving every information you need to know to make a career in UX space. 

#4 Nielsen Norman Group

The creator of this blog is the man who coined the term “User Experience”. Donald Norman coined the work and co-founded Nielsen Norman Group with Jakob Nielsen. It had to make it to our list. This is a UX research and consulting firm. Their articles focus on Web Usability, Psychology and UX, Ecommerce, Design process, and much more. They also hold UX conferences all over the world.

#5 Adobe XD Ideas Blog

XD Ideas blog is a forum for unique insights and authentic points of view on the practice, business, and impact of design. They deliver high-quality content and innovative resources to empower the design community. Their content includes the information architecture, prototyping, UI design, user research, user testing, and more.

#6 UX Collective 

UX Collective provides wholesome content on user experience. It has curated stories on UX, Visual, and Product Design. Subscribe to UX Collective Newsletter to get their recommendation on insightful UI/UX articles.

#7 Invision Blog

Invision is popular tool for online prototyping and workflow creation for websites and mobile apps. Invision Blog has quite a few interesting design and UX related articles relevant to designers. Being a tool for designers they try to product really good quality content with unique insights in the industry.

#8 Awwwards

Awwwards is a platform that recognizes the talent and efforts of the designers in the UX industry. The Awwwards blog provides a range of savvy articles on Web Design, Research, and tools, Design, and illustration written by some of the best minds in the business. You can even talk to UX designers and share knowledge and criticism with the community about their designs. 

#9 FacebookDesign

Facebook wants to give people the power to build a digital community and bring the world closer together with its global outreach. The community is made up of product designers, content strategists, communication designers, and more. The Facebook Design blog showcases posts on culture, process, case studies, and a career section for upcoming designers. 

#10 Usability Geek

Usability Geek is a great blog about usability and user experience. It also provides useful insights into Human-Computer Interaction(HCI), Information Architecture, and related topics. Their main aim is to evangelize the importance of website usability. 

#11 UX Booth

UX Booth blogs have very high-quality content across the spectrum of UX. They even write about topics such as voice UX design. Their content provides practical solutions for UX designers. You will come across content relating to Analytics, Business Strategy, Content Strategy, Virtual Design, Information Architecture, and more on their blog. Must visit.

#12 UXMastery

UX Mastery is a very under-rated website. Although it provides a plethora of info-knowledge on UX. It offers a UX Mastery Podcast, along with articles on Culture, Career Advice, Design, and research. It has an interesting feature called “UX Sketch videos” which you must see. UX Mastery overall provides really good quality and insightful content. 

#13 UXPin

The blog at UX Pin mainly write about usability and design systems. The blog has decent content but what’s unique is, the e-books they provide for free on topics such as web design trends, UX industry reports, prototyping, and many more.

#14 52WeeksOfUX

52 Weeks of UX is a fairly unique blog. The idea was to publish one article each week starting January 2010. It’s fairly old but the content and ideas shared are still relevant today. Personally, I found the blog quite informative, so do check it out.

#15 Uber Design

The Uber Design blog comes from the design team at Uber and offers resourceful articles from their own experiences on building their platform and brand.

We’re designing experiences that don’t exist yet. Because of that, we’re constantly innovating and improving what we’re making. It’s an amazing challenge, and it’s also incredibly rewarding

Amritha Prasad, Product designer at Uber

#16 Airbnb Design

Airbnb Design is a blog that features articles about design. They also publish case studies, opinion pieces, and more. Airbnb Design even do interviews with designers and artists and publish interview transcripts. Their article provides good insights into the world of design.

#17 UXWritingHub

This Blog is all about writing for UX. It is insightful for beginners and professionals alike. UX Writing Hub also provides a free course on UX writing, you can also save yourself a spot at the UX writing academy. If a newbie is reading this, go get yourself that free course.

#18 UXMatters

UX Matters is an unusually designed blog as compared to its counterparts. The blog’s Top Articles section offers the best quality content dating years back, but still relevant. The primary focus of the blog is in business, community, design, code, research, strategy, reviews, experiences, and process. 

#19 Muzli

The Muzli blog shares the latest links about design and interactive, from around the world. It says it’s “a designer’s must”. On this blog, you will find a plethora of articles on everything there is to know about design, and the designing community globally. If the design is what you care for, dig right in!

#20 UXMag

UX Mag is a magazine dedicated to the world of UX. UX Mag has an abundant variety of articles written by professionals from around the world. It cares for topics such as accessibility, artificial intelligence, conversational design, data visualization, empathy, and storytelling. 

#21 1stWebDesigner’s UX Category

The content on this blog is created by web design professionals, for web design professionals. 1stWebDesigner’s UX category has topics ranging from web design and development best practices, web accessibility standards, the future web design to marketing web services, and anything about WordPress.

#22 Digital Telepathy

Telepathy is a customer experience and UX design agency. Their focus on customer experience shows on their website, it’s very sleek. Apart from the sleekness of their site, they offer a really nice reading list of topics such as product design, marketing design, startup design, enterprise design, evidently everything design. 

#23 Smashing Magazine’s UX Category

Smashing Magazine has been around for more than a decade now and their content is simply amazing. They post blogs regularly and have a knack for UX for web design. They also write stuff about Design Patterns, Accessibility, UI, and a lot more to even mention here. This blog is one of the best in the game and is highly recommended.

#24 Creative Bloq

Creative Bloq is all about art and design inspiration. It offers topics such as graphic design, web design. It also delivers inspiration for graphic designers, illustrators, and UX designers. They also have a magazine named “ImagineFX” that talks about general design.  

#25 UX Movement

UX Movement is a blog that mostly writes on how good and bad a design practice is, and how it affects user behavior. They post once in a month which is kind of off-putting but every article they post is filled with utmost research, clarity of reasoning, and experience.

#26 UX Studio Team’s Blog

UX Studio Team solely focuses on user experience work. You will find the best content on user experience on their blog, and they also provide case studies as to how designers handle UX work – they are some really interesting read. They have some great articles on User Psychology, Brand Strategy, Usability Testing, and more.

#27 UXMyths

UX Myths writes about the most common user experience misconceptions and provides clarity. All their content comes from a detailed research finding done by design and usability experts. It has to date debunked 34 myths surrounding UX. 

#28 A List Apart

Truly doing justice to the name, A List Apart is a blog that writes about an array of subjects for UX designers. They publish enormous and in-depth articles on subjects such as Application Development, HTML, Content Strategy, Brand Identity, Interactive Design, and a lot more to mention here. Their blogs are easy to read and very insightful.

#29 Usabilla

Usabilla is a user testing tool for UX designers. On their blog they post about business-oriented UX, CX insights, Innovation in the industry, and more. They also provide e-books, webinars, and research.

#30 Interaction Design

Interaction Design claims it has the world’s largest free online resource on UX design. Topics include human-computer interaction,  visual representation, usability evaluation, and much more. It also offers a range of online courses such as the psychology of e-commerce, interaction design for usability, information visualization to name a few. 

There you go!

Above listed UX blogs were handpicked for you to get the best information, knowledge and latest trends in the world of UX. The purpose of listing so many of them was to give you a comprehensive list that gives you taste of all kinds of UX people and their insights.

Go ahead and bookmark this page so that you have it handy the next time you need to look up a UX blog.

Did I miss any blog? Do let me know by leaving a comment below.

The post Here’s Our Pick of Top 30 UX Blogs to Follow appeared first on Fantastech.co!.

What’s the impact of all this increase – mobile user experience can no longer be kept second priority and a mobile-first approach must be follows. Optimizing websites for mobile devices should be the crux of your development efforts for every single website project you do, no matter how big or small a website project might be.

The explosion in mobile traffic has fundamentally altered how we browse the web. And there are notable differences in how people browse on mobile devices and tablets. It’s crucial that you keep this in mind when building website.

To put you on track, here are 8 mobile/tablet design best practices that’ll help you modernize the visitor’s user experience.

8 Absolute Essentials for Designing Websites for Mobiles & Tablets

Let’s see how to make an awesome impact on any screen size.

Navigation for Mobile Standards

Mobile navigation impacts three crucial elements that make or break your user’s mobile experience – UX, relevance and content. The links and the menu all come together for a holistic device-specific experience. Classic navigation doesn’t work well on mobile screens as it looks cluttered on the small screen. Here’s what you can do:

• Limit the number of menu items between four to eight.
• For ecommerce websites design multi-level navigation with adequate drop down functionality.
• Employ serial position effect – list important pages of menu as per priority and common anticipated actions.
• Sticky navigation can be used to help increase visitor retention by making menu accessible at all times.
• Navigation language and fonts can be tested through A/B testing to select the most potent combination.
• Intuitive navigation, including Hamburger menus, help save space.
• Put all the less important navigation links to footer.

I go for designs that prioritize the navigation options. In case a user has to make more than three clicks to reach a page, I would shelve such design. Hiding vital elements from users makes it complex and difficult to access. If design allows suitable space, you can link the logo back tot he home page as conventionally suggested.

Designing for Thumbs

Designing responsive websites becomes easy when you understand how users physically interact with websites on various devices. Devices operated with thumb taps or swipes are perceived fundamentally different than those which employ mouse clicks.

• Call to actions and menus should be bottom central or within easy reach
• Keep it cards friendly so users can spend more time
• Gestures and movements must be performed naturally
• Provide adequate tapping space and allow smooth swipes
• Keep button size consistent throughout the page
• Spacing between buttons, text and links should be uniform across various text blocks

Use a tab bar or tabs to display high priority navigation options. In a desktop environment, navigation is prominently displayed on top left hand corner where it is clearly visible. On mobiles, however, the reach of thumbs has to be viably navigational as per the location of menu bar. It’s vital that important elements are within reach because majority mobile users, approximately 80%, use one of the thumbs to operate the screen. Thus, the content should be laid down keeping this usage psych if you want users to browse easily.

Optimize Forms for Mobile

While browsing on mobiles, we all have had some frustrating experience while filling the forms as they are quite long and involve lots of typing. This experience can get even more frustrating on smaller clumsy phones. With the advancement in mobile software updates, the typing experience has improved with features such as auto-correct; but still typing is a big deal.

Whether it is a contact form, newsletter sign up, registration/login form, order submission, lead generation or others, you should always make the experience swift. To reduce the typing strain on mobiles, developers should design forms with only mandatory ones.

Minimal fields and quick submission must be key to mobile forms. For example have a look at the get quote form we have on our homepage. You’ll find that we’ve kept it short and to the point.

Use auto-suggest and dropdowns wherever possible so that user has to type less to help fill the forms quickly.

Keep Different Mobile Screen Dimensions in Mind

So, which screen should you be designing for? In-depth research is the right answer here. Mobile resolutions can be tricky nowadays with varying aspect ratios. Try at least three different layouts to create a comprehensive design for the website. For e.g. under 480px, 480 to 768 px and over 768px for bigger screens.

Go for popular mobile and tablet devices and their screen sizes so that you can have most users covered. This will also cover key responsive breakpoints. At this junction, designers should also cover both portrait and landscape orientation scenarios.

Use Less Content

Or to put it simply, hide and prioritize content appropriately. Sometimes, removing content means compromising on the mobile experience. Situation demands that content display is absolutely pertinent. So, how can you display whole content without making it look drab and super lengthy. Simple – you hide and prioritize! When we are minimizing cognitive load, content should be counted.

The absolutely vital content must be displayed up top so it can be digested easily. Next, you can create tappable areas to hide content appropriately. For example, you can display just the title (add an introductory paragraph), along with a clickable link to open up further content. The user can click on link to view full content body, if he so wishes.

Proper Font Sizes

Screen size and resolutions are getting increasingly complex. In order to make the text legible on various screens, you must ensure proper font size is employed. CSS file contains the font size details. In case, there is no custom font size, browser itself assigns a default font size (normally 16px). Fonts are measured in various other units such as Em’s (em), points (pt), and percent (%).

Here are some general recommendations relative to font size:

• Follow the most common 16px font size. You may vary the font size as per font properties.
• Typographic scale can be varied as per the base font size.
• There has to be vertical space between text characters. Default browser line height is 1.2em. Adapt the line height accordingly.
• Don’t use too many fonts and varying typographic scales. It throws the users off balance.
• Kerning – The space between two letters, called Kerning, can be adjusted to achieve aesthetically perfect results and enhance readability.

You can use Type-scale.com which provides pretty nice tool to find out the exact typography options for your website.

Body font sizes and headings must be balanced as per the screen size of the device. Typography can be defining factor in content heavy websites. Thus, tread with caution here.

Use Collapsible Sections/Accordions

A block of long text and lengthy paragraphs will not be perceived positively on a mobile screen. This makes it difficult for the user to find the information they are looking for. An ideal solution is to use accordions, or collapsible content sections. These are ‘containers’ filled up with content, which expand when the user taps. This way, visitors can scan your page, read headings, and tap on a heading to expand.

It’s primary benefit is that you can put a ton of content on a page. Simply create appealing headings and users will tap on the ones they would love to read further. However, designing perfect accordions is an art! Employ the right mix of icons, content and headings to make every accordion worth clicking.

Fluid Vs. Responsive

Lastly, we come to the most important debate – fluid or responsive! Well, both come handy when you need certain features. First you have to know the differences. Fluid layouts (or Liquid Layouts) ensures proportional layout of elements occupying equivalent space in percentage terms on various screen sizes. On the other hand, responsive design employs CSS Media Queries to create various layouts depending on the screen used.

The intent of the fluid design is to present all the elements with the same spatial weightage. Responsive design aims to present a device specific layout that ensures each device gets custom layout. I recommend using responsive design as fluid won’t work well in most modern website designs.

Wrapping Things Up

This is just tip of the iceberg. Designing mobile websites is getting trickier everyday. There are many technicalities, responsive design updates and mobile market trends. These points, however, cover, the crux of this genre. Implementing these will surely give you a head start and ensure your website fits well on most modern devices.

And once you’ve designed the website in tools like Adobe XD, Sketch or Figma, feel free to reach out to us and we’ll help you with conversion of those designs to WordPress website code.

Want more tips on mobile redesign or wish to share your inputs? Get in touch with me and I’ll be happy to take things forward.

The post 8 Things to Keep in Mind When Designing Websites for Mobile Devices appeared first on Fantastech.co!.

Well, that’s one reason we rebranded our website fantastech.co (which was earlier built in 2015) so that the design can be fresh and relevant. So, are you also ready to design an awesome website this year and ahead?

Here’s a list of non-negotiable standards that your website must have in any case.

Modern Website Design Standards

1. Simplicity

Well polished design always gets the job done. Visitors don’t pay much attention to design details but instead are looking for information or take some action. So, it is vital that you stay on the course and avoid gaudy design that serves no purpose. Let them accomplish what they have came for – get information!

So, colors gamut should be kept simple with a maximum of 5 different colors. Typefaces should be instantly recognizable and legible. Stick to popular fonts to make the right impact. Graphics must be limited to specific areas. Basically, Keep it Simple Silly (KISS)!

Here are some examples of simple website designs.

2. Visual Hierarchy

The visual elements must be organized in such a manner that users gravitate towards ‘focused’ elements naturally. Remember, the goal of UX is to lead the user towards completing a desired action – without forcing them. When you create a sense of uniformity in color, position and size of the elements, a designer can draw a visitor’s attention positively.

This one is a good resource on visual hierarchy that you should really help you.

3. Navigability

Visitors should be able to locate everything easily on your website. They should simply surf through various pages and swiftly reach their desired location. An intuitive navigation helps them find what they’re looking for.

The primary navigation structure must be kept simple. Use breadcrumbs on every page and the footer of the page must include navigation pattern. Having a search box also helps visitors find relevant information.

4. Consistency

Besides the navigation, there must be consistency in overall look and feel of your website’s pages. The color scheme, backgrounds, banners, typefaces etc., all come together to create an impact on your website’s UX.

Yes, there can be adequate differences on two pages in terms of layout. However, the color change should not be drastic so as to change the whole vibe of your concept. For e.g. landing pages can be different from service pages in order to focus on call-to-action.

5. Conventional

Over the years, users have become accustomed to certain design features. It’s good to let them have them, so you don’t come out too awkward in terms of design philosophy. For e.g. the top logo with the link back to the home page, navigation menu at the top or a shopping cart icon etc. All these design conventions don’t make a website old, it makes it relatable. Take advantage of the conventionality to help visitors familiarize with the website. Let them navigate through the pages conventionally.

6. User-Centricity

Each user is different. So, how do you create a user-centric website for all of the visitors? You simply focus on the user-centricity. Testing and user-feedback can help you gather information and make necessary changes as per the popular demand.

Being clear and honest about your website’s services/products helps build credibility among the users. Users shouldn’t have to dig through tons of navigation to reach their desired page. Being user-friendly helps you build long-term brand value.

Modern Web Design Elements Every Designer Should Know

Whether it is old website renovation or a brand new project, designing futuristic websites will earn you client’s respect.

Besides the basics, a good designer always chooses the best modern elements to add sparkle to a website. You should also pay attention to the basics. To narrow down your choice, here are some of the trends, elements and ways you can truly design a website for modern users.

1. Large and Unique Typography

Today, there’s a large selection of typography and fonts to choose from, helping designers better express the content. Users move across content better when expressive fonts are used since they evoke subtle hints. The content can be fun, information, functional or serious based on the font or typography employed.

The suitability of fonts across various browsers should also be considered. Selecting an unsupported font means that your content is not displayed or comes out awkwardly. Uniformity of fonts across the webpages is a must. It should also be represented well across various devices.

2. Responsive and Large Hero Images

Large images help overcome the limitations of over and below the fold issues. Large images present a strong visual experience, along with minimal social buttons or CTA, which encourages the visitors to read more content. Large images with overlaid content in beautiful fonts helps you create an initial interest in the user.

Premium websites cater to high end users. Naturally, expectations are high! They can be browsing on phone, desktop or tablet computer. Thus, a responsive image is a powerful medium to convey your message. Powerful banner lines that evoke a sense of action can truly help you convert more visitors.

3. Background Videos

Five years ago, background videos would have been a big ‘no-no’. Connections were slow and data limits were regulated. But modern users are mostly browsing on fast connections and have more data limits. Thus, auto-playing videos in the background can add a lot of impact on your page.

They can help tell a story much easily compared to other content. Users don’t have to read lengthy content. Background videos are a brilliant way to illicit the user’s interest the moment they land on the page. Designers should ensure that key points of the message are short and crisp so users can digest easily.

Videos are digested much faster relative to heavy blocks of text. With increase in mobile devices, you can bet that your modern users would love to hit the play button more often.

4. Semi Flat Design

Famous brands are shifting to flat design due to its increasing acceptance among users. Simply put, when there are no depth or 3D shadows associated with a design, it is called flat design. Since it does not have overly-technical or complicated elements, it is far easier to load.

Be it Apple, Samsung or Uber, flat design is becoming the rage. Users comprehend it and relate better to the basic icons. Designers can add their touch to flat design by implementing subtle depth or angular corners to bring them to life. It is vital that all your webpages represent the same design cues to bring about uniformity everywhere.

5. Hamburger Menus

Classical menus can occupy a ton of precious screen space. But you can’t eliminate menu either. Enter the ‘Hamburger Menu’! It was first employed in web applications and slowly found its way to websites today. Even Google uses one. It integrates menu options into a hamburger like setting that pops open and close when you scroll over.

Hiding a busy and long menu creates a clutter-free look. Users can browse through the various options distraction free. Moreover, designers should keep the important navigation options only to further streamline the browsing experience. This increases the likelihood of finding the information.

6. Gradients are Making a Comeback

Gradients are back! Today, designers are using them extensively to make a bold statement in a retro way. They channel emotions and help customers connect better with the product or service. Even a simple hue transition creates a powerful impact while navigating.

Designers use gradients to create something new simply by blending colors. Refreshing mix of colors with flat icons creates a symphony of sorts especially on latest high-resolution mobile devices. Whether it is unsaturated or saturated, gradients create a beautiful sense of depth and dimension. With popularity of augmented and virtual reality increasing, designers will definitely use gradients to add more immersion and realism to the website design elements.

7. Large Product Images

This is important for ecommerce websites. Even B2B websites with many products to display have started to display large product images. The number of products displayed on the webpage can be regulated to ensure that each product gets suitable attention. The images can be responsive so that there’s uniformity in viewing across different devices.

Large images aid in better representing the various product features effectively. You can highlight a certain feature through various related images. Here, too, the primary benefit is that images convey the feature better as compared to words.

8. Card Design

Modern users are fascinated with cards. Designers and marketers both understand that cards can help disseminate the information visually without being overwhelming. When articles are broken in cards, users can get a peek and decide which one they want to read further.

How you serve content to the users is the key to success. Breaking up content into various cards is a clean and organized way to present content to the visitors. You can highlight multiple articles or products (in B2B websites) without relying on excessive text.

By breaking up different pieces of content into cards, users can pick and choose which articles they want to expand. This helps to keep the homepage feeling clean and organized, without relying on a ton of text. Remember, each card must be responsive and adapt to the screen size easily.

Basic Web Design Precautions For Happier Users

Establish design principles: Designing websites with well-defined principles helps consolidate visitors. If users are spending time on a webpage, its basics are taken care of.

Standardize the Color Palette: The color palette must not deviate too much from the standards. Use precise color codes in addition to choosing a standard naming convention.

Well built Icon Library: Create and maintain a well-stocked icon library and UI inventory. This creates uniformity across the pages that users can relate to.

Bold Lines and Geometry: To draw attention towards a secondary image, bold lines can come in handy. Intersection points and color must be in sync with the focal point.

Tactile Design: Coming from material design realm, it helps digital objects appear real. Just like geometrical patterns, tactile design can help distinguish various graphical elements.

Multilayer Design: Highly realistic look can be achieved with multilayered design. Drop shadows can be employed for distinguishing layers and create more realism.

Hover Effects: Avoid using excessive hover effects on every link. Gesture controls and tappable buttons have emerged as viable alternatives to information flow.

Animated effects: Simply them since most don’t perform well on mobile devices. Instead, animated GIF’s work good on simpler mobile devices.

Voice Activation: With faster speeds, you can surely implement voice activation that not only increases intuitiveness of your website, it also serves queries faster.

Still struggling with designing websites for the modern users? Not to worry! I regularly share my insights about fast moving web design industry right here. Or you can get in touch to discuss in detail.

Once your designs are ready in PSD, Adobe XD, Figma or Sketch, you can share them with us for conversion to WordPress code using one of our services.

The post How to Design Websites for the Modern Internet Users in 2022 and Beyond? appeared first on Fantastech.co!.

Seven reasons are mine and one it’s your to add.  So, here they are!

1. We speak different languages

We do. And not different in the same sense as English and Japanese, for instance, are different. Even when speaking the same language there are times we don’t understand each other properly for the simple reason that we see different meanings for the same words. And that basically happens because…

2. We have different backgrounds

From the early days of our preparatory school through everything that formed us professionally, we are essentially different. We see things differently and, besides being the most wonderful thing in the world (our uniqueness, I mean), this may sometime lead to communication difficulties that need to be addressed somehow.

3. We are (mostly) visual beings

Most of our understanding about the surrounding environment comes through the visual senses. Why I think that is so it’s because there are so many shapes, colors and combination of them, and their number is overwhelming comparing to the amount of words & concepts we use to denote them. And besides that, it’s easier to spot a shape than to read and comprehend its literal description. It’s far easier to take that shape and visually integrate it into a larger picture than it is to do the same thing using only your imagination.

4. It’s faster & cheaper

To be more specific now, prototyping is by definition a very early draft version or a simulation of a yet to be built product. It only make senses to invest time and resources in prototyping only when it’s cheaper and faster than building the real product. That’s why, most of the time, prototyping is done in a different technology than the one used for the real product. Which leads us the the next point.

5. It can be done by non-developers

When it comes to User Interfaces prototyping, the ones that know best how the UI should be are not necessarily the most technically skilled persons in the team. It’s just much easier for UX/UI designers or even project managers to simulate software in a non-programming environment for the sake of prototyping.

6. Allows more iterations in a shorter period of time

When things come together faster, it’s much more easier for everyone to meet, share ideas and iterate over. This way it will be much more improbable that requirements will significantly change during development because of lack of communication or mutual understanding.

7. It’s better for usability testing than static wireframes & mock-ups

While simple static images linked together can help, it’s far more realistic to prototype using assets that closely resemble the experience users will have when facing the real product. From simple text input boxes to drop-down menus or advanced transitions & effects, the closer you are to that experience, the accurate your test result will be.

8. What’s yours take?

There is, most certainly, a lot more to say about the advantages of prototyping. Let me know what you think about the above points and if you have something to add. I’d be so happy to learn from your experience during prototyping in early stages project development.

And remember, once your prototypes are ready, do reach out to us for your Adobe XD to WordPress, Figma to WordPress or Sketch to WordPress project.

The post 8 Reasons Why You Should Be Prototyping appeared first on Fantastech.co!.

That’s not to say we should know everything, nor that we should refuse doing work we are not sufficiently prepared for. From freelancers to big companies, we are sometime facing the need of wearing someone else’s hat. In those cases we have no other option but to simply get ourselves wet and just do it.

While the Internet is big place, stuffed with lots of information and answers, it doesn’t hurt ones knowledge base to play, from time to time, with subjects collateral to your main professional field. Besides enriching your skills, it also gets you a little bit more prepared when forced to actually use that knowledge.

And while we should always respect our more experienced colleagues and be aware of our limits, I personally find no shame in being an amateur in a particular subject.

amateur: “one who has a taste for (something),” from Fr. amateur ” lover of,” from O.Fr., from L. amatorem (nom. amator) “lover,” from amatus, pp. of amare “to love”. Meaning “dabbler” (as opposed to professional) is from 1786.

These being said, I’d like to summarize in the following some of my findings regarding UI design, listing the big items that a developer should at least be aware of when programming user interfaces.

1.  Content Layout

This is of course very important. A nice, aesthetic and well balanced content layout will assure that users will easily spot what they are looking for. A technique which was well known and used in print media for a very long time, and has got a lot of attention in the past few years is the so called grid based design. Basically, it means that you will organize the content of each screen such that it will fit nicely in a grid of equally sized vertical columns.

• Designing With Grid-Based Approach
• 960 Grid System

2. Typography

Readability is another key factor in the way users interact with your software. Understanding basic principles of typography such as font types, sizes and families will help you improve certain aspects of the user work flow. And sometimes very sensitive aspects, such as check-out or sign-in process.

• Typography is the backbone of good web design
• On Web Typography
• I Love Typography

3. Colors

While written words send a clear and explicit message, non-verbal communication can also be used successfully to help users fulfill their tasks or enjoy using the software. From establishing a certain mood to sending specific messages (warning or error messages for instance), colors are an important factor in achieving the desired result.

• Color Theory for Digital Displays: A Quick Reference (Part I and Part II)
• Techniques & Tools for Using Color In Computer Interface Design

4. Technical writing

Every bit of text used in your software user interface it’s you talking to the users. Sometimes users can guess things based on their previous experience with other software applications but, more important, the rest of the time they don’t. A self conservation instinct makes us ignore what we don’t understand. But when confusion or misunderstanding prevents us from achieving a goal or finishing a task, that will lead to pain and frustration. I have personally seen successful software applications with both very terse as well very long and explicit texts. But they both had very good reasons to do so. Decide for yourself but be very cautious on every piece of text you put in the UI. Make sure it gets read as intended on the other side of the screen.

• Technical writing and Copywriting
• Copywriting is Interface Design

5. Error handling

This may be considered a sub-item of the previous point. Nevertheless, it is so important that it can be very well taken by itself. Error messages are extremely important. One can not stress enough how much time is actually spent on a feature after that feature has been completed. From properly documenting it for the user and all the way up/down to the customer support department, a mis-implemented feature will cause lots of problems and will cost lots of money. Make sure you do everything you can to anticipate anything that could go wrong (because it will go wrong eventually) and try to take control when something bad happens.

• 10 Tips on Writing Hero-worthy Error Messages
• Error Message Guidelines

6. Forms

I guess that there are very few software applications that don’t require, at least once, some sort of input from the users. In the end, that’s why we call them user interfaces, because they represent the mean by which the computer exchanges information with a human being. This means that data flows in both ways, from the computer to the user and the other way around. Forms grew up to be a quite complex subject, too. From simple login or sign-up forms, up to very complicated forms like flight bookings or even more complex ones, UX professionals have tried to come up with the simplest and most efficient ways to improve forms design and usability.
There are several aspects that should be taken into account when designing and implementing a form, such as: label/controls positioning, input validation, double-submission prevention, invalid data submission prevention, error and warning messages, default values, hints and help messages etc.

• Web Application Form Design
• Web App Form Design a talk by Ryan Singer, designer at 37Signals
• Defensive Design for the Web: How to improve error messages, help, forms, and other crisis points

7. Keep it light and simple

As tempting as it may be to stuff everything into the main screen or on the home page, up high above the fold, well… as dangerous that is. Cluttered and bloated interfaces are as ugly and hard to use as the cluttered and bloated code that we all have to debug from time to time.
Users will have a hard time making their way though dozens of UI elements that each will ask its own right of being clicked or accessed. As a matter of fact, most of the time users will only access a very small percentage of the features initially thought to be needed. Learn what are those features and differentiate them.

And even if there are plenty of things that you need to show your users or to ask from them, you don’t need to do that in one step, do you? Take it step by step and lead users to the end of each task gracefully and gently. They will thank you for that or, at least, you will save them time and frustration.

• Progressive Disclosure

8. Understand your users

This may also be translated as: think like an user, use the application yourself daily, understand the problem your software is solving etc.
However you may put it, it’s challenging and a quite difficult thing to do. I have tried to address this aspect in a previous post. Usually there are business analysts or product managers that are supposed to do this job for the developers. In an ideal world, a nicely crafted set of requirements documents would be handed to developers and a beautiful software will result, perfectly matching client’s vision and needs. As you may very well know, this doesn’t happen. At least not always.

It’s then up to all of those involved in the software development process to do their best in making sure the delivered software will prove to be useful and will really solve people problems.

What are your thoughts?

I am not an UI designer, nor or UX professional. So what I have wrote above may very well be incomplete or wrong. I’d love to hear your opinion, thoughts or whatever you may find useful to be mentioned.

Thanks for reading this!

The post 8 Things Programmers Should Know About UI Design appeared first on Fantastech.co!.