Expectations are Changing; UI Designers and UX Designers Take Note
In recent years, the massive shift towards web apps and mobile apps have completely changed user expectations around how software should look and work.
When most folks are using the computer, they’re on the web (and increasingly not in a Windows app, except, of course, for the web browser that they’re using to access the web) and at these web sites:
[cols]
[col class="1/4"]
Google
Facebook
YouTube
[/col]
[col class="1/4"]
Yahoo
eBay
Amazon
[/col]
[col class="1/4"]
MSN
Pinterest
Hotmail
[/col]
[col class="1/4 last"]
Bing
Wikipedia
Twitter
[/col]
[/cols]
And, these same folks have a smartphone and are using these apps:
Users are expecting apps to be simpler, dynamic, “active” or “alive,” personalized, and responsive:
- “3 days ago”; relative date/time formatting
- Content first; labels and other items demoted
- Mixed Case vs. all UPPERCASE; natural and easier to read
- Hierarchy represented with whitespace and lines vs. rectangles within rectangles
- Minimal horizontal scrolling
- Modal; focus on one thing at a time
- Beautiful and actionable dashboards
- Progressive disclosure (show stuff as-needed)
What does this mean for the user experience design of your enterprise applications?
WinDirStat - See treemap of your file system, easily find big files
WinDirStat is still a really great tool, even after all these years. Very useful!
I don't know of any other way of quickly and intuitively finding out what's taking up my disk space. Perfect use of the treemap visualization.
Use These Mockups: Lots of Design Patterns in Balsamiq Mockups (BMML) format
For those of you that use Balsamiq Mockups, here are a bunch of templates I created that you might find handy.
Download them all in one ZIP file (90KB).
I find myself re-using many of these elements when I design applications (especially the boring/tedious/must-have features, like Forgot Password, Sign In, 404 page). Enjoy!
The following mockups are included in the ZIP file:
Home Pages
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| Home Page, Members Only Mockup |
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| Home Page, Downloadable Product Mockup |
Feature Tour
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| Feature Tour Mockup |
Pricing, Upgrade, Downgrade
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| Pricing Page Mockup |
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| Upgrade & Downgrade Mockup |
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| Upgrade "Thank You" E-mail Mockup |
Read-Only List of Items
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| Read Only List of Items Mockup |
Editable List of Items
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| Editable List of Items Mockup |
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| Add Item Mockup |
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| Edit Item and Delete Item Mockup |
Invite Friends
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| Invite Friends Mockup |
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| Invite Friends Via E-mail Mockup (Popup) |
Settings / My Account Page
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| Settings / My Account Page Mockup |
Sign In
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| Sign In Page Mockup |
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| Sign In Popup Mockup |
Forgot Password Process
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| Forgot Password Page Mockup |
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| Password Reset Email Mockup |
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| Reset Password Page Mockup |
Miscellaneous
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| 404 Page Mockup |
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| Log / History Page Mockup |
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| Downloading Page Mockup |
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| Windows System Tray Mockup |
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| Windows Tour Mockup |