Adobe unveil major update to Photoshop

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Today, Adobe has released a major overhaul to its flagship product, Photoshop. The new version, CC 2015.1, comes with a number of new features and a brand new look.

It is substantially faster than the previous version, the UI is more coherent, and there are dozens of new features that focus on design and photography workflows.

Redesigned UI

The first thing you’ll notice, quite literally, is the new welcome screen. The welcome screen features a list of your latest files, sorted by list or grid; once you’ve begun working with the app you’ll see thumbnails alongside the file names. You’ll also see personalized tutorial suggestions, based on the tools and features that you use most often.

The whole UI, including the welcome screen, has been redesigned to create a flatter, more modern interface. Drop shadows have been removed, and the dialogs—which now match whatever theme you choose, light or dark—have been revised to be consistent across the whole application.

The clunky 1990s-style buttons have also been replaced by rounded ghost buttons.

The icons in the tool bar have all been revised; some, such as the Move tool’s, have been entirely redesigned, which long-term users may find a little disconcerting at first. A welcome addition to the new toolbar is the ability to customize it based on your needs and preferences.

Artboard enhancements

Adobe was very late to the party introducing artboards to Photoshop, but it’s made up ground quickly and enhancements in CC 2015.1 make Photoshop artboards one of the better implementations.

Dozens of minor tweaks, including new defaults, have been added to artboards as well as several big features.

You can now easily group artboards, making arranging complex screens far easier. Guides can now be limited to an artboard. Helpfully, the Layers panel can also be filtered by artboard, so you’re not left toggling on and off layers every time you switch boards.

Improved typography

Photoshop CC 2015.1 introduces a number of major typography improvements.

Whereas previously you could search fonts, you can now filter fonts by category, such as sans, or script. You can also favorite fonts—with a star, not a heart—and filter by those favorites.

A major feature addition is the ability to filter fonts by similarity; Photoshop will compare the outlines of available fonts and find something similar, which is a great feature when you’re looking for an alternative typeface, or even pairing typefaces.

There have been tweaks to the Glyphs panel and you can now set the x and y coordinates of text in the Properties panel.

Probably the most welcome update is the addition of 16pt in the default text size options, which has been stubbornly absent until now.

Touch screen ready

The new Photoshop CC 2015.1 includes a number of enhancements to make it compatible with touch screens.

There’s a dedicated touch-screen mode, which makes tabs larger and easier to tap. There’s also a 2-finger swipe to undo. You’ll also find a new panel that allows touch-screen users to toggle on and off the shift, alt, and ctrl keys; giving access to a full range of shortcuts that were previously only accessible via the keyboard.

Touch screen features are only available for Windows users; they’re not compatible with the Apple trackpad, and Adobe’s focus on dedicated mobile apps for iOS devices means that this is likely to be the case for the foreseeable future.

Improved workflow

Furthering the trend towards greater CC integration, Photoshop can now create a library from an existing document; you can export all assets, or select just character styles, colors, layer styles, smart objects, or any combination. You can also drag and drop directly from the Layers panel into the Library panel.

Like the other dialogs, the Export panel has been overhauled to visually match the rest of the app. In addition you can export individual artboards as distinct files, tweaking settings (such as JPG quality) individually or as groups.

Major changes to algorithms under the hood mean that the vast majority of the time, Export is now faster than Save for Web, especially for JPG and PNG. Export will also produce a higher quality at the same file size as Save for Web.

Conclusion

These improvements are unlikely to tempt designers back to Photoshop, but they’re substantial enough to stop more existing users jumping ship.

Photoshop has looked like a questionable choice for web design for a number of years, but improvements across the board mean it’s more than keeping pace with competitors, and is looking increasingly appealing as a design tool once more.

Creative Cloud subscribers can download Photoshop CC 2015.1 now.

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How to design UX for millennials

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Ah, millennials. They’re coming of age and are estimated to have annual purchasing power of more than $200 billion by 2017. That’s very significant, especially when you factor in e-commerce purchases right from the Web.

So it’s no surprise that some in the design community are also turning their attention to specifically figuring out how to design for millennials. Millennials have been raised on, and with tech, giving them a unique status compared to older generations like the Gen Xers and the Baby Boomers. Accordingly, design considerations should be unique to this generation, simply because they, like other generations, do things their own way.

Designers would do well for their clients and careers to focus on giving this demographic what they want and expect as they’re browsing a site.

Here are some vital factors to keep in mind when designing for millennial users.

Rule #1: make it mobile

Designers who want to please and attract the millennial users have to design with the mobile-first approach, as in making sure that their websites display properly and seamlessly on mobile devices. This is because stats show that more than 80% of millennials, those between the ages of 18 and 34, own a smartphone. Compare that to older demographics like 35- to 54-year-olds, where 68% own smartphones, and those 55 and up, where just 40% own a smartphone.

Since millennials spend a lot of time on mobile devices, it’s a best practice to put mobile design first to draw them in.

So what constitutes good mobile-design habits? These practices do:

• keep the core content of the desktop site and mobile site the same to avoid confusing users;
• optimize for mobile even if the core content stays the same, which includes making the user experience very tap- and swipe-friendly;
• define your grid and breakpoints appropriately for the mobile experience;
• ensure that mobile pages load quickly to keep users from leaving the site;
• limit the layers of navigation to keep users engaged with the site.

PayPal is a site that understands this well. When you compare its mobile site to the desktop version, you immediately notice that the core content is the same, the mobile site loads fast, and there are just two layers of navigation on the mobile site.

Rule #2: emphasize the user experience

It follows naturally that the user experience of your mobile site has to be top-notch if it’s going attract and then retain millennials. After all, with so many other sites out there, millennials—who are not the most patient bunch—will just go to another site if the site you built is slow, has glitches, or just makes it really hard for them to navigate.

Since millennials spend so much time on their mobile phones, you’ve got to give them a second-to-none user experience. Failure to do so means that conversions and dollars will go from your client’s pocket to another site’s owner whose designer has built a site with better UX.

The first thing that millennial users care deeply about is finding what they want quickly and easily, so simplify your site navigation! This means cutting unnecessary navigation elements from the desktop version and using a hamburger menu to save space.

Beyond this, it also means designing for unavoidable interruptions, whether due to real life or from other prompts on the millennial’s smartphone. Millennials can look at mobile sites or apps while standing in line to a concert, or be distracted by something else while on your mobile site, like when their phone rings.

To ensure that they can jump back to your site and efficiently use it, keep design minimalist and basic, giving them just what they need to accomplish tasks, whether that’s buying something or browsing news stories. By doing this, you also reduce their cognitive load, making it likelier that they’ll be able to finish what they were doing and complete a mobile page goal.

IMDB’s mobile site exemplifies this UX focus. Navigating the site on your mobile phone is very intuitive, with links to movies, actors and TVs easy to find, click on and return to after any distraction takes you away from the site. Its page layouts are also highly usable, making it likely that millennials will be able to find what they’re looking for with no hassle, wherever they are.

Rule #3: enable self-service solutions on your site

Millennials are into instant gratification because they were raised with tech, so much so that they expect customer service to be as easy as sending a tweet or clicking a call to action button. Surveys show that, in keeping with this being-in-control theme, millennials want customer service solutions to increasingly be self-service approaches.

This means no calling a number to wade through a long phone menu to eventually talk to a live person, nor does it mean live chat or sending customer service an email! It means empowering millennials to solve customer service issues on their own directly on a site, cutting out the hassle of dealing with another person.

So how can you design this self-service aspect into your clients’ sites?

Include copious resources like highly active and regularly monitored community and discussion forums as well as a page exclusively dedicated to FAQs, self-help tutorials and troubleshooting tips. Your millennial users will definitely appreciate being able to solve issues on their own much faster than having to wait around for a customer service rep to help them out.

A great example of a site that does this excellently is Zendesk. Its support page is crammed with self-service options, everything from a community forum that encourages users to ask questions, to a thorough knowledge base where the basics of using Zendesk are posted in an easy-to-read format. Millennials surely appreciate such efficiency, control and resources that are always available at their fingertips whenever they need them.

Millennials appreciate these design touches

You have to know how millennials behave on the Web to design for them effectively. This goes for your e-commerce efforts as well as just having millennials return to the same site and look at it as a trusted and enjoyable resource time and again.

It’s not difficult to understand the millennial user experience—all you have to do is look what device they use most, and it happens to be mobile. Armed with this knowledge, your design focus should be on mobile first for the millennial generation. At any rate, designing with mobile as a priority is a best practice of web design these days as more people in general shop, read, and do research on mobile!

So to snag your clients a piece of that whopping $200 billion pie of millennial spending power, it’s in your best interest as a designer to adopt these rules on your next design project.

 

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Popular design news of the week: November 23, 2015 – November 29, 2015

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Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers. 

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that were posted, so don’t miss out and subscribe to our newsletter and follow the site daily for all the news.

4 Layout Trends on Dribbble

Must-Know Techniques for HTML5 Responsive Design

7 Common Mistakes Made with Responsive Mockups

The Cost of Frameworks

Why is it so Hard to Find a Front End Developer?

The Future of Responsive Design Standards

Web Design Trends 2015 & 2016: Fearless Colors

10 Things I Learned About UX by Being Drunk

The Story Behind the New WordPress.com

Photos of Darth Vader’s Rather Ordinary Daily Life

Google’s Star Wars – Rebrand Google with the Light, or Dark Side

Responsive Times Two: Essential New Books from Ethan Marcotte & Karen McGrane

I Am Done with Bad Meetings

Instantsearch.js: JavaScript Library for Building Great Search Experiences

6 Designers’ Bad Habits – And How to Avoid Them

Digital Style Guide: Tool for Lean Design Process

The Origins of Flat Design

Don’t do That, do This.

3 Ingredients for a Successful UX Strategy

Raspberry Pi Zero – The $5 Computer

The Unsplash Book – Crowdsourced Book Featuring Photos, Essays, and Art

Fallout 4’s UI is Truly Terrible

If the Internet is Addictive, Why We Don’t Regulate It?

These Gorgeous Sunrises and Sunsets are Made from Slices of Time

The Museum of the World

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

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Comics of the week #315

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Every week we feature a set of comics created exclusively for WDD.

The content revolves around web design, blogging and funny situations that we encounter in our daily lives as designers.

These great cartoons are created by Jerry King, an award-winning cartoonist who’s one of the most published, prolific and versatile cartoonists in the world today.

So for a few moments, take a break from your daily routine, have a laugh and enjoy these funny cartoons.

Feel free to leave your comments and suggestions below as well as any related stories of your own…

Build your world power

Always thinking about the job

 

That’s a relief

Can you relate to these situations? Please share your funny stories and comments below…

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How we redesigned Youthletic.com

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A consistent trait among digital products that have withstood the test of time is adaptation. Adapting to new technologies. Adapting to new devices. And adapting to users (essentially user experience research and analysis).

Youthletic began as a repository of youth organization data, targeting both parents and organizations. For parents, the site was intended to be a one-stop-shop to search and register their children for youth organizations. For organizations, the site was supposed to be an easy place for coaches and group leaders to gather registrations, payments and information about the children (ie. allergies). Initially as an afterthought, the site added a collection of articles pertaining to youth sports and relevant topics.

With the initial plan came several challenges:

1. The project depended on youth sport organization commitment and this proved to be more difficult than planned. Most youth sport organizations are run by non-profits and volunteers so communication and developing relationships is challenging.
2. Organization data is fragmented — gathering and maintaining data is a tedious and time consuming process.
3. There were legal hurdles when accepting payments and gathering information about children. Many hurdles would take serious time and financial investment.
4. The project depended on several third parties add-ons and services, such as payment processing. Many of these third parties proved to be buggy and problematic.

The site needed change to further justify its existence. Maintaining a local focus would continue to be a priority but widening YL’s reach to a national level through content would be an emphasis moving forward. So here’s where we focused our efforts:

1. A parallel approach towards content

With organization search and registration not gaining as much traction as initially expected, more youth sports articles were published to keep the site active. They say “content is king” and this proved to be evident on Youthletic, as proven by the direct correlation between number of articles published and site traffic.

To cement the change further was the fact that YL’s parent company is a media company at its core so the move to a content focus made even more sense.

2. Becoming agile

Initially, there was a group of four creating the entire project:  a business owner, a project manager, a UX/UI designer, and a back end developer. The separation of duties was strictly defined and the project followed a waterfall methodology. This proved to be problematic as the project was meant to be brought to life quickly.

Waterfall methodology is ideal for some companies and products, but the issue with a waterfall process is that the project requires the fulfilment of one phase, before proceeding to the next.

Switching to an agile methodology encouraged collaboration among team members and allowed for the product to evolve quicker.

3. Designing a better user experience

There were four principles that we wanted to make sure to get correct when designing a better user experience:

Thinking mobile-first 

We knew that a majority of site users were accessing the site on mobile devices (roughly 65%). Mobile usage continues to grow so the design needed to be consistent and beautiful across devices. To accomplish this, we used site-wide, mobile-friendly navigation (a slide-in from the side).

Developing a light site

If users want content, we need to give it to them and do so quickly. Speed matters. Page abandonment goes up dramatically for every second a page takes to load.

To avoid abandonment we implemented a content feed that makes ajax calls to load content at vertical scroll distances. This decreased page load time dramatically (in our case by 400%) and helped drop the site’s bounce rate by 30%.

Making sharing prominent

A social media analysis showed that parents loved sharing Youthletic articles. On the previous design, sharing was enabled but it was only accessible on one area of the story page.

But sharing is caring. With article pages in the new design, parents could share from 3 separate places, and sharing capabilities were omni-present. Chartbeat data suggests that users will share content without reading it, so the new design also allowed users to share without going into an article.

Giving users other means of navigation besides the top nav bar

Through Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, we knew that users were not using the top navigation very often, thus shortening site visit length and increasing bounce rate. To counter this, we added author, sport and category tagging for easier access to information users may be interested in. Not only did this provide additional means for users to travel around the site, it more neatly organized our content in the CMS and made it easier to give users related content.

Tag activity has been used more and more since its implementation and we expect that trend to continue as users become more familiar with the new design.

4. Altering the definition of “success”

Looking at expectations from a higher level, the site’s initial goals were flawed. They were driven by registrations and other bullshit metrics — page views, page visits, pages per visit, etc.

We wanted to measure quality over quantity.

Planning for the future and laying a groundwork for the rest of the Scripps organization (YL’s parent company), we knew that companies buying advertising would soon catch on to the fact that site metrics were often misleading and didn’t measure quality. Modeled after Medium’s Total Time Reading metric we began gathering user data like scroll distance on article pages and visit depth. As we gathered information we were able to establish realistic, relative goals while learning about users’ experiences.

Moving forward 

As a result of the redesign, total sessions are up by 98.54%, the average session duration has increased by 20%, and mobile usage is up by 217%; at the same time, the average page load time is down by 6%, and the bounce rate is down by 17%.

New challenges arise everyday as we continue to build the product out. Local youth sports will continue to be a huge focus and area of opportunity but content will also be a driving force. The roadmap includes new feature implementation, a mobile application and continued growth towards creating a quality user experience, so there may be updates as we go on.

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