Popular design news of the week: April 18, 2016 – April 24, 2016

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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.

Material Design Color Palette Generator

 

Man Who Allegedly Deleted his Startup with One Line of Code is a Huge Troll

 

The Cutting-Edge CSS3 Features that are Essential to Modern Web Design

 

Optical Corrections in Logo Design

 

21 Tiny Design Features that Show Apple’s Incredible Attention to Detail

 

New from Google: Goals

 

Everyone Thinks They’re a Designer…

 

Stop Feeling Dumb About Pairing Fonts

 

The Ultimate Responsive Logo Reacts to the Sound of your Voice

 

“Me-Too” Content Strategy Leads to Failure

 

Should I Use Grid or Flexbox?

 

New MacBooks with Better Specs Plus a Rose Gold Option

 

How Facebook is Slowly Eating the Rest of the Internet

 

Ship your Side Project — Even if it Sucks

 

Magic Leap: Inside the World’s Most Secretive Startup

 

11 Things They Didn’t Teach You at Design School

 

Twitter/Medium Founder: “We Put Junk Food in Front of Them and They Eat It”

 

Wait! The Web Isn’t Dead After All. Google Made Sure of it

 

This Dizzying Drone Video is the First to Use the ‘Vertigo Effect’

 

The First Roman Fonts

 

Bootstrap 4 Cheat Sheet

 

The True Story of Milton Glaser’s Best Client

 

Airbnb Rolls Out Redesigned App with Much Improved UX

 

Welcome to the Invisible Revolution

 

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 #336

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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…

No other options

 

Technical research

 

That explains it

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

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Is Conversational UX the future of the web?

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One of the biggest buzz phrases at the moment is “Conversational UX”. It refers to a user experience in which your interaction with a company, or service, is automated based on your prior behavior.

Contrary to the implication in the title, a conversational UX doesn’t have to be a literal conversation, the term refers to back and forth interaction in which both parties come to understand each other.

Most current conversational user experiences are based around small snippets of micro-copy. In a conversational user experience, you’ll never need to understand the hamburger menu, because there won’t be one, the app—web, or native—will simply adapt to your inquiries. And if device operating systems follow suit, you may not even download apps, your OS will simply determine which apps and services to use on your behalf, based on prior usage.

The economic reality is that any task that can be automated, will be automated

A conversational UX is more responsive than any existing app or site. A conversational UX can have the same interaction as a million call centers, without the need for hold music, security questions, or checking with its supervisor. A conversational UX doesn’t need onboarding and won’t suffer the same drop-off rates as apps, because it will adapt to the user’s (or programmer’s) needs. The economic reality is that any task that can be automated, will be automated.

The one weakness of a conversational UX is that we don’t trust AI. Trust is a core value of any successful user experience. Connecting on an emotional level is the ultimate tool of most design processes; one of the reasons the term “UX” has outgrown “UI” is that the former implies empathy, the latter implies mere utility. Whether it’s a luddite’s aversion to new technology, or too many ‘80s sci-fi movies, we always suspect an ulterior motive. As Ripley discovered, behind every Bishop there’s a Weyland-Yutani.

So we might allow a conversational UX to buy our weekly groceries for us, but would we let one buy our clothes? Book our vacation? Select our college major?

we like robots that can be readily identified as robots

We’re talking about conversational UX now, because the bots that power it are reaching the point of viability. No, they can’t pass the Turing Test, but they really don’t need to. In fact, the current obvious flaws in AI may be precisely what powers the bot revolution.

Conversational UX is so flawed at present, that mistaking a bot for a human is tantamount to being outwitted by a lamppost. The time is ripe for conversational UX, precisely because we can still identify it for what it is; we don’t feel deceived. As Asimov predicted, we like robots that can be readily identified as robots.

The key to conversational UX may be a transparently bot-like personality. Ironically, the most successful conversational UX may be the one that learns to act dumb.

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Coca Cola Globally Showcases Its New Design Language

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In a move that’s billed as worldwide brand unification, the Coca Cola Company announced a major redesign of its look this week. The new design language, pioneered in Mexico and soon to roll out globally throughout 2016 and 2017, will serve as a unifying rebrand.

The redesign covers classic Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, and Coke Life. At the heart of this redesign is what the company is calling the Red Disc, which will unify its different drink lines. Already associated with the Cola brand by Coke drinkers worldwide, the color red is the powerful component on which this design language is based.

The red disc is essentially a bottle cap with the name “Coca-Cola” spelled out in the familiar brand lettering—lettering based on the handwriting of the Coca-Cola company’s first bookkeeper. The plan is for this new brand asset to show up on every single Coke that you buy, regardless of the exact drink in the bottle or can.

The red disk also has a history with the company’s branding from long ago; originally, the red disc was used in Coke ads from the 1930s; then in the 1940s it was utilized as a signage system in retail locations to tell the public where to buy ‘genuine’ coke. In practical terms, the company hopes that this means newer lines such as Coke Life will gain some of the credibility that the heritage of the classic line of Coke already enjoys.

Of course, different Coke products will still retain a small sense of uniqueness by displaying their own brand colors as part of the packaging. And the red disc will adapt to the specific context in which it is being presented on packaging.

The unified brand approach is significant because over the last three decades, Coke’s approach to branding has been to design in visual distinction to enhance the difference between their drink options. Changes in consumer tastes and an awareness of healthier options means that full sugar Coke is losing ground to Diet Coke; if the trend continues, the new brand approach means that in future we’ll still think of Coke red, rather than diet grey.

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Plesk secures web app development

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Ten years ago, building a web site was a marketable skill; today, there are a myriad of site builders that can do the job, and increasingly web designers are finding themselves moving into the more advanced web application arena.

Web apps are increasingly popular, offering almost the same functionality as native apps, but with the added benefit of being cross-platform and powered by a single code-base.

However, for all the benefits of web apps, they’re not without their problems; especially when it comes to day-to-day maintenance, and more importantly, security.

WebOps and Plesk

WebOps is a general term for any server job that is part of the process of deploying and maintaining a web application—that might mean repairing a database, or securing the system.

WebOps are fundamental to the longterm success of any application, but can be prohibitively complex for web designers making the step up to web application development.

Solving the problem is Plesk, a hosting and WebOps platform that runs directly on your server. If you’ve ever been responsible for setting up shared hosting space, you’ve probably been given the choice of a couple of control panels, one of the choices was almost certainly Plesk—it’s currently deployed on more than 300,000 servers, runs more than 10,000,000 websites and handles 15,000,000 emails every single day.

Partnered with 50 of the top 100 hosting providers, if you’re using a quality service provider, then there’s a good chance Plesk is an option available to you.

What Plesk brings to the table

Once installed on your server, Plesk allows you to manage your server—even a virtual server—via a simple to use dashboard, creating a “ready-to-code” environment. You’ll find a fully featured online code editor, that allows you to navigate to files, and edit them, without ever leaving your server. There’s also one-click installs for WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla. You’ll find web app preview tools, full app isolation, and an added option for optimized VPS hosting.

Plesk even enables role-based access to your server setup so stakeholders can access the parts of the application that you want them to, without worrying about letting them loose on your proprietary code.

Plesk provides you with all the tools you need to deploy and maintain your web app, so that you can focus on developing features, refining UX, and designing your UI.

And of course, all this comes with rock solid security built in…

Plesk and security

According to research conducted by Plesk, only 1 in 10 web developers knew to properly secure their application before something went wrong, the other 90% left themselves vulnerable. Plesk combats this problem by securing websites and web apps automatically.

Server to site security is automatically in place to stop hackers, spammers, and botnets.

Take advantage of multi-factor authentication, single-sign-on, and minimum password strength. If you need or want even more security there are 3rd party authentication mechanisms such as social authentication, Google, LDAP, or Active Directory available.

Plesk secures WordPress

Plesk has recently introduced what it refers to as the WordPress Toolkit 2.0 which is a powerful WordPress management panel built into the Plesk dashboard.

Introduced to make managing WordPress installations as easy as possible, Plesk’s WordPress Toolkit 2.0 allows you to mass-manage WordPress installations, themes, and plugins; all while adding an extra layer of automated security.

In addition to WordPress management, you’ll find a whole heap of 3rd party extensions, many free, and a few premium options.

Plesk has just integrated Let’s Encrypt’s free SSL certificate as an extension, which allows you to validate, install, and renew your SSL certificates with a few clicks. What’s more, Plesk allows you to employ the latest security option, by moving all your domains to HTTP/2.

On top of this, Plesk is actively engaged with both the WordPress and Joomla communities, collaborating with them to build further extensions for Plesk, based on their own SDK, CLI, and API; and all open-sourced through Github.

The value of Plesk

Managing a server is a huge stumbling block for most web designers looking to create web apps. Plesk takes the labor out of the process, so that you can quickly and safely deploy your own web apps in no time.

Partnered with some of the biggest names in hosting, including Media Temple, 1&1, 123-reg, GoDaddy, Telefonica, and Amazon Web Services, Plesk is readily available on both Windows and Linux, providing full feature parity across operating systems.

If you’re ready to make the jump to web app development, and plan to handle your own WebOps, then you should check out Plesk.

 

 

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Plesk –]

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What does simplicity in UX design look like?

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For over a decade, designers have debated what constitutes simplicity in user experience design.

As Robert Hoekman Jr. points out in his article When It Comes to UX Design, Simplicity is Overrated, the variation in semantics is confusing. Simplicity could refer to a clean design (then there’s the disparity of what “clean” actually looks like), the complexity of the experience, or even the required coding.

These definitions can vary further between users and designers, and clients and stakeholders.

“As designers, we assume we all agree on its meaning. To us, simplicity is a high goal of design,” Hoekman Jr. writes in the aforementioned article. “‘Simple’ is a relative word, granted. It has no definitive value; the simplicity of a thing can only be measured in comparison to something more complex.”

It turns out simplicity is actually quite complicated.

Looking for a good example of simplicity in UX design? Google it

When defining simplicity by aesthetic, perhaps there is no more perfect an example than Google. When a user goes to the website, they are presented with only one input: the search bar. This search bar then auto fills possible search queries based on complicated algorithms before pulling a list of relevant search results. Compare this to Yahoo, where a user is bombarded with information and options.

To the user, both Google’s interface and the experience are simple and self-explanatory even though the backend of the application is not.

“I think simplicity ties in a lot with intuition. That notion of whether the user experience is intuitive in nature makes the end result a very simple and delightful user experience,” said Dominic Wong, the head of experience design at Invoke. “Do I know instinctively what to do? And if I if I go out and do it, is it actually aligning to my behavioral expectations of an experience?”

The simplicity of Google is perhaps part of the reason why “Google it” became a part of our lexicon. The experience is designed in such a fashion that it is easy for a user to find what they are looking for—and find it quickly.

[UX] is threatened when the simplicity of an interface design comes at the expense of usability

User experience is threatened when the simplicity of an interface design comes at the expense of usability, such as when elements are buried, buttons are not labeled clearly, or the user is unfamiliar with the navigation. Even simple design needs to be strategic and take into account the users’ customs.

“Simplicity has to tie in with how to guide someone to intuitively make decisions,” Wong said.

User experience in the age of instant gratification

When it comes to simplicity and functionality, maintaining consistency in what a user innately expects from an experience is perhaps equally as important as accounting for the fact that today’s users are also accustomed to getting what they want right away.

Like it or not, we’re deep in the age of instant gratification and this needs to be taken into consideration when designing a user experience.

“People are expecting less flashiness and a certain level of utility,” Wong said.

“I think nowadays when the visual or stylistic elements become overbearing, it actually detracts from the experience.”

While there are opportunities to create lush user experiences and interfaces, they need to be appropriate to the end goal—both that of the user and of the design. You don’t want the user interface to distract from the user experience. Rather, you want to offer the user what they came for in a prompt manner that is easy to follow and understand.

“The best way to grab attention and build interest is to present a single core idea, fully fledged,” wrote Daniel Ritzenthaler on 52 Weeks of UX. “This allows the user to make a binary decision about it: ‘Am I interested or not?’ Introducing a feature in a way that people can instantly map it to a desired outcome will help them prioritize and be confident about their next step.”

Creating simple user experiences despite complex needs

One might think then that simplicity equates to minimalism, but it is more about giving users only what they need. When you give the user just enough, simplicity can prevail, even when dealing with complex applications.

Wong spoke of a recent project involving the redesign of a dental application that required numerous complicated, but essential elements. The experience needed to be simple to use without sacrificing the complexity of the interface. The team had to design the experience so that the application contained all the necessary elements, but only showed the user what was necessary for the desired outcome at that moment.

You don’t want to include anything that will distract or require someone to put more effort into obtaining what they need to obtain—Dominic Wong

While much of simplicity’s semantics continue to be debated, Wong says in the end it’s really about this one very thing: serving users what they need, when they need it in the most straightforward way possible.

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