Realistic or Flat Design? Be Style Agnostic

via UXmatters http://ift.tt/1lMoLLD

By Kent Eisenhuth

Published: June 23, 2014

“When creating a new visual design for a software user interface, don’t just adopt the popular style of the year. Instead, get to know your audience by conducting user research, then deliver a design that’s appropriate for that audience.”

When creating a new visual design for a software user interface, don’t just adopt the popular style of the year. Instead, get to know your audience by conducting user research, then deliver a design that’s appropriate for that audience. In this article, I’ll offer some process tips that will help you to make your next visual design project a success.

That Is So 2014!

For the past 18 months, there has been a lot of discussion around design styles. Realism versus flat design has been the biggest point of debate. I follow many designers on Dribbble, a popular design-sharing site. If you peruse the user-interface mockups that appear on Dribbble—for example, those shown in Figure 1—you’ll notice that they all look very similar. Nothing really stands out. What is the common thread? It’s clear that flat design is the current flavor of choice. But will this still be the trend in three years? I doubt it.

Figure 1—Search results for Interface on Dribbble, Spring 2014

Interestingly, about three years ago, realism—in the form of skeuomorphic design—was everywhere. At that time, the now-hated, realistic leather stitching, wood grains, and metallic textures of skeuomorphic design made their appearance in nearly every mockup on this site.

But regardless of the time period, clients typically use the same words to describe what they’re looking for in a user interface: modern, clean, and sexy. I usually find myself asking what they really mean.

Clients often delay updating the visual designs for their software user interfaces. Therefore, as a visual designer, you face a challenge. How can you create design styles that people will perceive as being modern, yet will remain timeless? How can you avoid following trends and, instead, deliver something amazing?

It is imperative that you approach a project with a style-agnostic viewpoint. Here are some ways in which you can leverage user research and client collaboration to help drive your visual design decisions.

Do Some User Research and Experience the Culture

“It’s always important to get to know your audience and their needs. Unfortunately, this part of the UX design process all too often gets left out, especially in the agency world.”

It’s always important to get to know your audience and their needs. Unfortunately, this part of the UX design process all too often gets left out, especially in the agency world. Formal, requirements-gathering visits with users provide information about their context of use and enable you to better understand your users and their needs.

For example, you can observe the environmental factors surrounding potential users. This will help you to decide how much visual contrast should exist in a layout. You may also take note of users’ font settings in their email client or Web browser. Such observations can provide insights into how you should treat font sizes and typography. It’s also important to note other applications running on a user’s screen, then to try to design a more holistic work experience that’s not limited to just the confines of the application you’re designing. These are just a few examples of things that impact your design decisions when you’re not merely trying to follow a predefined style.

An appropriate visual design language is the key to a successful project. While spending time with your users, you must try to soak up their culture as much as possible. Listen to the words and phrases that they use. Really get to know their culture. If you’re on site, take a look at the physical space in which they work and the way it’s designed. Observe the styles of clothing that people are wearing. Consider their geographic location. Letting all of this flavor your design style will definitely increase users’ satisfaction.

I recently designed an infographic for a group of users who wanted something modern. This group was located in a rural Philadelphia suburb. I noticed that they dressed in retro styles. After asking them to show me some examples of modern design, I decided to put a mid-century modern twist on the style of the infographic.

In another example, I worked on a project where most of the users commuted by train to their office. Consequently, I borrowed some visual design cues from a subway diagram when creating a workflow map. This enabled me to make the complex content more relatable for this group. I wasn’t trying to use trendy styles in either of these examples—and both projects were huge successes.

Navigating the Designer / Stakeholder / User Love Triangle

“Client stakeholders are notusers. In today’s world, users influence our interaction design decisions, but visual design typically gets left to the client stakeholders’ preferences. But, just as with interaction design, the designer should represent the user throughout the visual design process.”

Client stakeholders are not users. In today’s world, users influence our interaction design decisions, but visual design typically gets left to the client stakeholders’ preferences. But, just as with interaction design, the designer should represent the user throughout the visual design process. 

Nevertheless, a client’s brand and style preferences must come through in your design. It’s important to work closely with stakeholders and let them participate in your design process and help set the design direction to ensure that their brand is well represented. However, throughout your collaboration with stakeholders, you must highlight stylistic decisions that you’ve based on users’ needs. You must always map the details of your design back to your user research. This will help client stakeholders to understand why particular parts of your design should look and feel a certain way.

Co-design

Our visual design instincts tell us that we must impress client stakeholders right from the start. A good visual designer lets these stakeholders participate actively in the design process from start to finish. Design workshops are a great way to get to get the ball rolling. For example, if stakeholders ask you for a modern design, you must understand whatmodern means to them.

In a workshop setting, show your stakeholders a set of popular examples of modern design. It’s important to have an in-depth conversation about each of these images. You must gain an understanding of what the stakeholder likes and dislikes about each of the examples. Stakeholders’ interpretation of modern design could differ drastically from what you had in mind. These conversations can mitigate potential communication issues with stakeholders.

Try Many Different Design Directions

“Combine what you’ve learned during the co-design workshop with all of the knowledge about users that you’ve gathered in the field to create a set of various design directions.”

Combine what you’ve learned during the co-design workshop with all of the knowledge about users that you’ve gathered in the field to create a set of various design directions. These samples should include a collage of common screen elements, not full-screen designs. A good visual designer shows versatility in these options. Perhaps one design direction is flat, while another includes some dimensionality and extra embellishments. It’s important to understand what the users and the stakeholders like and dislike about each sample. It is also important to understand the tradeoffs between them.

Figure 2—Sample visual design concepts

Since these samples should require minimal effort, this is the time to explore a blue-sky concept—assuming you’ve already mocked up a few safe samples. You don’t have to spend a lot of time on this, but it affords you the opportunity to show the client your design concept. You must map all design decisions back to either the initial research or findings from the design workshop—including design iterations from the workshop.

At Last, A Full Design That Works!

“Because you’ve done some user research and collaborated with stakeholders throughout the design process, chances are that the outcome will be a success.”

Because you’ve done some user research and collaborated with stakeholders throughout the design process, chances are that the outcome will be a success. And, once you’ve followed the steps that I’ve described in this article, the design of a full screen should require less work.

In the end, the aesthetic of your design may be flat, or it may have some touches of realism, or the aesthetic may be something completely different. The key thing is that you’ve designed something that your client likes, and you didn’t merely follow today’s popular style trend. Oh, and by the way, upload your design solution to Dribbble. It will probably stand out in the crowd.

- See more at: http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2014/06/realistic-or-flat-design-be-style-agnostic.php#sthash.GK82y9wm.dpuf

4 Ways to Improve Your Web Content Strategy for Better Results

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/12/improve-web-content-strategy-results/

By MIKE MURRAY published DECEMBER 19, 2013

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Online marketers have many options as they create and refine their web content strategy.

Content Marketing Institute’s many contributors have offered a diverse range of ideas, tools, and guiding principles on how best to handle web content, including tips on how to achieve better conversions.

Here are some of the best practices that they’ve shared:

1. Use templates to save time and effort

For your web content strategy, you can save time and stay organized by taking advantage of a suite of invaluable templates.

You’ll find everything from a content mapping template to a social media conversation calendar in Michele Linn’s post, 10 Must-Have Templates for Content Marketers. In addition, the post references additional tools recommended by CMI contributors, including a content questionnaire and a template to track keywords.

2. Manage the process by breaking it into steps

Managing a web content strategy requires a wide range of skills and processes, not to mention considerable ongoing efforts. But it’s easier to stay on task if you start by defining goals and following some effective, established best practices. In Ben Finklea’s post, An Overview of the Web Content Strategy Process and Deliverables, he suggests five steps for streamlining the process, providing relevant deliverables and advice for each:

• Phase 1: Research Overview
• Phase II: Analysis Overview
• Phase III: Strategy and Design
• Phase IV: Content Creation and Testing
• Phase V: Maintenance

For example, Ben recommends existing content and competitive analysis reports. He also believes a readiness report is worthwhile. He describes it this way:

The readiness analysis is an optional spreadsheet for a smaller project, but it is a necessity for larger ones. This document evaluates the readiness of a content strategist, a team or a company for conducting the project successfully. This document should look at the three Rs: resource readiness, process readiness, and technology readiness.

3. Try a creative approach

The web content you produce can be presented in many different formats. For example, Virpi Oinonen outlines comic-style visual content in her CMI post, When Your Web Content Strategy Can Benefit From Comics: 5 Factors.

Virpi notes that businesses need to decide whether a non-traditional or humorous approach makes sense for their web content strategy. Marketers should ask questions like, “Will a comic resonate with your audience?” and “What style will best represent your business?”

As with movies, comics don’t reflect a particular genre, she writes. “Humor tends to increase shareability online, but depending on the message and the audience, you might want to consider a more serious tone.”

With your web content strategy, you need to be mindful of how far you push out the content because of a number of opportunities throughout the web, including social channels.

4. Avoid overextending your reach

Aaron Dun acknowledges the pressure to extend the reach of your business in his CMI post,The New Content Life Cycle: 4 Steps to a More Strategic Approach to Web Content.

Aaron asserts that in the current culture of “share everywhere,” it’s essential that companies start to take a more holistic approach when deciding what, when, where, and how to connect with various stakeholders across the social web. He outlines four key content imperatives:

1. Create a holistic system that allows you to communicate with stakeholders across a number of social channels, drive conversation, and influence customers.
2. Engage with more customers through a wider online presence by allowing more people to contribute content throughout your organization. Be sure to remove any technology or process roadblocks that inhibit the expansion of your contributor pool.
3. Don’t view your corporate sites as “the central point of engagement.” Instead, look to the edge of your network while delivering fresh, compelling and timely content that engages users and keeps visitors returning to your site.
4. Listen to your target audience members and their online conversations. Build your web content strategy based on the insights that you gain. To complete the cycle, constantly test new ideas, and dump what doesn’t work while further optimizing what is working.

If you’d like to hear some additional voices chime in on this topic, check out some of these articles:

• Stakeholder Interviews: Engage the Octopus
• The Content Strategy Knowledge Gap
• Kristina Halvorson on Content Strategy for the Web
• How to Create a Great Content Strategy for an Established Website

How do you effectively manage your website strategy? Please share what’s been working for you.

For more great tips to help you get more value from your web content strategy, read “Epic Content Marketing,” by Joe Pulizzi. 

Cover image via Bigstock

12 Insights for Visual Content Success with Infographics

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/11/insights-visual-content-infographics/

By JASON MILLER published NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Some marketing skeptics claim that infographics are dead. I disagree. I think bad infographics are dead, and always have been. Well-designed and executed infographics, on the other hand, are not just alive — they are a thriving and essential part of any integrated content marketing strategy.

With all the competition for consumer attention on the web, it takes more than just creative wording to rivet eyeballs. An infographic is a compelling way to use visual content to tell a rich story at a glance.

Here are some of the reasons why infographics are the perfect way to capture consumer attention:

• Visual content is at an all-time high: Social media sites that focus exclusively on images are swiftly gaining in popularity. In February, TechCrunch reported that the percentage of online adults using Pinterest (15 percent) had almost caught upto the percentage using Twitter (16 percent). Facebook recognized that Instagram was going places when they purchased the photo-focused app for $1 billion in 2012. Today, Instagram has 150 million monthly active users. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn all get the power of the picture and have added better image-sharing functionality to their platforms over the past few years.
• They put the “I” in image: Of course, words are still the best way to communicate many types of information, but according to a 2011 study by Skyword, the total views of a piece of written content increase by 94 percent when visual content, such as an image or infographic, is embedded.
• Competition improves quality: The number of infographic vendors continues to grow, prompting lists of the best infographic design companies, such as this onejust published by Visibility Magazine.
• Big data is big: We have more access to data than ever before, and data is the very core of infographics.

Indeed, the competition to create an infographic that’s viral-worthy is fierce, so you need a solid plan.

5 steps to creating killer infographics:

1. Come up with a concept to tell a timely story
2. Find or capture striking, reliable data to back it up
3. Design a visually winning infographic
4. Set clear marketing goals
5. Follow through on these goals with a marketing plan

That last step is one that harried marketers often treat as an afterthought or even skip, but without it, the other steps are pointless.

My experience (working at Marketo and LinkedIn) has shown me that a company’s blog is the best permanent residence for an infographic, and that it’s a smart practice to offer an embed code for readers to easily grab so they can share the image elsewhere. Great infographics have wanderlust — they beg to travel and be consumed; that’s why you can find them all over the web. So, the more seductive your infographic — and the more desirous companies, organizations, and individuals are to repost your infographic on their blogs and social media — the greater the chance of spreading your infographic and brand message quickly.

Why go through all this trouble for one piece of marketing content? The answer is four-fold:

4 benefits of a successful infographic

1. It attracts attention: An infographic is a visual interpretation of your brand message; a rich combination of words, data, and pictures in a fun format that can be easily shared.
2. It has viral potential: A viral piece of content is valuable — almost sacred to a brand. It’s the Holy Grail of content from which consumers drink heavily. If you can get your infographic to go viral, you’ve won.
3. It is fuel for your social and demand-gen programs: An infographic is easy to share on any medium, so it’s great content for social media sites, email marketing campaigns, and even in an eBook or on a printed brochure. It can be multi-purposed to the hilt.
4. It attracts SEO linkbacks: If influential people or companies link to your infographic from their websites and blogs, you get more than just a bigger audience — you also earn higher search engine rankings. Search engines consider an incoming link to your site from another reputable site proof positive that you are a bona fide content source.

3 secret channels to showcase your infographic

Beyond your usual marketing channels, there are a few strategic places you can place your infographic that many companies don’t seem to take advantage of, which is inexplicable to me, since these channels are cheap-to-free and take very little effort. Here are my top three essential channels to utilize:

1. SlideShare: This presentation-sharing technology has been around for a while and is available to LinkedIn members to showcase their work visually within their profiles. A lot of LinkedIn members use SlideShare to display portfolios, for example. SlideShare recently upgraded its technology to host, display, and share infographics right from a company’s profile page. Displaying your infographic on LinkedIn gives you insight into analytics and lead gen right from that page.
2. Infographic directories: There are plenty of online directories that allow you to display and then track traffic from your infographic back to your website or other call-to-action destinations. Search for your favorite using SearchRank’s Quick List of Infographic Directories.
3. Press releases: The days of hiring a publicist to issue a press release are long gone. Now, you can easily submit your release to online distribution services, such as PRWeb. Because many companies still distribute dry, text-only press releases, if your release includes creative and informative visual content front and center, news outlets are more likely to notice it and include it in their stories.

Infographics, when properly designed and executed, are popular marketing tools because they work. But they’re not necessarily for every company, and aren’t guaranteed to go viral, which is why a small faction of critics claim they aren’t valuable marketing content. In my experience, whether an infographic is a huge hit or not, it’s always a sound investment in your content marketing.

For more ideas on using visual content, such as infographics and images, to make your content stand apart from the competition, check out Joe Pulizzi’s book, “Epic Content.”

5 Tactics for Content Creators to Increase Content Consumption

via Content Marketing Institute http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/2013/11/tactics-content-creators-increase-consumption/

By HEIDI COHEN published NOVEMBER 18, 2013

As a content creator, you can produce the best content in the world, but if it doesn’t break through the clutter and motivate your target audience to want to read it, it holds little value, no matter how well written it was, or how much time and effort you spent on developing, optimizing and distributing it!

Think of your content as a gift you give your readers. Content creators need to include intriguing packaging to entice readers and make sure they will want to “open” it.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point:

For a school holiday gift grab bag, one of my classmates brought in a huge box wrapped in shiny gold paper. The box seemed too big to be worth the small spending limit we were given, so we were all hoping to grab it as our gift. Naturally, the first student to pick chose the box, and inside he found a series of wrapped boxes, each containing a coin. Together, the coins added up to the amount of money we were allowed to spend — thus delivering on the expectation, but in a more enticing way. The box looked like it held something of high value, making it the most desirable choice for potential “users.”

If you would like to deliver your content value in a similarly desirable way, here are five actionable content marketing tips for maximizing content consumption that the experts don’t talk about.

1. Hook readers in with a great headline

Take it from one of the original “Mad Men,” David Ogilvy: Only one out of five readers gets beyond the headline. Therefore, take the time to ensure that your headlines pack a maximum punch. I advise content creators to start with these tips:

1. Spend time at your local magazine stand: Dead tree (i.e., print) magazines perform based on the power of their headlines. Study what makes them tick, particularly high-circulation publications, like Cosmopolitan.
2. Read Jon Morrow’s 52 Headline Hacks: Jon has cracked the code on headlines and shares his knowledge for free. (BTW, you can check out his Problogger article to understand how he does it.)
3. Give your headlines one last tweak before content goes live: While it can be useful to have a working headline to start off your writing process, it’s a good idea to go back and take a second look at it at the end of your process to make sure it’s the best it can be.

2. Include eye candy

Humans are visual beings — it’s one of the traits that has kept our species going. Thus, it should come as no surprise that 90 percent of the information we take in is visual, and that we process images 60,000 times faster than text. Even more important for global audiences is that visual content often spans multiple languages, where text-based content may not.

Some considerations here:

1. Add at least one image to your content: Use a picture related to your topic near the top of your text. Think of it as an advertisement for your content.
2. Incorporate photography: To make your images more memorable, select one that includes a person, since people are programmed to look at pictures of other humans.
3. Consider adding visuals other than just images: Instead of writing a bunch of text, content creators should think about producing a video, designing an infographic, or developing a presentation to convey their desired messages.

3. Format your content for optimal reader appeal 

Avoid “THDR” (“too hard, didn’t read”) or no one will consume your content, no matter how good or relevant it is. Make your content quick and easy to consume and absorb by following these tips:

1. “Chunk” the information you present: Use short paragraphs that don’t look intimidating, and use outlining or highlighting to facilitate easier reading.
2. Add bolding to guide readers through your content: Presenting hunks of seemingly endless text turns readers away, but bold text helps guide the eye and break up long content passages into more digestible bites.
3. Use easy-to-read fonts: While you may think typefaces with curlicues and script add a touch of fun to your content, these enhancements may not be legible for the average reader — particularly if they are viewing your content on a tablet or smartphone screen. Use “fancy” fonts sparingly, if at all.
4. Avoid microscopic type: Too-small type practically screams that you don’t want people to actually be able to read your content. Take pity on your readers, many of whom might need reading glasses (i.e., are over the age of 40), and use at least a size 11-point type in your content.
5. Check for color contrast: Ensure that there’s sufficient contrast between your text and the background it appears against. Also skip neon colors, like acid yellow, which can distort the text.

4. Optimize content for search

 Make sure your content is findable on search engines, by following these suggestions:

1. Focus each piece of content around one keyword phrase: The more focused you are, the better.
2. Incorporate relevant links: Provide links to the original source of information. Specifically, add links to reputable third parties, as well as to other pieces of content you have created for your business.
3. Add text to non-text content: Understand that search engines can only read text, so make sure you add meta-data to your images, videos, and other image-based content, so that search engines can index them.
4. Use Google+ authorship: This helps protect your content, and make sure it is associated with you and your business.

5. Encourage social engagement

Maximize social interaction by removing obstacles and fears that hinder sharing. Often this relates to writing text. Bear in mind that your readers have a “Don’t make me think!” attitude, so make sure each share takes as little effort on their part as possible:

1. Add social sharing icons at the top and bottom of your content:  Alternatively, consider using a persistent sharing option. In either case, make sure that it’s easy for visitors to share your content.
2. Incorporate other forms of sharing in the body of your content: Use tools such as ClickToTweet to enable sharing without the need for readers to think about how they can do so.
3. Encourage comments by asking a question at the end of your content: Post a comment policy to provide guidelines for commenters. And to ensure valid comments don’t get lost, employ a commenting tool. While this helps minimize comment spam, don’t forget that you will still need to monitor your content forums to clear out any inappropriate comments that may have slipped through the filters.
4. Respond to the comments you receive: Reply to people who take the time to comment on your content. It is just good manners, and it increases the social proof. Further, ask guest authors to monitor their posts and add responses for at least two days after you have posted their content on your blog or other outlets.

Packaging your content well will maximize your content consumption. To further improve your results, test out which of these five tactics work best for your target audience. Remember it’s not a matter of getting the largest number of readers but, rather, attracting the readers who represent the greatest potential for you to meet your content marketing objectives.

What tips have you found to be the most effective for improving content consumption and why did they work best? Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section.

UIEtips: Designing for Breakpoints

via UIE Brain Sparks http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2013/12/04/uietips-designing-for-breakpoints/

BY STEPHEN HAY

Originally published: Dec 04, 2013

Article originally published at A List Apart on June 04, 2013.

Jeremy Keith notes that what happens between the breakpoints is just as important as the breakpoints themselves—perhaps even more so. While I agree with this, we do have to start somewhere. In a way, this part of the process reminds me of storyboarding, or creating animation keyframes, with the in-between frames being developed later. We’re going to do that here.

Let’s say you’ve chosen three basic design directions from your thumbnails. Think about what yourmajor breakpoints will look like (Figure 7.6). And here’s the key: try to come up with as few major breakpoints as possible. That might sound crazy, since we’re talking about responsive design. After all, we have media queries, so let’s use about 12 of them, right? No! If a linear layout works for every screen and is appropriate for your particular concept, then there’s no need for different layouts. In that case, simply describe what will happen when the screen gets larger. Will everything generally stay the same, with changes only to font size, line height and margins? If so, sketch those. For these variations, make thumbnails first, explore some options, and then move on to larger, more detailed sketches. Use your breakpoint graph as a guide at first and make sketches according to the breakpoints you’ve estimated on your graph.

When thinking about major breakpoints, remember to think about device classes. If you’re thinking about smartphones, tablets, laptops/desktops, TVs, and game consoles, for example, you’re heading in the right direction. If you’re thinking in terms of brand names and specific operating systems, you’re on the wrong track. The idea is to think in terms of general device classifications and, sometimes, device capabilities. Capabilities are more important when designing web applications, since you should be thinking about what screens will look like both with and without any particular capability.

Rough sketches of major breakpoints can help you determine:

• Whether or not more major breakpoints are needed
• Which design choice will be the most labor intensive; you might opt for a design that will better fit within time and budget constraints
• Whether or not a particular device class has been neglected or needs further consideration
• What technologies you’ll need to develop the design responsively

Figure 7.6: Most websites need very few major breakpoints.

So where and when will you sketch minor breakpoints? In the browser, when you do your web-based mockup. You’ll find out why and how in the next chapter. In the meantime, simply focus on making sketches of the state of your web pages or app screens at the major breakpoints of each design.

At this point, don’t worry too much if you notice that the initial breakpoints on your breakpoint graph simply won’t do. Those were just a starting point, and you’re free to revise your estimate based on your sketches. You might even decide that you need an extra breakpoint for a given design and record that in sketch form; you can add that breakpoint to your graph. This is a cycle of discovery, learning, and revision.

Think about your content while sketching

While sketching, you’ll certainly be thinking about the way things should look. My experience is that much UI sketching of this type revolves around the layout of elements on the screen. I’ve found it useful to keep thinking about the content while sketching, and to consider what will happen to the content in various situations. When designing responsively, it can be useful to consider how you’ll handle the following content in particular:

• Text
• Navigation
• Tables

Oh, sure, there are many more things to consider, and you’ll end up creating your own list of “things to do some extra thinking about” as the project progresses. For now, let’s take a look at the items listed above.

TEXT

Before you say, “Hey, wait a minute, didn’t you just tell me that I didn’t have to draw text while sketching?” hear me out. While sketching, there are a couple of text-related issues you’ll need to tackle: column width and text size, both of which are relevant in proportion to the screen and the other elements on the page.

Column width is fairly obvious, but it can be difficult to estimate how wide a column will be withactual text. In this case, sketching on a device might give you a better idea of the actual space you have to work with. Another method I’ve used is just to make a simple HTML page that contains only text, and load that into a device’s browser (or even an emulator, which while not optimal still gives a more realistic impression than lines on paper). When the text seems too large or too small, you can adjust the font size accordingly. Once it seems right, you’ll be able to make your sketches a bit more realistic.

Think about the size of links—not only the text size, but also the amount of space around them. Both of these factors play a role in the touchability or clickability of links (and buttons): large links and buttons are easier targets, but slightly smaller links with plenty of space around them can work just as well. That said, there’s a decent chance that no matter what you choose to sketch, you’ll end up making changes again when you create your mockups.

This is the great thing about sketching that I can’t repeat often enough: you’re going to refine your design in the browser anyway, so the speed with which you can try things out when sketching means you won’t have to do detail work more than once (unless your client has changes, but we all know that never happens).

NAVIGATION

Navigation is another poster child for sketching on actual devices. The size issues are the same as with links, but there’s a lot more thinking to do in terms of the design of navigation for various devices, which means navigation might change significantly at each major breakpoint.

Think back to Bryan Rieger’s practice of designing in text first, and ponder what you would do beforethe very first breakpoint if you had only plain HTML and CSS at your disposal—in other words, if you had no JavaScript. That means no, you can’t have your menu collapsed at the top of the screen and have it drop down when someone touches it. If you have your menu at the top, it’s in its expanded form and takes up all the vertical space it normally would.

This is a controversial enough subject, with even accessibility gurus in disagreement: JavaScript, after all, is currently considered an “accessibility supported” technology. But this isn’t necessarily about accessibility. It’s about thinking about what happens when a browser lacks JavaScript support, or if the JavaScript available on the device is different than what you’d expect. Your content will be presented in a certain way before JavaScript does its thing with it, no matter what the browser. So why not think about what that initial state will be?

In the chapter on wireframes, I talked about my preferred pattern for navigation on the smallest screens: keep it near the bottom of the screen and place a link to that navigation near the top of the screen. JavaScript, when available and working as expected, can move that navigation up to the top and create the drop-down menu on the fly.

But a pattern is not design law, so how you choose to handle the smallest screens will depend on your project. If I had only a few links in my navigation, I might very well put the menu at the top from the very start, and there it would stay at every breakpoint.

Remember that JavaScript and CSS let you do a lot of rearranging of stuff on the screen. That knowledge should empower you to safely design a great page with plain HTML and use JavaScript and CSS to spice it up any way you like. This is the essence of progressive enhancement.

TABLES

Tables! Oh, the bane of the responsive designer (or wait, is that images? Or video? Or layout? Ahem). Tables are tough to deal with on small screens. I’d love to tell you I have all the answers, but instead I have more questions. Hopefully, these will lead you to a solution. It’s good to think about these while you’re sketching.

First of all, what types of tables will you be dealing with? Narrow? Wide? Numerical? Textual? Your content inventory should give you enough information to answer these simple questions. Once you’ve considered those, try to categorize the types of tables you have into something like the following classes (Figure 7.7):

• Small-screen-friendly tables, which you’ll probably leave as they are, because they’re small enough and will work fine on most small screens.
• Blockable tables, which you can alter with CSS so that each row in the table functions visually as a block item in a list (Figure 7.8).
• Chartable tables, which contain numerical data that can be transformed into a chart, graph, or other visualization that will take up less space on a small screen.
• Difficult tables, which are hard enough to deal with that you’ll need to come up with a different plan for them, sometimes even on a case-by-case basis. These are our enemies, but unfortunately, are the friends of our clients, who all love Microsoft Excel. Oh well.

Figure 7.7: There are several different types of tables, and different ways of dealing with them 
on small screens.
(Sources: mobilism.nl and eu-verantwoording.nl)

Figure 7.8: One way of dealing with small screen tables is to treat each row as a block.

Thinking again in terms of progressive enhancement, the base design should probably just include the whole table, which means that the user will have to scroll horizontally to see the whole thing in many cases. On top of this, we can employ CSS and JavaScript, when they’re available, to do some magic for us. Blockable and chartable tables can be blocked with CSS and charted with JavaScript. Plenty of designers and developers have experimented with many different options for tables, from simply making the table itself scrollable to exchanging columns and rows.

The fun part is that what you do on small screens isn’t necessarily what you’ll do on larger screens. That’s why now—when all you have to do is sketch and it won’t take much time—is the time to think about the changes you’ll be making at each breakpoint.

What to do if you get stuck

Every designer gets stuck at some point. It’s no big deal unless you treat it like one. There are countless ways to deal with it, from asking yourself what if questions (“What if it weren’t a table, but a list?” is what I asked myself before “blockifying” the attendees table for the Mobilism site) to the clichétaking a shower, which you hopefully do on a regular basis anyway. The reason this chapter focuses so much on sketching is because the act of drawing itself can actually stimulate your brain to come up with more ideas, provided you push it hard enough by sketching past your comfort zone of first-come ideas.

If your problem is that you’re stuck creatively, there are many inspiring books and resources to get your creative engine started during the bitter cold of designer’s block. Although there are plenty of resources on design and creativity itself (try such classics as Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking), the greatest inspiration can come from sources outside the realm of design.1 Trying to combine things that normally aren’t combined can lead to surprising results. It’s a simple little trick, but I’ve often used Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies to force me to take a different approach.2 Worst case, it’s a lot of fun. Best case, you’ve got a great idea!

If your problem is that you’re not sure how to handle something in the context of responsive design, there’s no harm in researching how others have solved problems like yours. Just be sure to use your creativity and tailor any ideas you might find to your own situation; after all, you’re a designer. At the time of this writing I find Brad Frost’s This Is Responsive to be one of the most exhaustive collections of responsive design patterns and resources available.3 You can spend hours going through there and you’ll certainly come across something that will get you unstuck.

Excerpted from Responsive Design Workflow by Stephen Hay. Copyright © 2013. 
Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and New Riders.

NOTES

1. Edward de Bono, Lateral Thinking (Viking, 2009).
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oblique_Strategies
3. http://bradfrost.github.com/this-is-responsive/

Want to learn more?

If your team struggles with how to design responsively, then you’ll want to hear Stephen’s practical approach to improving your responsive web design workflow during his December 12 virtual seminar on Responsive Web Design Workflows.

About the Author

Stephen Hay is a front-end design and development consultant based in the Netherlands. He is the author of Responsive Design Workflow (Peachpit/New Riders 2013), a contributor to Smashing Book #3, and a frequent speaker. You can follow Stephen on Twitter @stephenhay.