Pull-to-Refresh is all the rage in mobile apps. Take something like the Twitter client. In the timeline, if you want to see if any new messages have been posted, you pull down on the list with your thumb, then release. The gesture signals the app to check with Twitter’s servers to see if anything new [...]

[Update: MSNBC picked up on this story and reminded me that I wrote an article deconstructing the Knowledge Navigator a while back.] Back in 1987, Apple (under the direction of John Sculley, not Steve Jobs), released a video of what Apple products could be like in the future. Called the Knowledge Navigator, it showed a [...]

JQuery facilitates the vital steps of designing and testing complex interactions of today’s modern websites and web applications. In the next UIE Virtual Seminar, Rich Rutter gets you started with JQuery—assuming no prior knowledge—and shows you lots of examples, hints, and tricks. Just 5 minutes into this seminar, you’ll see JQuery in action and have something you can use in your own wireframes.

As we use a multitude of devices to access the same content, we expect a similar experience across platforms. If you have a great user experience on the desktop, it would be easy to rationalize that your mobile experience, for example, shouldn’t be painful. User experience professionals now need to consider how and where their applications and content are being accessed more than ever before. Developing rich interactions across all of these platforms can be a daunting task. Bill Scott discusses how employing design patterns can help ensure that your users have a great experience wherever they use your product.

Everybody strives to arrive at the end of a project with a great design. But often times the “brilliant idea” isn’t easy to communicate and takes a long time to develop. Brandon Schauer believes that you can develop techniques to help this communication, arriving at good design in shorter amounts of time. By putting your ideas on paper and post-its, and getting everyone participating, you create a collaborative environment that allows these ideas to grow and develop.

Story mapping is a way of organizing Agile user stories that communicate user experience. Agile expert Jeff Patton will show you how this technique helps you put the big picture of UX and the little pictures of Agile in one place. Users will always have an experience with your product. Story mapping will pull your UX focus into the organization’s process and ensure that experience is a great one.

Hang around me long enough and you’ll hear me say this: Outsourcing your user research work is like outsourcing your vacation. It gets the job done, but probably won’t have the effects you were seeking. I usually say this when someone is asking me to do their user research for them. This is something we [...]

[In essence, the User Interface 16 Conference is all about the full-day in-depth workshops. This is my third entry in our series to introduce you to the amazing workshop faculty we've assembled.] More and more, we’re finding ourselves in situations where the design just “has to be right.” No longer, can we just have incremental [...]

Incorporating CSS3 into your designs allows you to create innovative designs with less code and reliance on images. The level of compatibility with many of the browser options out there is already impressive and it continues to grow. Taking advantage of the new CSS3 features helps to shift heavier visual elements to the browser itself. Dan discusses examples and tips in this podcast.

[We're butt-deep in preparations for the User Interface 16 Conference. For my part, I get to work closely with the amazing speakers we've assembled, helping them construct their full-day workshops. Here's the second part of my series introducing each of the UI16 experts.] So much of a project’s success is determined at its start. If [...]