Web Application Design

7 Critical Considerations for Designing Effective Applications
Based on research UIE has conducted on dozens of applications, we've assembled an essential set of questions teams need to ask about their design to ensure they are providing the best value to their users.

Web Form Design in the Wild, Part 1
Luke Wroblewski recently had a difficult experience with the Fairmont Hotel web site. He emerged from his experience with eight best practices for web form design.

Web Form Design in the Wild, Part II
Expert designer, Luke Wroblewski, shares tips for designing web forms based on his experience with the Boingo and British Airways sites.

Web Application Form Design
Luke Wroblewski discusses how variations in the alignment of input fields, labels, calls to action, and their surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior.

Flash Strikes Back: Creating Powerful Web Applications
With the advent of Flash MX, developers now have the power to create web applications with more sophisticated client- and server-side interactivity. In this article, we highlight web applications that truly demonstrate Flash's benefits over traditional HTML-based applications.

Using Ajax for Creating Web Applications
By combining the sophistication of screen-based apps to the relative ease-of-implementation of paged-based apps, Ajax is a solid alternative for new interface development.

iHotelier: Demonstrating the Potential of Flash for Web App Design
Christine Perfetti's where she shows how one very innovative design built with Macromedia Flash gets past the constraints of HTML.

Deconstructing Web Applications
Hagan Rivers is a recognized pioneer in the area of Web Application Design. UIE's Christine Perfetti recently had the opportunity to talk with Hagan about some of the biggest challenges in the web application space.

Designing Powerful Web Applications: An Interview with David Malouf
Joshua Porter interviewed David Malouf, a premier Interaction Designer, to discuss the issues involved when development teams are thinking about designing web applications using AJAX and RIAs.

Discovering Web App Structure: A Discussion with Hagan Rivers
Jared Spool and Hagan Rivers discuss her newly published report about finding a web application's structure.

Tips for Designing Powerful RIAs: An Interview with David Malouf and Bill Scott
Jared Spool and Joshua Porter talk with expert web application designers, Bill Scott and David Malouf, to discuss Rich Internet Application (RIA) development, AJAX, and other important issues surrounding the creation of sophisticated web apps.

Designing Web Applications for Use
Larry Constantine, IDSA, of Constantine & Lockwood, describes several of the recurring problems with user-centered design and discusses how designing for use rather than for users is a way to focus design more sharply.

Web Application Strategy

Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype
Jared M. Spool challenges the myth of Web 2.0, uncovering APIs, RSS, Folksonomies, and Social Networking, which suddenly give application developers a new way to approach hard problems with surprisingly effective results.

Common Pitfalls of Building Social Web Applications and How to Avoid Them
Joshua Porter outlines 4 of the most prevalent mistakes designers make when creating social web applications, and explains how to avoid making them yourself.

Simplicity: The Ultimate Sophistication
Joshua Porter explores whether or not simplicity is a bad design goal.

The Elements of a Design Pattern
Jared M. Spool discusses how design teams are discovering that a well-built design pattern library makes the user interface development process substantially easier.

Taking Time to Tour
The practice of designing web applications is so new that few formalized methods for studying them exist. In order to educate ourselves, we must take tours of various web apps to find out what works and what doesn't. Jared Spool explores why we tour web applications, which ones to tour, what to look for, and what we can do with the information we gather.

Web Application User Experience

Flash + Information Visualization = Great User Experiences
By combining tools like Flash and the little-known field of information visualization, designers can dramatically improve how users work with large, multidimensional data sets.

Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
Luke Wroblewski discusses how a balanced visual hierarchy provides a clear path for your users to recognize and understand the information displayed on your web site.

Designing Embraceable Change
Design is all about change -- hopefully changing for the better. None of us set out to make things worse from the get-go. Yet, as we know all too well, that isn't how it always works out. Jared M. Spool discusses how to introduce design changes that will be embraced, not resisted.

Five Usability Challenges of Web-Based Applications
Jared explains five of the toughest challenges facing designers of web applications: scalability, visual design, comprehension, interactivity, and change management.