ThinkRooms is a application development studio at Bandung. We do application development based on web technology. Our services are develop application, PSD/PNG to HTML, and CMS template development. You can check our official website at http://www.thinkrooms.com

 

Uniform

Uniform is a jQuery plugin to enhance your web form visualization. It’s come with theme and can change the visualization of selection dropdown, file upload field, checkbox, and radio button selection.

Free iPhone UI design elements

Free iPhone UI design elements with PSD resource. Including slider, basic input form, tab, and button elements.

50 New Useful CSS Techniques, Tutorials and Tools - Smashing Magazine

Awesome collection of CSS techniques, tutorials, and tools. It’s show how to create amazing UI using CSS.

Five Useful CSS/jQuery Coding Techniques For More Dynamic Websites - Smashing Magazine

Interactivity can transform a dull static website into a dynamic tool that not only delights users but conveys information more effectively. In this post, we’ll walk through five different coding techniques that can be easily implemented on any website to provide a richer user experience.

The techniques will allow you to better display difficult content, help users find information more effectively and provide meaningful UI cues without overwhelming the user.

  1. On-page text search
  2. Drag controls for oversized content
  3. Subtle hover effects
  4. Comment count bars
  5. Full-page slider

10 Usability Tips Based on Research Studies

Great usability tips from Six Revisions. It’s based on research studies so we can trust it should be effective to implement on your website. My favorites tips are:

  1. Place your important content on left side.
  2. Make your content easily readable.
  3. Whitespace of text affects readability.
  4. Small detail make a huge difference.

My favorites tips above already implemented on my ThinkRooms website. It’s should used when you design your new website for better usability. 

The difference between good design and great design

great vs good design

Another great article from Six Revisions about design. The author wrote about the difference between good design and great design. Design need to fit with 3 perpective, from other designer, client, and user.

Truly great design, then, is when these three perspectives are considered and implemented equally to create a final product that is beautiful, effective and functional.

Keep in mind that the product must be a synergistic realization of the three perspectives and not merely contain elements ideally suited for each. The design must be attractive enough to catch a user’s attention, the message strong enough to communicate effectively to the user and the functionality simple enough to cause the user to take action.

Above is a summary about great design. You can read the long explanation and see some examples on it’s original post.

Use 80-20 rule to increase your website effectiveness

Oleg Mokhov wrote a post at Six Revision about how the 80-20 rule can optimize your website and increase it’s effectiveness. It could help your website and increase conversion rate of your website.

Basically 80-20 rule is decrease the content of your website page to 20% to get the 80% result. Basically it’s still borrow the concept of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid).

Don’t show empty page, redirect it to add action for better experience

I found many web apps including my own (yes, I did it too), that show empty page. Empty page doesn’t mean that it’s really empty without any content on the page. I mean, when we want to see the content list. For example our friends list in social network apps. Most apps show an empty friend list and a link or button to add content or in this example to invite friends.

This screen shoot below show custom post list page which I called “portfolio” and it show empty portfolio page.

User will click add new button if they want to add new portfolio in this website. But why we don’t redirect them directly to add new portfolio page and tell them that there is no portfolio in database yet and ask them to add one. I think it’s better because it’s cut one step to view the portfolio list and click the add new button.

I use this theory when design my web app for better user experience

Do not ask your user to view a page where only one choice available for them on that page.

I write this post to keep remind me for better web apps is a better user experience. I hope it’s also useful for you.