How to Deal with Feature(Scope) Creep
“If any assumption is safe, it’s that six months after launching a website (or sooner?), its owners will have a list of things they want to change, from minor typos to entirely new functionality.
Is it possible to accept feature creep as a natural (or at least inevitable) process?
Many websites begin to fail when their goals change or their scope expands.
Feature creep sets in when a client asks for one tiny adjustment that takes only a minute and then never stops making requests.
Accepting feature creep as a natural process requires an ability to distinguish between a genuine need and a run-away imagination or ‘Wouldn’t it be great if'”…
Get Hundreds of Free, Open-Source Fonts!
Google Web Fonts gets an upgrade. Go check out their new offerings optimized for the web: [Go to Google Fonts]
Useful Ideas And Guidelines For Good Web Form Design
“The input form is an essential element of almost any website or application these days. Input is a core method of interaction, and in many cases it represents the hard conversion point between success and failure. With the amount time and effort we put into bringing users to our sign-up and contact forms, it’s surprising that we tend not to spend a proportional amount of time on the forms themselves.
A number of techniques and elements can be used in Web forms to turn them from abject failures into successful conversion points. In this article, we’ll present some interesting examples and useful guidelines for Web form design.” [Go to full article]
Top Challenging Client Habits Every Designer Needs to Handle
“Dealing with clients is a great challenge for everyone. Oftentimes, we encounter problems in working with our clients. These are actually not just habits of clients but are the realities of work. It now depends on how you deal with it. Here are some habits of clients that most designers experience:”
Do You Know The Real Design Trends For 2011?
“Everything inside the design world is permanently changing, evolving and adapting into new ways of expression and communication looking to satisfy the new consuming needs and set innovative exchanging channels. 2010 made a huge closure for the final year of the first XXI century decade, we witnessed the rising of tablets (iPad, Samsung Galaxy Tablet among others), the demise of Internet Explorer 6 and the absurd fanaticism towards Flash (though it’s losing a lot of fans), which is going to be slowly replaced by HTML5 (we’re not saying that Flash is dead, only that HTML5 will begin to cover many of its current uses).”
The Biggest Secret of Social Media
“Here’s the biggest secret of social media: if you don’t like people very much, it won’t work very well.”
The Importance of Brand Identity in Email Marketing: Case Study
“We are all bombarded with too much email. Therefore, we are all very quickly scanning emails to decide if we should take the time to read them. We do this scan by reviewing the from, the subject line and/or quickly glancing at the body of the email.
If a message is not from someone we recognize, we need even more reason to feel compelled to take the risk and open it. We just don’t have time and we are much more likely to not open an unrecognized email.”
Watch Out! Social Media Misuse That Could Cost You Big Time
“Social media is a combination of human interaction through web applications where people produce their own content, mold their own experience, and define their online presence. A loose definition of social media is that it’s like a country, people gather and interact with massive amounts of people from their area and abroad. It’s really a broad place, both wonderful and terrible depending on your use of it.
That said, there are many people out there (both individuals and groups) that are very adept at misusing the powers of social media. Read on and be one of the people who understand just how terrible things can be if social media is misused. I am no social media expert and probably never will be, most of what I am to say is derived from my own experience of being a netizen. By all means please criticize!”
Smashing Mag: Understanding Copyright And Licenses
Great introduction to what to beware of on the web to prevent copyright and licensing issues.
“The Web is full of creative and practical resources that we can use to improve our projects. Photography, fonts, music and code are perfect examples. Finding stock objects and existing implementations is often quicker, cheaper and more practical than producing your own.
Whether free or not, these resources normally come with a license to ensure fair use. For professionals, understanding the limitations of a license is critical; with this knowledge, you’d be surprised by what’s available. Understanding copyright and licenses allows us to do what we do best: be creative.”