Knowing the Difference between UX and UI

UX and UI are common terms in the design field, however, differentiating them is as important for users as it is for designers since many people wrongly consider these terms similar. For a user, the main difference lies in the appearance and functionality of a design. UI is all about the appearance of a website whereas UX is about its experience.

From a designer point of view, you must be clear about the area you need to work on, whether it’s UX, UI or both. You can work on both, but for that, you will have to be exceptionally talented. Designers working on both UX and UI are known as full stack designers. But to work smoothly, you will have to be familiar with these tasks in order to successfully perform as a UI and U designer.

UX designers are those who are mainly concerned with the way their product feels. They have to explore the different ways to solve and address user issues. For creating a good UX, designers need to strictly focus on the logical flow of the product including work on different elements such as design and content. UX designers also need to analyze the user’s interactions with the services/products to evaluate its working.

UI designers also are known as User Interface Designers mainly focus on creating a product instead of improving its experience and feel. This makes UI designers accountable for creating a design deliverable serving the needs of a user. In short, both roles are important to the success of a product, and UX designers are critical for designing a great end product. Medialinkers web design agency highlights the entire main difference that there is between UX and UI.

Knowing When to Revamp a Website

A lot of business owners do not know when to revamp their website and this is a reason why about 95% of the businesses have got outdated sites. Small businesses either do not think of their site or don’t realize the fact it’s outdated. Some ways suggested by Medialinkers web developers to know if it’s time for a site redesign are:

1.       1/3^rd of website traffic comes through mobile devices, which means that your site must be easy to use and work across all the mobile devices such as tablets and Smart phones.

2.       When a business site doesn’t work on a mobile device of prospective customers, they will turn away to a site that does. Make sure you are not sending the customers away.

3.       When using an adaptive mobile site, you need to upgrade to responsive design. This has SEO benefits and is also the industry practice these days. The responsive site design is a new technology which will make your site to work flawlessly across all devices through automatic adjustments.

4.       You also need to make sure that your site has the right security and is not outdated or at risk. Out of date sites or plugins are the main reason behind the sites getting hacked.

7 Common Terms Used in the Digital Design Industry

Every person has the potential to become a designer. They can understand the basic design principles whether they know it or not. For instance, when approaching a door, you will clearly know if you have to push or pull it open. You push or pull a door according to the icons displayed on it.

There are moments where a handle is not labeled correctly as a push or pull, causing confusion for the public, who think about if it could be designed better. Similarly, there are specific terms in the web design world, which everyone must know even if they are not a designer, to be better connected with their site design and its usability. A few important design terms are shared by the Medialinkers webdesign team:

1.       User Interface (UI)

The interface n a computer screen refers to the LOGIN button to your favorite site as it open its virtual door to it. The LOGIN button makes it easy for you to enter a site and the background behind it makes everything easy on the digital screen to become part of the site’s user interface. The User Interface needs to be created the same way a physical object or space is treated. It has to be super intuitive, direct and clean in purpose.

2.       Usability

When taking the interface into consideration, there is another method which makes interaction of user interface and user possible.  This communication between the two is called “user experience” and usability” of the interface measures how successful the interaction is between both parties.  If you are not able to navigate successfully through a site, then that is called a bad user experience. Pin pointing the weaknesses of a specific User Experience is a key to increasing the user conversions and its effectiveness.

3.       Visual Hierarchy

When entering any building, the first thing you need to see is its entrance. Second is to see the entrance name where as third is to see if you are pushing, swiping, pulling, scanning a retina or hastening through the door for entering the building. Visual hierarchy makes sure that you do not see the PULL lettering in large letters before knowing the door to enter through in the first place.

Visual hierarchy is about guiding the users through user experience, taking a narrative form about what will happen next.

4.       User Conventions

Another great way is to think about a design convention by understanding the benefits of consistency. Every time a doorway method to open a building changes, minutes and seconds of time is spent unlearning the previous method and for learning the new one. This comes under inconsistency which can be fixed by maintaining conventions.

If a door had a same push bar to push and pull a door then it becomes hard to forget how to open any door. This consistency is also called convention and saves many people a lot of time into thinking twice about it. Another term to refer it is known as UI pattern.

You need to research great looking designs and embed the similarities between these campaigns and designs you see and respond t in your designs.  These will layout these in your design.

5.       Intuitive Designs

Ever tried pulling a door which has no handle and just a flat metal panel? Most cases, the design of the door is such that your only intuitive option is to push the door. This design type is called affordance as it makes the available options obvious to process to the users. The elements displayed on the page needs to behave in accordance with how things feel like they need to behave naturally.

6.       Responsive

This is quite easy to explain. You may have pets at your home and whenever they walk in to your home, they use a small vent in the door, installed to meet their small body needs. Same is the case with a website design. It has to be different in size for a desktop, tablet and Smartphone screen. A good design needs to behave according to the different device sizes and screens.

7.       Minimalism

Take example of door again. If you have installed features that allow push on one side and pull on another, you have created an intuitive and minimalist design. Simplicity in a digital design helps to avoid unnecessary details and confusion at the same time.

You can also gain knowledge from Kennesaw web design experts about the common terms used in web design.

Bing Launches Coding Help Feature for Programmers

Bing launches a new help feature for programmers in collaboration with HackerRank to seek help frequently. It offers an executable code in the search results which is not something provided by the other famous developer search engines such as Mozilla Developer Network and Stack Overflow.

According to the tool’s official announcement, engineers visit search engines to get answers to various sites such as Stackoverflow, Stackexchange and other blogs. You will now get a streamlined alternative which not only offers a unique coding solution you require but also assists in code editing to play with it in real-time.

WordPress Developer Rian Rietveld Picks Heroes of Accessibility Awards

Annual International Technology and Persons with Disabilities Conference held last week in San Diego, California is an event for people who work around removing obstacles for disabled people. Every year certain people are awarded for their contributions and this year’s achievement category award went to Rian Rietveld for her contributions to the WordPress core. She won the Heroes of Accessibility Awards, categorized under the individual achievement category.

Other members include Karl Groves and Sally Shepard, Tenon.io and iOS developers respectively. Video of the ceremony is available on the official site and the Rietveld award announcement is time stamped at 6:50. In addition to the core contributions, Rietveld offers consultancy and auditing for WP theme and plugin developers. Rietveld shared that the award was a great encouragement to continue work on WP accessibility combined with the team.

For more news, stay tuned to Medialinkers blog.

Adobe Post: A New Tool to Create Graphics for Visual Marketing

Adobe has recently introduced Adobe Post for interesting visuals to post on social media in a few seconds. If you are relying on visual marketing to divert traffic to your site, consider using Adobe Post.  You can install it free of charge on your SmartPhone. The tool has received a lot of great reviews with thought leaders and works great for business of any size. A few features reviewed by the Medialinkers web design experts are as follow:

How Can You Use Attractive Images for Blog Posts?

A picture is worth a thousand words as it not only grabs user attention but published with a proper caption also makes it crucial from SEO point of view. Any blog post added with a nice photo or illustration will get a lot of attention on social media.  Here is why, posting attractive images in blog posts is important for you.

1.       Choosing Images According to Blog Post

When choosing an illustration or a picture, you need to make sure that the image fits the blog topic. A picture must make users to read a blog post and explain the points they have written in the blog. The picture and text needs to be about the same topics and must reinforce each other.

2.       Tips on Finding Blog Images

Pictures and photos have copyrights, making them inaccessible to be used on every blog post. These should not be used without the consent of the creator. However, you don’t need to worry, as there are many databases consisting of pictures which you can use freely or buy accordingly.

3.       Using Pictures

Create Your Own Images

When looking for original pictures matching the theme of your post, consider making your own pictures. Take pictures which ensure an original picture, those that are never found on another blog. This will also allow you to show a picture which really fits the post content. When blogging your daily life events, take your own photos to define the details.  The same also goes for food blogs. From a technical or company blog such as Medialinkersweb design Atlanta blog, it becomes difficult to find pictures suitable to the theme of a blog.

Using Images from Platforms

In case the blog content is not in line with the pictures you can take, you can consider downloading the pictures from image platforms. There are sites such as shutterstock, Yayimages, unspalsh and librestock etc which offer both free and paid images for users. However, try and select exciting images that are not used by everyone on the web.

4.       Using an illustrator

You can also work with a professional illustrator to create illustration based images for you. Many sites are doing that. Not only this will give you on-topic illustrations but will also provide you with original and unique ideas customized perfectly to your blog post topic. People will recognize a post by understanding the illustrations. Lots of illustrators work freelance, which means that you can hire them for your blog post without much problem.

Conclusion

Illustrations and pictures when used correctly make a blog post more appealing in the user eyes. The social media exposure also increases, with the help of attractive images. Work to create and pick original images to make them stand out from others.

You can also contact the Kennesaw web design agency to design images for your blog posts.

How to Build a Successful Brand for Your Business?

Everyone is looking to increase the capital, attracting talent and kick starting their business off the ground. However, by following a few basic principles relevant to designing, user experience and marketing, you can surely increase the odds of starting and maintenance of a successful brand.

Is Building a Google+ Profile Worth Your Time and Efforts?

Is Google+ slowly getting killed? Should you be worried? Well, not right now, as there are industries in which, it offers good enough content. However, what's not clears still is the fact that whether it’s growing or not, as Google doesn’t include it to comment on YouTube, its author tag was also dismissed and is also removed from the brand knowledge graph in search results. Even though it seems like it’s on a decline, we can surely say that it is not being discontinued. This is because it only just added a feature known as “Collections” and this tells that the Google has not decided to call it off as yet.