Finally, an awesome UX tutorial

// Answering the question "What are the best resources for learning bleeding-edge web, UI and UX design?" on Quora, Colm Tuite, UI/Visual Designer & Developer, decided to write one of this own. The result was an extensive post / #tutorial  with 10 steps to a decent (if not great) start in learning about #UX. To sum up: 

1. Discover the problem
2. Get to know your users
3. Learn to #wireframe properly
4. Communicate effectively
5. Guide your users
6. Encourage your users
7. Reward your users
8. Learn the basic fundamentals (HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Python etc.)
9. Learn visual #design
10. Study. Study. Study.

Read the full article here http://b.qr.ae/XNmOQH

Colours, Emotions, Brands

// This kind of chart has been going around the net for a while, but a reminder is always good :)

If you're looking for more #marketing -oriented #color   #infographics  see also How do colors affect purchases?
http://bit.ly/VG6O70

(Chart by The Logo Company http://bit.ly/VG6wwT)

Cross-network social media engagement analysis

// Did that sound complex enough? :) Statistics and trying to do comparisons can often be misleading as just seeing the numbers below can prove. The numbers are from a test +Wil Wheaton did: he asked people on #Facebook  and #Google + to following a list to his blog as a test on how much traffic he gets from either #network . Here they are:  

Facebook followers: 95K
Google+ followers: 1.4M
 
Traffic from Facebook:  ~13,428
Traffic from G+: ~11,261

Interactions on Facebook: 1118 likes and 345 comments
Interactions on G+: 647 +1s (same as likes) and 247 comments

On first look, FB looks like an amazing way to get engagement given that there were more interactions with just tiny fraction of followers. I think a crucial explanation for these numbers is that every like and comment on Facebook generates a story in the feeds of the friends of the user who made the like or comment.

This allows a much bigger spread of anything that get a good amount of likes/comments (as recently proven by the recent "help me get laid for 1 million likes" story http://cnet.co/YMy5pc). Meanwhile, the main way for something to spread on G+ is shares and the trending list (although usually in order to get on the trending list you need a lot of shares).  

Where as a percentage of the 1.4mil of G+ followers might see Wil's post just once if they have him on a circle which shows 100% of posts in the main stream (and if they read everything on their stream), on Facebook, it's not just a percentage of the followers who see a post in their feeds. It is also the friends of everyone who liked and commented on it through the "X commented on Will Wheaton's post" stories. 

An additional insight: a small page I manage on FB has just over 1100 likes. The overal potential audience though (friends of fans) is over 400k. I suppose some similar numbers apply in Will's case. His 95K followers can translate to an audience of millions. I wont do the math because I am probably going to end up with wrong assumptions again. 

The fact is, people interact differently with content and also discover differently  content on either network. So the whole situation is a bit like, well, apples and oranges :) 
_(Photo by Michael Fawcett http://bit.ly/12k6EE1)_
cc +Robert Scoble as he has written a lot about the differences between FB and G+ and their content discovery models. 

Hack your life!

// #Hacking  is not a bad word, mmm'okay? :) Here is a small intro on hacking your daily routines to improve your #productivity  and enjoy more of what's really important in #life! :) 

The interface is (part of) your brand

// When it's pointed out it is kind of obvious but you might not consider it otherwise. Interface elements are indeed part of your brand. If you're not convinced take this quiz: can you recognise the origin of the buttons on the image below? 

Answers on the original article by +Marc Hemeon : http://bit.ly/11cxFK9 Marc has more guidance on designing your buttons. 
(via +Nassos K.) 

History: G+ Activity Log for the rest of the Web

// I recently wrote http://bit.ly/Vx6wiE asking for a #Google+ activity log, a page where you could see all the posts you +1ed or commented on. The problem is, if someone doesn't interact with the post after you, you can't easily find it. 

It turns out something like this is on the works. +Shamil Weerakoon pointed me to the direction of the #Google #HistoryAPI. Announced back in June of last year at Google I/O, it promises to allow websites to post updates of actions you take around the web to Google's archive. If the concept sounds familiar it is because #Facebook has already done with #OpenGraph http://bit.ly/YG2e9B

The History #API is still in development but you can get a taste of it already. You can have in a single page, the archive of pages you +1ed around the web (not G+ posts), videos you viewed on YouTube, apps you got from Google Play, photos from Instant Upload and searches you have made (although that last one hasn't appeared on my page so far). People concerned with #privacy  should be reassured by the fact that you can select per source who can see your history (i've set everything to "only me"). 
 
Click here to learn more http://bit.ly/WARdDg and here http://bit.ly/WzOOce to sign-up. And here's another #googleplusrequest : Do the obvious, integrate this with Google posts and comments! :)

Photobox: CSS3/jQuery image gallery

// There are probably thousands of #lightbox  solutions but here is fancy one, straight from the refreshed #jQuery   #plugins  site (http://bit.ly/YBFQye):

Photobox promises to be a lightweight image gallery modal window script which uses only #CSS3 for silky-smooth animations and transitions. The goal was to create an image #gallery script that uses GPU rendering to move things around, instead of the old fashioned #javascript way (e.g. most other scripts in existence).

The visual result is what you see in the screenshot, check out the demo and download it here http://bit.ly/114QgYz 
Official support includes Firefox, Chrome and IE8+, although Safari had no issues with it as well.