Tag / platform
8 Universal Design Necessities for E-commerce
Great web design is an art, and in the increasingly accessible digital world, it has become ever more important to ensure that your design decisions are focused on an accessible user experience. This not only facilitates more positive engagements with a business’ audience, but is also an important step in establishing a brand’s reputation, visibility, and authority.
The principles of universal design arose from a recognition of the need to overcome obstacles to accessibility, particularly in the case of individuals with physical or cognitive difficulties. However, as the name suggests, universal design extends beyond these challenges to encompass the barriers faced by individuals in all walks of life, for myriad different reasons.
Accounting for all users’ needs is no minor feat, yet there are a few fundamental tenets to use to make your work better and transform the customer journey into an experience that is accessible and enjoyable for all.
1. Provide Choice Customizability enabl..
With the Continental GT, Bentley proves it’s still working on a different scale to everyone else
The Bentley Continental GT is a modern classic. This is the car that turned Bentley from a niche builder of brutish, old school gentleman’s conveyances into a honed, modern luxury goods manufacturer, able to build anything from a GT car to a royal limousine. This transformation was brokered by Bentley’s then-new owners, the Volkswagen Group, and the GT embodied the shift from traditional methods to modern, platform-engineered production. Like all the best brand rebirths, the original design team behind the Continental GT adeptly fused the marque’s best qualities with modern materials and technologies. The original GT arrived in 2003 and was substantially overhauled in 2011. Never, however, has the car been given a complete ground-up makeover.
Despite the masterful synthesis of old ideals and thoroughly new underpinnings, VW’s might and muscle was never far away, however, Detractors pointed out the various shared components – everything from engines to in-car entertainment – and lament..
Ship shape: nautical modernism takes to the trees in a Highgate house
In the conservation area of north London’s leafy Highgate, a glass egg can be seen high up in the canopy. The egg is an indoor conservatory that perches upon a vessel, which is balanced on a brick base. This layered architectural structure is 6 Wood Lane, the eccentric location for Wallpaper’s October fashion shoot (W*223), where a platter of denim – with pieces by Tommy Jeans, G-Star Raw, Levi’s and Diesel Black Gold – was served up among the transparent room’s hanging succulents, and photographed by Ivan Ruberto.
Completed in 2012, 6 Wood Lane was designed as a home for Mike Russum, who was both client and – with the Birds Portchmouth Russum Architects practice, of which he is a director – the project’s architect. Russum describes the upper volume as a ‘vessel’ because of its aerodynamic and nautical references.
Russum initially wanted to build the conservatory out of aluminium, but it turned out to be more efficient to use boat-building technology. Thus, the vessel was made of ben..
Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler
The way people consume information is constantly evolving. As web designers and developers, we keep up with all of the different screen shapes and sizes, learning to create beautiful, flexible software. Yet most of the available tools still don’t reflect the nature and diversity of the platform we’re building for: the browser.
When I was making my first responsive website in 2012, I quickly realized how inefficient and time-consuming the constant browser window resizing was. I had just moved from Estonia to Australia, and with a newborn, time was very much a precious resource.
The post Meet XRespond Testing Tool: Let’s Make Building Responsive Websites Simpler appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
Just for kicks: Nike and Virgil Abloh get in step
Like most American teenagers, Virgil Abloh, the multi-dexterous creative behind cult fashion label Off-White, grew up coveting Nike trainers. In his younger days, Abloh and his friends would sketch shoe ideas and send them to Nike (they were politely rejected). This week, Abloh’s highly anticipated reimagining of ten iconic Nike styles is being unveiled in all its glory. Simply known as ‘The Ten’, the collection teams Off-White’s irreverent styling with Nike’s iconic heritage for a fresh design perspective.
In Abloh’s hands, the ten Nike silhouettes – Air Jordan I, Air Max 90, Air Presto, Nike Air VaporMax, Blazer Mid, Converse Chuck Taylor, Nike Air Max 97, Nike Air Force 1 Low, including two new styles: Nike React Hyperdunk and NikeLab Zoom Fly SP – have been revamped with deconstructed and material interventions.
An installation at the Nike Off Campus pop-up
Shoes have been cut by hand and reconstructed, remade with translucent uppers and reversed materials, and emblazoned with ..
Find the Right Metrics for Your Sales Team
“What gets measured gets managed” is a longstanding business aphorism. But today’s sales technologies enable companies to measure almost anything, which leads many managers to try to measure everything. As a consequence, managers don’t have a clear sense of what is really driving sales in their business, while salespeople, who are inundated with dozens of metrics, get lost in the day-to-day noise. The result is poor management of what matters.
The challenge, of course, is to decide on the right metrics. Consider the results of a survey of key performance indicators (KPIs) being used by more than 800 sales teams across industries. Wins are the most common metric used across sales roles and industries. On average, firms measure closed deals and rep production against quota monthly, which isn’t surprising. Selling is a performance art, and “making the number” should be the goal of any sales organization, but a closed deal is an outcome and a lagging indicator; it can’t be used by the sal..
How To Create A Sketch Plugin With Front-End Technologies
UX design hasn't been the same since Sketch arrived on the scene. The app has delivered a robust design platform with a refreshing, simple user interface. A good product on its own, it achieved critical success by being extended with community plugins.
The open nature of the Sketch plugin system means that anyone can identify a need, write a plugin and share it with the community. A major barrier is stopping those eager to take part: Designers and front-end developers must learn how to write a plugin. Unfortunately, Objective-C is difficult to learn!
The post How To Create A Sketch Plugin With Front-End Technologies appeared first on Smashing Magazine.
At CIFF 2017, a new generation of fashion designers is on the rise
On a sunny evening last week, a 100-plus people could be spotted grooving in an out of town car park at the Bella Center in Copenhagen. Bottles of beer and craft vodka cocktails in-hand, they were wearing a diverse smattering of styles – from Supreme X Louis Vuitton dungarees to boiler suits and floral dresses by the Danish label Ganni that recently posted annual revenues of nearly $59m. A giant pink cardboard installation featuring totemic symbols by London-based set designer Gary Card housed the DJ/designer, Charles Jeffrey Loverboy.
It’s not what you might expect from a fashion trade show but then CIFF (the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair that runs in parallel to Copenhagen Fashion Week) is smoothly re-inventing itself as a destination for buyers, creatives and emerging talent alike. The Loverboy pop-up was conceived by Lulu Kennedy MBE, founder of London’s Fashion East not-for-profit platform, one element of a curated programme of shows and stands through which Kennedy intro..
How to Work with Someone Who’s Always Stressed Out
We all know people who seem to be constantly stressed out — who claim to be buried in work, overloaded with projects, and without a minute to spare. Colleagues like that can be difficult to work with, but you probably don’t have a choice. How do you deal with coworkers who can’t handle stress? Should you address the issue directly? Or try other tactics to help them calm down and focus? And how can you protect yourself from their toxic emotions?
What the Experts Say
Stress is part of everyday life. “We all go through periods when we are dealing with a lot of stress,” says Caroline Webb, author of How to Have a Good Day. “Those periods might last 10 minutes, 10 days, or 10 months.” But for certain people, “stress is a habitual pattern.” These folks always “feel overwhelmed, constantly stretched, and always out of their depth.” Working closely with a person like this can be a real challenge. “But you mustn’t make them the villain,” says Holly Weeks, author of Failure to Communicate. “Don..
Eye spy: Apple makes the long-awaited leap to Instagram
That Apple is a conduit for creativity is not, at this point, a surprise (its devices have reconfigured our creative landscape in unprecedented ways, after all). That it doesn’t have an Instagram account is. But that’s just changed.
The Apple iPhone is the most popular camera in the world, responsible for over one trillion photographs every year. Two years ago, the company launched the ‘Shot on iPhone’ campaign, celebrating the finest in community-generated phone photography and highlighting how the easy access and egalitarian nature of the iPhone’s camera has fundamentally changed our relationship with the medium.
[embed]https://www.instagram.com/p/BXffs_QDMVv/?taken-by=apple[/embed]
The launch of the @Apple Instagram account is a natural continuation of this. The process is simple: Instagram users tag their images with #ShotoniPhone and Apple will act as curator of its own channel, choosing the best images via the hashtag and recirculating them from its account, giving almost unim..