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I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Patternry | User Interface Design Patterns for Ideas and Inspiration
  We recently completely revamped our site, and at the same time changed its name. For a while our new user interface design pattern resource was called Pattern App until we re-re-named it to Patternry. Patternry will be something more than just a collection of design patterns or a design gallery.
• 5 Leading Airline Booking Forms Tested for Usability | UX Booth
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• Another Useful Blog: What You Always Wanted to Know About Eye Tracking – Part 1: Fixation Detection
  Since the topic of eye tracking keeps drawing people’s attention – it’s a silver bullet for some whereas others see it as a complete waste of resources – I thought a series of posts that focus on the methodological aspects of eye tracking research would be in order. As such, the posts will not focus on particular (usability) studies that have been conducted with eye tracking but rather shed some light on implicit and explicit assumptions, caveats etc. of the method itself. Ideally, readers will find some information to make up their own minds regarding the appropriateness of the eye tracking method for the examination of diverse questions.
• Top 11 E-Commerce Usability & Optimization Resources – Baymard Institute
  All these resources have "made a vital contribution to the e-commerce usability and optimization community" and continue to do so.
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Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Top ten simple design tips for online travel startups | Tnooz
  The commercial internet is not even 20 years old but the opportunities, especially in the travel sector, have never been greater. But unless the design is at your core, even the best business plan and the smartest team will fail.
• Quality Assurance as Applied to User Experience Design | inspireUX – User Experience quotes and articles to inspire and connect the UX community
  Quality Assurance (QA) is a critical part of any web or application development project.  QA helps to verify that a project has met the project’s requirements and technical specifications without bugs or other defects.  The aim is to identify issues prior to product launch.  Most QA initiatives focus on following predefined test cases, which meticulously outline required functionality by stating an input and expected response.  In order for QA to be successful, requirements must be clearly articulated and changes must be communicated effectively.
• A List Apart: Articles: Strategic Content Management
  Trying to fix an organization’s content problems by installing a content management system (CMS) is like trying to save a marriage by booking a holiday. We know that a successful web project needs a content strategy—but when it comes to the CMS, we stop thinking strategically. Despite all the talk about user-centered design, we rarely consider the user experience of the editorial team—the people who implement the content strategy. We don’t design a CMS, we install it.
• benji | ben martineau | art & design
  Below are a handful of design projects I have worked on over the recent years from both client and personal workings. Unfortunately the extent of my works cannot be displayed publicly though I believe those below are indicative of me as a designer. I strive to create simple, minimalistic, grid-based design solutions across all media with the majority being digtal.
• What Makes Them Click » Blog Archive » 100 Things You Should Know About People: #42 — We’ll spend more money if you don’t mention money – Applying Psychology to Understand How People Think, Work, and Relate
  Cassie Mogilner and Jennifer Aaker from the Stanford Graduate School of Business conducted a series of experiments to see whether references to time or references to money would affect whether people stop to buy, how much people are willing to pay, and how satisfied people are with the products they buy. They conducted 5 experiments. The first one was the lemonade stand described above:

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• 7 Ways to Increase User Participation
  Running a site doesn't only require Web development skills. Any site where the users can add content and communicate with each other requires a great deal of care and attention if it's going to be a success.
• Presentation Zen: Presentation: A few minutes with John Cleese on creativity
  Below is an excellent 10-min video clip from a presentation by John Cleese expressing a few of his ideas on creativity. One of the main problems for many of use today is that we are always in a hurry and our minds are a bit scattered juggling many balls in the air.
• The 5 habits of highly effective field researchers
  You may not get many chances to visit and observe your customers at their place of work, so you want to make the most of the opportunity. But what’s the best way to run a site visit? Highly effective field researchers show 5 specific behaviours. They create a focus question, audio record the sessions, take photographs of the environment, take notes and write up a short summary of the observation immediately
• Three Reasons Why Persuasive Design Isn’t Enough to Influence Change :: UXmatters
  Persuasive design is designing to change people’s behavior, or actions. This design movement fascinates me, and I’m jump-up-and-down thrilled to see it get more attention lately. Forbes recently ran an article about Jon Kolko, creative frontman at Frog Design, and his perspective on persuasive design. Kolko noted:
• Faceted Navigation: SEO and Facets « Experiencing Information
  Faceted navigation, when done well, can help customers find what they are looking for quicker and in a more satisfying way. This is good for business and for the bottom line. After all, customers can’t buy what they can’t find.
• Why mobile is vital for in-destination bookings | Tnooz
  We have always known that activities tend to be the last thing that people book when they go on holidays.<br />
  For the most part this is due to two important factors:<br />
  <br />
  For online travel agency sites that provide airport transfers and activities, these offerings are treated as an add-on at the end of the booking after flight, hotel and car. This makes it very easy to skip during the booking process.<br />
  <br />
  The majority of in-destination offerings are not available online. The ones that are provided are generally consolidated through multiple aggregators, such as a local destination marketing company and then the OTA.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

I bookmark a lot of pages and sites which I find interesting, inspirational and informative every day! I’d like to share some of them with you here. In general they are about user experience, usability, UCD, accessbility and design. In general, but not always!!

• Ten simple steps to make global travel websites more engaging | Tnooz
  Ever wonder what the most popular sites do to keep traffic and grow their business? While the specific formula for success is different for each site, there are some things in common that most popular sites do.
• A huge list of Style Guides and UI Guidelines » The UX Bookmark
  If you are a graphic designer or an interaction designer and have ever been tasked with creating a style guide or UI guidelines document (both are different and I’ve had the pleasure to work on both of them creating templates and the actual documents for brands and products), this list should help you out as a consolidated list of references. This list is going to be constantly updated (and will ultimately be a monster list, it’s quite modest for now) of publicly accessible style guides and UI guideline documents on the web. If you find any links not working or would like to suggest one that is not on the list, feel free to comment and let me know.
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• Twitter: 10 Psychological Insights — PsyBlog
  There are now 190 million Twitter users around the world producing 65 million tweets each day. 19% of US internet users now say they use Twitter or a similar service to share updates about themselves—double the figure from the previous year (Pew, 2009).<br />
  <br />
  So who tweets? Why? What are they talking about? And what is so engaging about all those little textual transmissions?
• Stop Designing Aesthetics, Start Designing Emotions | Webdesigner Depot
  Discussing emotion in design is a bit of a hot topic at the moment, it seems to be popping up in more and more blog posts and speaker sessions. In fact I saw at least three different web designers say that it was the subject of the talk which they had recently submitted for next year’s SXSWi.

Please do feel free to suggest other related (and unrelated ones)!

Greetings from Saigon!

A city that the hits you straight into the side of the head with a sledgehammer blow of stimuli, Thors Hammer would have a hard time matching this place! A dazzling variety of smells, ranging from the wonderfully fragrant to the eye-wateringly pugent. Sounds that can delight one moment and irritate the next. Sights from the intoxicatingly spell binding to harrowingly sad – thankfully we have had far more of the former that the latter, but in a country as poor and with such a history as Vietnam it’s hard to avoid the latter.

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