Free Online Survey Tools

My fav online free survey tools are

http://polldaddy.com/
http://www.surveymonkey.com

Very Useful Resources for UXers
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2010/07/30-places-to-submit-your-website-designs/
http://konigi.com/showcase?page=3

As a Visual Designer deciding Color Palette is one of the very important part in designing. I still remember 5 yrs  back this was typical job of Artist folks/some one who has great understanding of colors.

But in recent times there are some great webapp/online tools which helps us to select color palette for design. one of the most popular among desingers KULER (adobe - kuler.adobe.com ).

Today i was looking for color codes, names, .etc .etc, this is how we all do our research (searhing again and again - ReSearch :) ), have got couple of links which will be very helpful for us while designing.
http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_colornames.asp
http://cloford.com/resources/colours/500col.htm

I was looking for some good resource to understand best practice/creative way of designing forms, have come across this post - http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/20-excellent-examples-of-forms-in-web-design
interesting

User Research - resources, If you are looking for User Research Question which you can ask to users are here
http://www.adaptivepath.com/ideas/e000041
http://www.designstaff.org/articles/questions-to-ask-before-user-research-2011-11-18.html

Must read articles on Web for any User Experience Professionals

INFORMATION ARCHITECT (IA)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/17/starting-out-organized-website-content-planning-the-right-way

USER INTERFACE DESIGNER (UI)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/smashing-book-1/user-interface-design-in-modern-web-applications/

USER EXPERIENCE DESIGNER (UX)
http://uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com/2011/03/15/why-user-experience-cannot-be-designed/

WEB DESIGNER
http://www.thebestdesigns.com/2011/01/29/the-role-of-a-web-designer/
http://thinkvitamin.com/user-science/user-experience/ux-professional-isnt-a-real-job/
http://www.andybudd.com/archives/2011/07/visual_designers_are_just_as_important_a/

FRONT END DEVELOPER
http://www.guardian.co.uk/help/insideguardian/2009/sep/28/blogpost 

ADDITIONAL RESOURCE LINKS
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/06/22/following-a-web-design-process/
http://usabilitygeek.com/the-difference-between-usability-and-user-experience/
http://www.fragmentlabs.com/blog/what-do-web-designers-do-or-at-least-what-should-they-do-24
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/07/26/defending-the-generalists-in-the-web-design-industry/

Happy New Year - Neudesic India

Small clip which shows how we Neudesic Team celebrates our day to day life. We are highly skilled professionals but still love to do mastis and celebrations. Welcome Happy New Year 2012!!!

Neudesic UX Family

Pulse - Make your Enterprise Social with Neudesic Pulse

PULSE - My Company's Product - one of the best Microsoft technology product in market.
if i have to explain in one line - This is the application by which Fresher/new joinee in organization can directly talk with CEO on the first day in office. We folks are very regularly using this application to have all our official interaction. Best part conversation is very transparent and other folks can give their views. In a way system creates strong repository of different subjects discussed by different employees, Groups. I f needed there are ways to do private discussions too. This has all the features which facebook or twitter kind of app need. Best part in my org people are using this only for professional purpose.


I will write in more detail about this with screen shots.


here is video - please have a tour to get feel of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uwYAIH8EX8&feature=share

Content Query Web Part in SharePoint 2010

CQWP - One of the coolest and probably most frequently used Web Parts in SharePoint – a great control that allowed you to display content aggregations to the users. 
http://erikswenson.blogspot.com/2010/03/sharepoint-2010-content-query-for-blog.html

New face of Neudesic.com - SharePoint 2010

My company Neudesic just released a new and improved public website that was built on SharePoint 2010 and does some cool things with CRM. Luckily I have got a chance to be part of this process from UX side. I am very proud to say that this is great example of SharePoint + UX + CRM + other technologies. This is a great example of how Rich public facing site built on SharePoint 2010 can look and definitely showcases some great features!Press Release - Click here

There’s even a cool contest where you could win a Kinect (I’m not eligible.)

Note - Still some improvements are there, we folks are working on it, very soon we will see one more improved version of this.

Request
Please share your feedbacks/views/comments, this will help us.

very happy to share that my photo is also there on Career page :) - Click here

How to float DIV to bottom under PARENT DIV

while doing development i got into this interesting task where i need to have my DIV B in bottom right.

there are different ways

1. giving top margin

2. giving bottom margin

.etc .etc....

finally after some browsing on net got superb answer which solves my problem.

its here in pic, if any one has still question please feel free to ask

How to create table data or grid data in Sketchflow

This demo explains how to create Grid | Table with some datas in blend/Sketchflow.
1. Dragging Data grid on workspace
2. Creating sample data
3. Binding Sample data with grdi

Must read - UX Books

Some of the must read books on UX

Must

• The Design of Everyday Things" by Donald A. Norman

• Don't make me think" by Steve Krug
• Sketching User Experience - Bill Buxton
• About Face 3: The essentials of interaction design" by Cooper, Reimann & Cronin

• GUI Bloopers 2.0" by Jeff Johnson

• The Humane Interface" by Jef Raskin

• Designing Web Usability" by Jakob Nielsenp

• Designing the Obvious" by Robert Hoekman Jr

Others

• Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data by Stephen Few

• Web Form Design by Luke Wroblewski

• Interaction Design by Rogers, Preece et al.

• Designing Interfaces by Jenifer Tidwell

• The Visual Display of Quantitative Data by Edward Tufte's

• User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky

- Free Book on net - http://worrydream.com/MagicInk/MagicInk.pdf

some of the great informations are here - http://commadot.com/books-for-ux/

Accessibility Testing

----- ll write some thing here... :)

here is the great web based automated tool - http://wave.webaim.org/

this gives complete report with comments

Storyboarding - A Great Concept We[Software folks :)] addapted from Animation World

Storyboarding an existing great concept, we software folks adapted it from animation world. I just tried to explain storyboarding in laymen language by giving actual definition and showing the similarity. Just give an idea have done basic Ball animation in Expression blend and created silverlight file.

Storyboarding an existing concept

View more presentations from Rajesh nair.

Worst Examples of User Experience

One of the worst Example, have eve`seen.. feeling very sad to see this on Microsoft Official site.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2006/sep06/09-19visio2007.mspx

Functionality side – a great great great feature

Experience side - user has to find SEARCH from SEARCHs for search -

Worst Part - Can anyone tell me what is the difference between WEB and BING search[ please look at this attached image] .... WITHOUT CLICKING It... I tried with 10 IT professionals.. again sorry to say, none of them were able to tell this :(. I will be very thankful, if anyone can pass this to Presspass team.

Really Sorry, if i am hurting some one... the only intention is to bring out this point as an User to make our life comfortable.

Example on Telerik site

http://demos.telerik.com/aspnet-ajax/ajax/examples/common/loadingusercontrols/defaultcs.aspx

CSS Compress Tool

Today, while doing search on net for CSS Compression mechanisim came to knwo about some of the very interesting free online Compression Tools.
here we go -
1. CSS Compression Tool
2. Compression Tool
What exactly it does ?
Basically it takes out all the extra spaces, alignments or seperations and makes it ugly:).
Yes, it gives good light file size.. which matters a lot and this adds great advantage for any project.

CSS Hack for browsers -

Hi all, browser compatibility one of the most complicated issue we face during our development. So whenever i get into problem, go and search on internet. Here, I like to share Paul Irish.

/***** Selector Hacks ******/

/* IE6 and below */
* html #uno  { color: red }

/* IE7 */
*:first-child+html #dos { color: red }

/* IE7, FF, Saf, Opera  */
html>body #tres { color: red }

/* IE8, FF, Saf, Opera (Everything but IE 6,7) */
html>/**/body #cuatro { color: red }

/* Opera 9.27 and below, safari 2 */
html:first-child #cinco { color: red }

/* Safari 2-3 */
html[xmlns*=""] body:last-child #seis { color: red }

/* safari 3+, chrome 1+, opera9+, ff 3.5+ */
body:nth-of-type(1) #siete { color: red }

/* safari 3+, chrome 1+, opera9+, ff 3.5+ */
body:first-of-type #ocho {  color: red }

/* saf3+, chrome1+ */
@media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio:0) {
#diez  { color: red  }
}

/* iPhone / mobile webkit */
@media screen and (max-device-width: 480px) {
#veintiseis { color: red  }
}


/* Safari 2 - 3.1 */
html[xmlns*=""]:root #trece  { color: red  }

/* Safari 2 - 3.1, Opera 9.25 */
*|html[xmlns*=""] #catorce { color: red  }

/* Everything but IE6-8 */
:root *> #quince { color: red  }

/* IE7 */
*+html #dieciocho {  color: red }

/* Firefox only. 1+ */
#veinticuatro,  x:-moz-any-link  { color: red }

/* Firefox 3.0+ */
#veinticinco,  x:-moz-any-link, x:default  { color: red  }



/***** Attribute Hacks ******/

/* IE6 */
#once { _color: blue }

/* IE6, IE7 */
#doce { *color: blue; /* or #color: blue */ }

/* Everything but IE6 */
#diecisiete { color/**/: blue }

/* IE6, IE7, IE8 */
#diecinueve { color: blue\9; }

/* IE7, IE8 */
#veinte { color/*\**/: blue\9; }

/* IE6, IE7 -- acts as an !important */
#veintesiete { color: blue !ie; } /* string after ! can be anything */

UT Tool - Problem Steps Recorder – win7

Problem Steps Recorder – win7 [I m not sure about winXP or vista]
Purpose --- Records screen[visual] + User’s reaction[text]
Result----- MHML
Who can use ?
- support engineers as
- software developers
- UX engineers
Benefits---
- Easier to receive a bug or problem ticket in much more detail.
- Developers will be enable to reproduce the steps that is causing an error
- Support engineers or help desk responsibles will be able to visualize and catch the problem
- Screenshots with very light file size

Demo - http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090111/windows-7-problem-steps-recorder-miracle-tool/

Windows 7 Shutdown misleads User

Windows 7 shutdown mislead users
Reason -
1. On mouse over Shutdown and Arrow gets highlighted the same time. but other side.. both have different purpose
Shutdown - to shutdown system
Arrow - This gives different options

I have tested the same with different users, most of the users were not able to get Shutdown in first effort.

What happens... when user try to shutdown
Start >>Shutdown and Mouse Over Shutdown [shutdown and arrow gets highlight same time]

How it misleads
1. User's purpose is to shutdown OS, but because of Arrow User gets distracted
2. User clicks on Arrow, which shows some technical words like HIBERNATE | SWITCH user.. which are not common for all users.
3. Important there is no SHUTDOWN option here.

Solution -
Simply, both should be highlighted separately.

I got to know this, when my wife was trying to shutdown my WIN 7 OS... it was very interesting to see her effort :)

Drive C Partition on Dell Laptop

Love to share here.. may this is very useful for folks who are looking for partition manager for Windows 7. Story is like.. i have got new Dell Laptop from my company. It has only C-Drive with 220GB, no other drives. I strongly believe multimedia folks should have minium 2 drives on their PC. I got into problem, because am not good into admin kind of stuffs... was looking for solution. I did search on net and got number of blogs and forums. Strange.. most of the responses on net was negative. Finally did search on CNET. COM, really got the exact solution - paragon partition manager. Its wonderful, but after installing this.. i got into another problem. The moment i restarted my system, got message saying BOOTMGR IS MISSING - RESTART SYSTEM. You may also face this same problem.. NO need to Worry. Just follow this steps
1. Put your Windows 7 CD or DVD
2. Say RECOVERY
3. Select your operating system
4. This will restore your missing file and restart the system
5. This time, it will show you the complete process of partition

good luck!!!

Visual Tab Experience - Unique Feature

Latest opera 10.10 browser have some interesting UI features
Visual Tab – very similar in the line of WINDOWS 7 TASK BAR…

Unite – It supports file sharing….

check out this - http://www.opera.com/browser/

It gives me feel .. that browser is becoming very high end platform with great features, like we all know Google is coming with Web-based Chrome OS. I am curious to see and experience new world of web.

My Experience with Sketchflow - Wireframe Prototype

My First hand on SKETCHFLOW [expression blend], its great!! tool... it has really good tools and feature to create DYNAMIC Wireframe Prototype.
Great features are
1. Artistic HTML elements.. like text field, drop down, combo box.. .etc
- very stylish - drag and drop kind of tool
2. Great flexibility to do interaction part
3. Sketchflow player to see output, it has good tools to give feedback on run time.
4. Map option - this works like sitemap
5. Connector -- which is very helpful to create parent, child and connectors
6. Style sheets -- once we done with our low prototype, it helps to make it attractive colorful prototype

i m in just starting phase.. love to explore it.. definitely i will come up with good very basic level tutorial on this...
Demo
steps
1. Download Demo
2. Unzip
3. play TESTPAGE.HTML

3D particle system

while going through one discussion, got interested topic.... its about 3d particle system... very frank . i havent done any work or study on this.. m writing here only those points what i got from discussion.. hope u folks will like it..

Particle ? -- natural smoke and explosions to geometric or organic abstract motion graphics design elements.

better instead of writing ... give you good links and softwares here..

examples
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnTyvWdHDvE&NR=1
2. http://www.openframeworks.cc/gallery
3. http://vimeo.com/6284199

Softwares -
1. http://www.trapcode.com/products_particular.html
2. http://www.nvidia.com/object/physx_new.html
3. http://www.flight404.com/blog/ [blog]
4. http://processing.org/
5. http://www.openframeworks.cc/

Third Party Window should get open in New Tab - "Latest Browsers"

There is one small .. or i can say this small is bigger than big issue ... :) sounds bit odd rite..
But true friends, this time i really got stuck.. my MENTAL MODEL is completely blocked.
I am trying my best to solve...
For this m putting this point to different people to get my answer.
ha ha ha. let me come to point..

This is about how to OPEN THIRD party site from your webpage
Q1. should it be in Same Window ?
Q2. Should it be in NEW WINDOW ?

Really love to see comments here on this

I would like to go for NEW WINDOW.. reason its very simple.. all latest browsers are having TABNAVIGATION which makes your browsing experience great with pseudo feature. For this point.. i have done small story...

here you go...

First Scenario –

Rajesh -- during visiting Site A -- got to see some interesting content and clicked on that.. finally got opened THIRD PARTY site B.

Here also there are good interesting information r there so by clicking B1 >> B1-a -- I am at B1-a










Again If I want to go to A --- Need to CLICK – browser’s Back button THREE times [ this really irritates user because he is not clear how many times he need to click]


Second Scenario –
The same time if Site B opens in new window from Site A and go to the same path

















In this case its very clear, where exactly i am.. and m not losing my PARENT SITE.. it will be there in BROWSER'S TAB NAVIGATION. this part works for me as a MAIN NAVIGATION..

Reason—all the latest browsers are having TAB concept, we can say Pseudo Navigation[notebook tabs] it clearly tells user about all the sites which are opened and help user to navigate based on his/her need.

I strongly believe... THIRD PARTY should open in New window only.

Like to hear from others.... request if any survey or metrics is there on same .. please share with me... Thanks - rajesh