It's sometimes said that usability professionals are good at finding problems, but not quite as good at coming up with creative solutions. This article describes a creativity technique called SCAMPER that will help you effortlessly generate dozens of design solutions to any usability problem you identify.

The content of any website is paramount to a site’s success.

High quality content, regardless of whether the site aims to inform, entertain, or sell a product, will increase the site’s likelihood of converting visitors. But beyond providing high quality content, a site also needs to organize that content in a way that makes it accessible to visitors.

Prioritizing your content is one of the best ways to make sure your visitors are finding the information you want them to find, and that they want to find. But figuring out what content is most important and how to arrange it to reflect that can get confusing, fast.

In many cases, designers and content creators feel like it’s all important, and should all get equal billing. But that’s not doing your visitors any favors. You need to get to the root of what’s most important to them, and then provide that in the most user-friendly way possible.

Many users who interact with websites everyday still don't have enough knowledge to actively explore a content-rich site. Even if the IA of a site was architected exceptionally well, a user lacking confidence could still find it difficult to use. This would likely have to do with perceived risks associated with interacting with extraneous page elements. Understanding this principle is what makes sites like google so popular and user friendly.

Although there are some legitimate examples of malicious activities being carried out by accidentally interacting with page elements, the biggest reason users dislike interacting with elements they're not confident about, is that it could cost them time. Remember, time savings is at the forefront of many users minds. If interacting with a banner could cause the brewer to crash, it would be better to avoid banners. If scrolling down a page causes my mouse to unintentionally expand a bunch of drop-down lists, it would be better if I didn't have to.

Conclusion

Stop being chained to conventions. Lets assume 3 things: 1. You know who your user is. 2. You know what you want your user to do, in a prioritized list. 3. You've read this article. With these assumptions, you can start doing something important:

STOP FOLLOWING EVERYONE ELSE

This post represents a foundation of understanding user needs & applying cognitive sciences to user experience. With some of the techniques I've talked about, you can think about revolutionizing how users interact with your brand online. Remember, before the introduction of the mouse everyone was interested in optimizing keyboard input.

Final thought - If designing for the lazy allows us to access the masses; lets figure out a way to make the lazy even lazier.

As companies understand the importance of users to their success, they move from viewing UX designers as problem solvers (“how will we present all this information in a understandable way?”) to a more deep, interwoven process (“what information should we present to the user?”) and further on to a strategic view that is part of their business vision (“what is our next product?”).

In this MasterNewMedia guide you will find a highly curated selection of guides, tutorials and visual samples collections that can greatly help you in understanding better what makes a great web site design and to how to distinguish a design that work from a cheapo, splashy, all-smoke-and-no-fire design template.

What is important to understand in fact is that the web design principles and best practices are not useful just for blogs, but also and even more for any kind of content-driven or service-driven website that you may want to build.

For example a few critical items that most new web sites have to take into consideration are:

• Above the fold: People should feel at home immediately when they land on your site. They do not have to scroll down to see where they are, who you are and what you have to offer them.

Page legibility: Do not pretend to be Monet. Virtuosisms in web design is beautiful to see, but they it is not required. What really counts is whether your web page communicates clearly what you have to offer in a handful of seconds.

Loading speed: Each and every design component you add on your web pages (widgets, plugins, Flash elements, etc.) contributes to slow down the overall load time of your content. Remember that speed is now one of the ranking factors that Google uses to rank your website inside Google search engine result pages.

Simplicity: Stay simple. Do not throw as much content and calls for action on your pages as you possibly can. Start by focusing your design layout on a few, valuable content items and then gradually guide your reader in discovering more of it.

Quick Tips for Creating a Mobile Optimized Site

Last year mobile web usage increased 148% worldwide. In the near future as smarthpones become more and more ubiquitous this number will continue to shoot up. As a developer, the time has arrived for you to seriously consider whether you should begin accommodating your mobile audience.

5 Can´t-Miss Usability Tips for Mobile Website Designs

Finding your way around a majority of the mobile websites that exist has become a nightmare with the lack of proper usability being implemented into their designs.

This has caused the quality of designs (especially the mobile usability factor) to decrease on a larger scale when compared to the sites that not only practice good mobile aesthetics, but allow their users a smooth transition between the regular site to an enticing experience on their mobile devices.

Because of the instability in a lot of the mobile web design information that is being distributed on the web, a lot of websites have very poor mobile interface designs. Below, we’re going to cover a few simple, yet prominent steps to designing a much more effective interface and increasing the quality of a mobile websites usability.

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Some of the content is a bit old but overall it's a great collection of resources..