Editor’s note: Contributor Marcy Kellar is a SharePoint Strategist and User Experience Designer. Follow her @marcykellar
Last summer, Marcy Kellar began a weekly series of her top picks of UX articles for that week. Marcy is going to pick up the series again so we’ve gone back to publish her original articles.
Here are the top 5 UX articles on branding this week:
1 - Guide to Website Navigation Design Patterns
In web design, there are certain common design patterns that are used for interaction. Site navigation has a wide variety of common and familiar design patterns that can be used as a foundation for building effective information architecture for a website. This guide covers popular site navigation design patterns.
Marcy Kellar: This article outlines patterns of navigation that includes description of use andpros/cons. It gives a fantastic overview and plenty of pictures to better understand navigation design patterns.
2 - The Elements Of Navigation | Smashing UX Design
This article is about the tiniest of details that goes into creating the main centerpiece of your digital product. The construction of the elements of your navigation, the most important aid you can possibly give to your users as they are constantly seeking a reason to walk out on you.
Marcy Kellar: My favorite part of this article is the Six Navigation Design Guidelines found toward the end. Print them out and put them on your cubicle wall; then live by them.
3 - Pleasure and Pain » Knowing Why Beats Knowing How
Last year around this time, I started following an eating plan called The 4-Hour Body by Tim Ferriss. At the same time, I was feverishly traveling the globe presenting my talk Design Principles: The Philosophy of UX .
Marcy Kellar: In SharePoint, often the focus is on "how" to do something, which makes sense considering the breadth and depth of the application’s features. This article makes an argument for knowing "why’ you are implementing. It’s a nugget of wisdom in a short post with many links worthy of clicking. Whitney Hess is well-known for her UX insights. She’s an industry thought leader and an enthusiastic blogger. If you aren’t familiar with her, I hope this article serves as an entry point for the rest of her blog.
4 - Overcoming Halfhearted User Adoption | UX Magazine
In 1996, I was a database developer at AT&T Solutions (now defunct). AT&T Solutions had two separate payroll systems, one for AT&T Solutions and one for AT&T corporate. Both were excruciatingly slow.
Marcy Kellar: Every one is talking about user adoption but what is it? What does failure look like? What causes failure and what moves you closer to success? This article provides a simplified understanding of user adoption. What I liked the most about this article was the authors transparency and use of examples.
5 - Design Tip: Never Use Black by Ian Storm Taylor
One of the most important color tricks I’ve ever learned was to avoid using the color black in my work. Mrs. Zamula, my childhood art teacher, first warned me about black when I was in middle school. And I heard the same again multiple times at RISD.
Marcy Kellar: This article encourages designers to look closely at areas of color you assume is black and provides examples you may find surprising.