Trends in UI Design

Trends in UI Design

WRITTEN BY JOSHUA JOHNSON, PUBLISHED ON 25TH APRIL 2012.
FILED IN GRAPHICS.

I’m always on the lookout for new design trends. It’s fascinating to me how certain ideas get picked up by so many designers and implemented in countless different ways.
 
Today we’re going to specifically explore the world of user interface design and see if we can spot any currently popular trends. Almost more than any other area of design, interfaces are extremely subject to the ever changing whims of designers and if you’re not in the loop, you could find yourself creating UI that feels outdated. Read on to see what’s trending!

Design Guidelines for Windows 8 Metro apps

Question I start to hear often: where to find good online resource for Metro UX design guidelines ?

1. Well, when first going to MSDN you’ll find this page “Designing Metro style apps” which I find a bit harsh (hello pictures?):
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh465427

2. Far better is the “UX guidelines for Metro style app development” article on the Blend Insider blog, which in fact is a well organized list of MSDN links grouped by topics:
http://blendinsider.com/technical/ux-guidelines-for-metro-style-app-development-2011-10-21/

3. And then, this awesome “Windows 8 Touch Guidance” document by Microsoft:
http://www.istartedsomething.com/20120223/microsoft-offers-touch-guidance-to-windows-8-metro-app-developers/

UX Anti Patterns for Security on the Web and in the Enterprise

UX Anti Patterns for Security on the Web and in the Enterprise:
I log into my local bank's website quite often. I transfer money
between accounts and all the usual things. Today, when I logged in,
I saw that they've decided to dump the security questions they had
us answer earlier this year and replace them with a completely new
and obscure set. If you don't set the security questions,
you can't get to your bank account.


Don't get between me and my money. Seriously. There's no better
way to get on my bad side.


In addition, they decided to make the questions really different
from the usual set. I'm sure they feel like they're doing the right
thing in the name of security, but here, they have failed. That got
me thinking about security usability and other anti-patterns I've
run into again and again. So here's my rant er.. list of things I
think are stupid when it comes to usability of security approaches.
These are only the front-end (UX) things that people seem to think
are good approaches, but really aren't. I'll leave out the
obvious things like emailing you your forgotten password, accepting
login info in plain text, storing passwords without salted hashes
etc.