Data flow diagrams are used mostly to explain how data runs through a system. It is important therefore to make it easy to understand and at the same time comprehensive. It aids business developers and design teams to better understand data processing and use the information to improve the system.

The following are several pointers on how to make better data flow designs.

Related posts:

• Eight UI Design Patterns You Should Consider
• How to Build a Better Design Experience
• Writing Tips For Web Designers
• Designing Websites for a Better Mobile User Experience
• 7 Best Lessons on Web Page Design That Apple Can Teach Us
• Tips to Evaluate Design User Experience

Tip#1

Use a top-down expansion method. This technique allows you to begin with an overview of the material and systematically go on down to the different levels of detail for analysis. With this method, you can specifically target each detail.

Tip#2

You will now have a series of diagrams that clearly identify the sources of inputs and outputs. The initial diagram represents the entire system which is being studied.

Tip#3

From the context diagram you can identify the major functions of the inputs and outputs. This can be referred to as your Level 1 diagram.

Tip#4

Once the external inputs and outputs are determined, you can then pinpoint the relationships that they have with one another. You can show your audience how these details interact and subsequently affect each other.

Tip#5

You can then go on to the lower levels of data processing, showing how each component of each level interacts with each other and how each level in turn affects the lower levels.

Tip#6

The best way to create the visual presentation is to make use of the established symbols for graphic representation. These will now be discussed in narrow detail.

Symbols used in Data Flow Diagrams

1. External entity

The external entity is input or output which is not being considered or is not part of the current investigation or study. An external entity is represented with an oval and is most often labeled for easy identification.

Image by shutterstock

Normally, the information represented within a system is taken from or forwarded onto an external source or recipient. It is important to provide unique identifiers for each entity.

2. Process

A process indicates how data is handled within the system. A rectangular box is used in this case with corresponding identification numbers and descriptive elements. The location where the process occurs is indicated (department or perhaps hardware). And the process is described briefly with an adjective or a phrase.
In labeling, make sure not to use vague terms. Names must clearly indicate the respective roles or functions. The description must be understood by the person using the diagram.

3. Data flow

This demonstrates how information flows from its source to its destination. The symbol used for this is usually a line with arrowheads showing the direction of flow of data.

4. Data store

This is considered as storage for information within the system. It is signified by an open-ended narrow rectangle. This information could be documents waiting to be processed or sales ledgers waiting to be analyzed or audited, for example.

5. Resource flow

It demonstrates the flow of physical material from one point to another.
Finally, the last crucial step in making the data flow diagram using the top-down expansion method is knowing when to stop the breakdown process. This is usually somewhere around level 2 or level 3 of the diagram. Take note that generally, a business process diagram should not contain more than 12 process boxes.
Here are some useful tips on how to determine when to stop the analysis.

1. A process with a single input/output data flow then it is obvious that there is no need for further analysis.
2. A process that can be adequately described by a single descriptive phrase needs no further explanation.
3. Ask yourself the crucial question, “Will further analysis affect or influence your decisions?” If the answer to the question is a determined “No,” then there is no more need for additional analysis.

With the ever-increasing availability of technology, it is much easier to create these data flow designs and make them interactive. There are numerous software programs available for just that purpose. The key to a successful presentation is to keep the information clear and concise.” All points must be laid down for easy access and ensure that nothing is left out.

There are really no specific rules for making data flow diagrams. However, it is critical to carefully scrutinize the source text that is the subject of investigation to cull out all significant data and break it down for further analysis.This is a key elemnent of the design process that should never be ignored.

So in the end, if you want to have a better flow design then you need to get your data flow diagram right. One school of thought has it that, without a good data flow diagram, you can’t have a better design. Another school of thought also has it that a data flow diagram is just a theoretical representation and that you do not necessarily have to create a great data flow before you can do a good design. Of course, there could be arguments for and against each of the schools of thought. I am not sure the debate will end anytime soon. But whatever position you may have, it is still important that you have a data flow before doing any design.

Related posts:

1. Ten Tips to Create an Effective Logo Design
2. Approach Tips to Design and Market Your Mobile App
3. 7 Tips to Find a Design Job Through Facebook
4. 10 Logo Design Tips to Create Professional Logo Design
5. Tips to Evaluate Design User Experience
6. Tips for Web 2.0 Style Design
7. Tips to Create Business Cards Attractive Design
8. Bitmap Data Manipulation in Flash ActionScript 3
9. The Factors behind the Design Value
10. How to Design for Your Target Audience

At this time each year, people around the world celebrate Valentine’s Day as a display of love and care. Many people including designers and clients want to add a red Valentine’s theme to their websites and social profiles. These themes come in different Valentine’s Day icons, backgrounds and elements, etc.

So in today’s pack,  I would like to present to you a new Valentine’s Day vector pack that includes a Valentine’s  background, icons and cartoon characters. The Valentine’s  elements in this pack are all in vector format, which makes it easy for you to modify them. To download the vector pack, members can click the download link at the end of this post.

Related posts:

• Premium Apple Product Vector Pack
• New Office Objects Vector Pack
• Vector Logo Templates Pack Giveaway for Members
• 15 Unique Seamless Vector Patterns for Your Design
• Premium Media Player Icons Vector Pack
• Premium Business Icons Vector Pack
• 15 Hand Drawn Social Media Icons Vector Pack

Our new Valentine’s vector pack includes 10 vector elements that you can use in your design about Valentine’s Day. The preview below gives you an idea about the content of the Valentine’s Day vector pack. The original artwork included in the pack is in Adobe Illustrator format:

If you are already a Premium Member then just sign in and you can download this full pack that includes Valentine objects in vector format with the source Illustrator files and large preview. Not a member? Sign up today or read more about our Premium Member area.

Related posts:

1. Premium Business Icons Vector Pack
2. New Office Objects Vector Pack
3. 15 Hand Drawn Social Media Icons Vector Pack
4. Premium Media Player Icons Vector Pack
5. Premium Social Media Vector Icon Pack
6. Vector Logo Templates Pack Giveaway for Members
7. 15 Unique Seamless Vector Patterns for Your Design
8. Freebies: GoMedia Vector Pack 9
9. Free Google Plus Icons to Download
10. Happy New Year, Happy New Look Graphic Mania!!

Design contests are always a lot of fun. They tend to be challenging and interesting and really expand your creativity. This year there were a large number of design contests for professionals, amateurs and even children. Each one has given people the opportunity to show off what they are able to create, no matter what the genre.

These five pages show off the design winners for five different contests from last year. Their innovative, interesting and creative designs impressed judges from different contests and could lead to big things in the future.

Related posts:

•  Talent Showcase: The Digital Art of Kevin Roodhorst
• Brilliant Examples of Photo Manipulation and Illustration Artworks of Lim Si Ping
• 30 Eye-Catching Illustration Artworks of Shadow Chen
• The Extraordinary Illustrations of Justin Maller
• A Journey to the Arabian Nights with Julian Breton’s Calligraphy
• Featuring the Amazing Digital Art of Andrée Wallin
• Amazing Concept Art and Environments Design of Frank Hong

International Design Contest

This neat contest gave a varied list of genre possibilities and set out to find the best of the best from around the world. Possibly the most inspiring piece of the entire contest was the Best In Show, an essay in the form of a two part mailer that gives an intimate, beautiful talk on the anxiety of the future and the necessity of always moving forward no matter what. Open, honest and thoughtful, it definitely earned its place in the number one slot.

It was judged by Michael Osborne of Michael Osborne Design Inc., Clint Runge of Archrival and Richard Westendorf of Landor Associates.

.

Poster Design Contest

This poster contest was a wonderful design challenge that was open to people all over the world. They ended up with a huge number of submissions, which were first cut down to seventy submissions in the final round. But that had to be cut down once again to just ten submissions, which judge Robynne Raye of Modern Dog Design Co said was the most difficult part of the entire process. In fact, she claimed that it was the hardest contest she has ever had to judge thanks to the huge number of amazing submissions.

From Spain to Israel, the ten winners brought creativity and innovation from every corner of the globe. You have to flip through them to get the real feel for how hard the contestants worked on their entries. So be sure to take a look.

Logo Design Contest

Logo design can be a more difficult category to judge for a contest, given the wide range of audiences such a piece may be aimed at. But this contest yielded some great results, both in minimalist and complex designs. Most of the winners were from around the USA, but there were two winners in the foreign admission category, from Canada and Croatia.

According to judge Von Glitschka of Glitschka Studios, there were both some amazing and some awful submissions in the contest. He had no problem narrowing it down to 30 entries, but then found it very hard to find the final ten. While he says they were all great, he has a special fondness for the Peace, Love, Desserts logo.

UK WorldSkills Contest

WordSkills London is a non-profit that is running the Have A Go campaign, which encourages a million people in the UK to try a new skill they did not possess before. This contest was for medals designed by children across the country. There were two winners, both of them13-year-olds, named Arash Manshadi and Shivani Kava, from Middlesex and London, respectively. There will be more than 200 medals made off of their designs. They were able to present them on stage to the runners-up and other winners of the actual WorldSkills challenge, as well as take a day trip to meet the people who will be responsible to making them.

Illinois State Fair Contest

The Illinois State Fair had a number of contests this year. One was a children’s contest for design in three categories: T-Shirt, Paper Session Cover and Banquet Program Cover. The winners were middle schoolers from Region 11 and Region 9, who will now have their work used in official merchandise for the state.

Conclusion

So ends the design contest year for 2011. But contests for 2012 are already opening for submissions, so if you are interested you should get searching for them. The exposure alone makes it worth the effort.

Related posts:

1. Graphic Mania Best Content Contest, and the Winners are…
2. The Winners of DepositPhotos Free Stock Photos Contest
3. The Winners of One Year Memberships of Vandelay Premier Contest
4. Graphic Mania Contest Winners are…
5. The Winners of 1800 Free Vector Downloads from Big Vectorious
6. Graphic Mania Best Web Site Contest – Sparkling Creativity!!
7. Graphic Mania Best Content Contest Ended
8. Graphic Mania Best Content Contest Extended
9. The Winners of Template Monster Free WordPress Themes
10. The Winners of $199 Value Pixmac Subscription

There are millions of free fonts available on the web. However, grunge fonts deserve special attention for their unique appearance, which goes beyond the typical typeface design and reaches the levels, where fine art starts.

Grunge fonts with distorted lines, fancy glyphs arrangement and ornamentally-rich backgrounds possess magic power to amaze, astonish and surprise. Among the myriad of grunge fonts we have selected the most prominent and free typefaces, which are presented for you below. These free grunge fonts are capable of transforming any project into a masterpiece.

Related posts:

• Best Usable Free Fonts of 2011
• Free Fonts to Use in Your Design
• 20 Fresh and Free Graffiti Fonts to Download
• 20 Free Fonts for a Youthful Design
• 10 Funny Type and Typography Tools
• Best Grunge Free Fonts on the Web

Saltpeter N Fungus Grunge Font

VTKS Bright Grunge Font

Dirtybag Bold trial Grunge Font

Skin & Bones Grunge Font

Urbana Grunge Font

Hawaii Lover Grunge Font

RawStreetWall Grunge Font

Hawaii Killer Grunge Font

Dirt2SoulStalker Grunge Font

Rosebud Antique Grunge Font

Hardcorium Grunge Font

VTKS Urban Time Bold Grunge Font

Conspiracy Grunge Font

Rusted Plastic Grunge Font

YouMurdererBB Grunge Font

BandungHardcoreGP Grunge Font

Vtks Blank Grunge Font

Vtks Desgaste Grunge Font

Easytrouble Grunge Font

Nightstalker-Trial Grunge Font

I hope you enjoy these grunge fonts and find it useful in your design

Related posts:

1. Extraordinary Free Fonts Collection
2. 1000+ High Quality Free Grunge Textures, Icons, Brushes and Fonts
3. 20 Fresh and Free Graffiti Fonts to Download
4. 20 Free Fonts for Your Creative Projects
5. Superb Collection of Free Calligraphy Fonts to Download
6. Free Fonts to Use in Your Design
7. 10 Gorgeous Free Fonts For Web Designers
8. Free Fabulous Bitmap Pixel Fonts
9. 20 Free Fonts for a Youthful Design
10. 25 Free Graffiti Fonts for Designers

To test a website efficiently, a UX designer must develop a site with certain features that can present relevant information to the end-user as well as give pointers to the owner. Since it is important that people feel positive when navigating an online site, a developer must meet every potential demand that customers usually use to associate with internet buying.

Of course, it is necessary that the developer develop a website in mind with design user experience since customers must become attracted to buy products advertised on the site.

Related posts:

• Eight UI Design Patterns You Should Consider
• How to Build a Better Design Experience
• Writing Tips For Web Designers
• Designing Websites for a Better Mobile User Experience
• 7 Best Lessons on Web Page Design That Apple Can Teach Us
• Convince the Average User to Change to a Non-IE Browser
• The Seven Deadly Sins of Using Templates

Tip # 1: Test Usability

A website is on the internet to help people to get their needs met. Customers will find it easier to use a website when its development is in good taste. A UX developer must develop a site to test for usability from customers by using design user experience that will be sure to leave a feeling of achievement.

To enhance proper design user experience from the end-user, the UX designer must develop a site with various characteristics in mind to make sure of usability. The designer should see to it that there are regular upkeep done to deal with all problems that have to do with relevance. This means that regular content is always added to the site to keep readers interested, thus, they will become returning customers. Other things that the UX developer should look for are relevant information such as the ways the content on the site attract the interest of the end-user, if the content presented serves the purpose of the website and if the site is easy to find.

Image by shutterstock

A website is there for the benefit of all that is using it. This will help to make sure that user experience is reliable, responsive and useful as well as defined. Of course, the better the UX designer designs the website, the more design user experiences he or she will gather. Check Tools for Web Design and Evaluation.

Tip #2: Have Feedback Survey

Whenever a UX designer designs a site, he or she should design it in such a way that the site enables the owner to get feedback from customers, thus, giving preference to design user experience. A feedback survey can allow the website owner to gather information in various ways. The website feedback can allow the owner to know if the user will recommend the site to others and why. The feedback survey can allow the owner to decide how each person view the products sold on the site and if they would recommend them to other people. The owner might be curious about how he or she can improve the products sold on the website and a survey feedback will be of help to him or her. One of the most important feedback the owner can gather to check the website is how competitive the site is in comparison to others on the internet. Check How Designers should Read Clients and Making Sense of Clients’ Inputs.

Tip # 3: Using Google Analytics

A UX designer must create a website for better user experiences and this includes using Google Analytics. Without Google Analytics, a website owner is not able to know the statistics on the website. The owner will be able to tell whether the website is meeting his or her business goals as well as to know changes in traffic over a period. In addition, having Google Analytics on a website can allow the owner to track conversions, know keywords used, locate traffic, search traffic and know the effects that social networks have on the website.

Tip # 4: Understand the Important Areas in the Design

The role of a UX designer is to understand the most important role the design plays in enhancing design user experience to the end-user. Understanding the important areas in the design will result in three things. These are introduction, consumption and reaction.

Image by shutterstock

Once a customer visits a website, he or she can easily form an opinion in a matter of seconds. Therefore, the UX designer must use carefulness when designing the site because first impressions are lasting. Since content is king on any website, the end-user will visit the site in most cases to find content that is of value to him or her. It is the job of the UX designer to keep the end-user’s attention by designing the website with great colors, layout, and proper presentation as well to get design user experiences.

Tip # 5: Get Feedback from Other Designers

When working remotely, UX designers can fall into technical problems and get discouraged. It is therefore wise to allow other designers to chip in the development process by giving their opinions to keep creativity flowing. To keep creativity flowing, the UX designer should communicate the design to other designers regularly until the end of the job. The designer can do this by using videoconference software to communicate. Although not all designers choose to use slides as a means of communication, there are still some that think slides are good ways of staying in contact with each other in the same field.

To gain great user experience, a designer needs to talk to other designers when working on a job. A UX designer can seek opinions from another person in the same field by allowing the designer to criticize his or her job, suggesting ideas, think visually, characterize tasks and expose limitations.

Tip # 6: Accessibility

To build a successful website, the UX designer must consider how assessable the site will be to design user experience. Accessibility may involve using technologies that offer easy usage to the end users.
With UX designers evaluating how a website affects design user experience, the need is fast growing to design websites with all the necessary accessories attached to them. To do the job of designing websites that can bring feedback to the owner, each designer should always consider the needs of the customer first.

Related posts:

1. Designing Websites for a Better Mobile User Experience
2. How to Build a Better Design Experience
3. INSPIRE – Adobe Experience Design Team new site
4. MAX sessions on Adobe TV: user Experience by Erwan Paccard
5. Designing User Friendly Navigation Menus
6. Tips for Web 2.0 Style Design
7. Tips For Better Data Flow Design
8. 7 Tips to Find a Design Job Through Facebook
9. Integration of Interior Design and the Web Design
10. Adobe User group in Egypt new site