Have you heard about the Trunk Test?
This test was proposed by Steve Krugs inside his book Don’t Make me Think and it is aimed to promoted a “Good Web Navigation”.

The test is composed by 6 questions which any web site owner must ask himself with a user perspective in mind.

As Krug states:
Imagine that you’ve been blindfolded and locked in the trunk of a car, then driven around for a while and dumped on a page somewhere deep in the bowels of a Web site. If the page is well designed, when your vision clears you should be able to answer these questions without hesitation:

1. What site is this? (Site ID)
2. What page am I on? (Page name)
3. What are the major sections of this site? (Sections)
4. What are my options at this level? (Local Navigation)
5. Where am I in the scheme of things? (“You are here” indicators)
6. How can I search?

I did the trunk test using the Sweet Sweet web site as an example, below are the results for your better understanding:

What do you think about this test?
Do you take in practice usability tests before launching a new web site?

Don’t forget to get the Steve Krugs book “Don’t make me think” from here.

Yes! We are so glad to tell you that now you can follow us on Dribbble!
We would like to thank Kara Brooks for the invitation

Feel free to comment our first shots and please don’t forget to join us at:
http://dribbble.com/sweetsweetMX

Facebook is currently testing a trial version of its Messenger as a Native application on Windows.
Only a few were selected to test the Facebook Messenger which lets you use Facebook without being on www.facebook.com.

Unlike its version for iOS (Facebook Messenger) the Windows version will let you:

• Chat and message with your friends on Facebook
• See the latest updates from your friends in ticker
• Get quick notifications about what’s going on

Say goodbye to Windows Live Messenger.

What do you think? Will you use it?
Are you between the few ones selected for testing the app?

You can find out more here:
https://www.facebook.com/help/messenger-for-windows

Image from Facebook.com

The festival with 10 years of tradition is the most important in Latinoamerica and takes place in the Metropolitan Park of the city of Leon, Guanajuato in Mexico.

Below you’ll find a photo gallery of the event for your inspiration.

Make sure to attend the festival next year, you cand find mor information on its website:
http://www.festivaldelglobo.com.mx/

This post is part of the Instainspiration series, made possible through the Instagram App.

On past november 16 JQuery announced the release of the final version of jQuery Mobile, named Final 1.0.

JQuery is a library that simplifies the manipulation of the HTML DOM, the handling of events, animations and Ajax interactions through Javascript.

Its mobile version, groups the most popular UI elements among the main mobile operative systems out there, these UI elements are based in the original JQuery version for the Web

and the Jquery UI library, using HTML5.

Download the JQuery Mobile library from here:
http://jquerymobile.com/

You can find the official announcement here:
http://jquerymobile.com/blog/2011/11/16/announcing-jquery-mobile-1-0/

Well, here are some images of the most unusal and creative christmas trees which could break your frozen imagination.

By Apartment Therapy

By Apartment Therapy

By Apartment Therapy

By OnePearlButton

By Laughing Squid

By Always Andri

By Martha and Tom

By Design Boom

By OhDeeDoh

By Pia Jane Bijkerk

By Crate

By Martha Stewart

By Curious Photos

By TechnAbob

By James Buckingham

By Geek Alerts

By Sandbox World

By iClarified

A human initiative

Well, this initiative aims to make known the author team who has been involved in developing a web site (in any kind of situation) in a very original way.

Nowadays it is of bad taste to place your personal mark inside the footer of any of your clients proyects (remember using the phrase “Designed by”, Developed by”?). If this is your purpose, you must take a look to Humans.txt.

How to use it

All we have to do is to create a new .txt file and call it as we actually call the robots.txt.
This fale must be named humans.txt and must be called from you section.

 This is an example of the code we need:
<link type=”text/plain” rel=”author” href=”humans.txt” />

Have you noticed something? Right! You must use the “author” tag to differentiate the file from all of the others, thank you HTML5!

And, who should be included in this file?

From their own words:

“Whoever you want to, provided they wish you to do so. You can mention the developer, the designer, the copywriter, the webmaster, the SEO, SEM or SMO… As you can see, the number of people who may take part of the creation of a site can be big, so the list is almost endless”.

To learn more about it and see some examples, please visit:
http://humanstxt.org/

 And by the way, have you seen ours?

Below I’ll share with you five alternatives to the Lorem Ipsum text which can make our designs funnier.

<html> ipsum – Ideal when coding in HTML

Hipster Ipsum – Bring out the hispter in you!

Bacon Ipsum – For pork lovers!

Vegan Ipsum – And for vegans

Tuna Ipsum – For seafood lovers

Beer Ipsum – And for alcoholics

Cake Ipsum – This is Sweet!

Gangsta Lorem Ipsum – Yeah!

Random Text – Its interface is great!

Tea Party Ipsum – Very funny!

Who doesn’t remember being enclosed in photoshop exporting and exporting dozens of images in order to achieve thoses “special effects” desired by our clients?

Beside the advantages that provides for designers, CSS3 also reduces server requests which previously were saturated because of the overuse of images in our websites (I think they were not websites, rather they were collages).

Below, I introduce you five awesome gradient generators, part of the new properties in CSS3.
Some of these generators are part of our daily work tools, so I hope you’ll find them useful:

Ultimate CSS Gradient Generator by Colorzilla

I personally recommend you this generator whose interface resembles the one of Photoshop, it is very powerful.

CSS3 Gradient Generator by: Damian Galarza

Another excelent gradient generator, courtesy of Damian Galarza

Linear Gradients Generator

Are you an Apple Fan? Well this generator is for you

CSS3 Maker

This is a full CSS3 generator, inside you can find a super useful gradient generator.

CSS3 Please!

Courtesy of Paul Irish and Jonathan Neal, this is special for you console lover!

Image credit: night_owl

Who is Dieter Rams?

Dieter Rams is an Industrial Designer born on 1932 in Wiesbaden, Germany. At the age of 15 Rams started to study Architecture and Interior Design together at the Wiesbaden College, which was based in a Bauhaus model. He then graduated in July 1953 and then he began his career wanting to be an architect but ending up as one of the most important industrial and functional designers.

Needless to say, but the Braun brand name is almost synonymous of the Dieter Rams name. He worked as a Designer in Chief for Braun from 1955 to 1997 where he developed most of his philosophy.

But what made Rams work so famous? Well, it could be his delightful attention to detail, is amazing interface design or his perfect sense of harmony and balance in all of his products. He always designed with three words in mind: “Weniger, aber besser” what in english means “Less but better”.

The 10 principles for a good design

Rams developed 10 principles which defined his approach to Good Design.

According to VITSOE:
“Back in the early 1980s, Dieter Rams was becoming increasingly concerned by the state of the world around him – an impenetrable confusion of forms, colours and noises – Aware that he was a significant contributor to that world, he asked himself an important question: is my design good design? As good design cannot be measured in a finite way he set about expressing the ten most important principles for what he considered was good design.”

 

The 10 commandments are:

1. Good design is innovative.
2. Good design makes a product useful.
3. Good design is aesthetic.
4. Good design makes a product understandable.
5. Good design is unobtrusive.
6. Good design is honest.
7. Good design is long-lasting.
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
9. Good design is environmentally friendly.
10.  Good design is as little design as possible.

Image credit: jforth

Its application in Web Design

As designers (either graphic, ux or web designers) we must not ignore these principles. You may think they were developed with a product approach in mind, but as designers, we all design products no? So let me tell you how we can take the best from them:

- The first one: Innovate

If you don’t innovate you won’t transcend, as Rams, let your work leave a legacy behind. Your users are tired of the same, go beyond! Don’t let your website or web application be another potato in the bag. If you want to success you must innovate, either in design or in function. Do not follow design trends, it is better to create your own style.

- The second one: Make a product useful
A product is conceived to be used, as so it is a website and a web application. What is the point in having the most beautiful website or web application but without a function or purpose? This principle force us to analyse our goals (from the start) in getting our bones in the web, we must create a criteria based on an initial research to fulfill our users needs. Why our users should bother in visiting our web? Which benefit will they get from us? Users surf in the web with a purpose in mind, your challenge is to discover or invent it.

- The third one: Make a design aesthethic
So, take a look at the Rams designs, do you like them? Well, let me tell you that most of them were designed during the 60s, 70s and 80s. This is what people use to call contemporary design, something that travells through ages. Your challenge is to make something beautiful, something that delights users, something to make them enjoy their stay but not falling in trends as said before. Come on, there are lots of possibilities out there, get some inspiration and bring your users something new, you could take advantage of so many design principles out there, there are no excuses.

- The fourth one: Make a product understandable
If the usability term existed some years ago, this principle might have been called “Make a product usable”. Usability is about making your products easily understandable. It is about taking the real world into the digital, it is about analogies. Take a look at your interface, would you still understand it if it wasn’t yours? For every project you work for, always take in mind your final user, be the most obvious you can in your actions and processes.

- The fifth one: Make a design unobtrusive
Products are like tools: they’re not a piece of art or decoration. At designing always remember what is your main purpose in the project. Don not fall in useless features that could distract users from your main objectives. In plain english this is what this principle is about, centralizing products. Avoid deviations.

- The sixth one: Make a design honest
Be real: do not promise anything you cannot give. Be responsive. Specialize, do not offer services you cannot give. If your business is Web Design & Development, would you still offer other services like Web Hosting or Marketing if you have never had any experience in these fields? Be honest with your self and think in the consequences it can carry on.

- The seventh one: Make a design long-lasting
It is your website plan to be long-lasting? Where would your website be in 5 years? Only in your hard drive? At first, you might not be able to think in future features for your project, but when the time comes take advantage of roadmaps. Roadmaps are a useful tool for visualizing your project’s future avoiding deviations, they’re so helpful because you’re planning and not developing.

- The eighth one: Go thorough down to the last detail
Be detailed in your work, add something unique that not all the users may note but only those with the eagle eye. This is a plus that some users will appreciate and make them engage with you. Have you noticed the details in Rams work? It is amazing. Be a pixel perfectionist, it is what your
clients are looking for.

- The ninth one: Design environmentally-friendly
This principle is about avoiding physical and visual pollution. In other words, try to be very clean in your work and avoid unnecessary elements that could add some noise and break your visual balance. It is really necessary to get some extra cash with advertisiment? I cannot remember how many people I have heard complaining about the Take Over banners they see at first in many websites. It is frustrating.

- The tenth one: Design with as little design as possible
You may get confuse with the previouse principle, but this one is different, here we are talking about the style elements, not the block elements. In the Rams interface designs we can see a spotlessly clean, minimalism in its splendor. I’m not saying that you must rely in this design movement, rather, you must avoid any kind of ornamentation, let the white space flow! Your users will thank you.

Take the challenge

Image credit: renespitz

Are you ready to start designing based in these principles? Maybe at first you won’t can applied them all at once, but try it, not for nothing Jonathan Ive, apple Designer in Chief has taken them as his guide to create the Apple Style of nowadays.

Have you ever think if your website has good design?