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Showing posts from October, 2016

How to Learn Interaction Design with A Simple WeUI Model?

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Art has many independent parts, but all of those parts have something in common. UI/UX design is also a kind of art, like painting. UI/UX design also needs imitations to improve our level. There is an old chinese saying: draw a tiger with a cat as the model. If you take a wrong example, you would copy the example without catching its spirit. Well, where can we find suitable examples to imitate? In fact, the famous Apps we daily use are the best examples for us, such as WeUI, the designing tool for Mini app in WeChat. First of all, we need to find the model of WeUI, it's really easy to do. There are plenty of excellent examples in Mockplus Demo Project , including Gogobot, BBC Sports, and of course, WeUI. Although there aren't many pages in this demo project, it contains everything you need for UX design. And, sure, you can also find the whole file at WeChat Developing Platform. Here, let's try out the example first. Because these are just some irrelevant

How Long Do You Need to Set An Interaction? 3 Seconds!

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There are mainly two kinds of prototype: one is static, we call it wireframing, the other one is dynamic, we call this prototyping. And, at present, there are three kinds of interaction design involved in prototyping: page link, components interaction, interaction state. Some of the prototyping tools we daily use have the functions of setting all these three, such as Axure, Justinmind, Mockplus, Proto.io, etc. However, every one of them keeps telling you that it is a fast tool. The Axure we usually talk about is actually called Axure RP = Axure Rapid Prototyping, Mockplus also claims that it is the tool for prototyping Faster, Smarter, and Easier. Today, let's have a look, check out which one of them is the fastest. Page Link: Same speed, different visualization All those kinds of interaction settings in Axure, page link is the most rapid way to set interactions. All you need to do is to click the Create Link button in the Properties panel on the right side, then

About Design, Tools, and Sharing: The Interview of Two Senior Designers

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With the development of software industry, prototyping has become an essential part of product design and gained more attention than before. As a new prototyping tool, Mockplus has gained a number of users in a really short time, especially in China. It is now rising with the idea of prototyping Faster, Smarter, and Easier. After the attendance of UXPA China (Chengdu Division), it is also well known by the most of Chinese designing schools. Mockplus is still growing. Responsible users are extremely important in this process. We just interviewed two of them, they explain the understanding and questions about design and designing tools from different aspects, at the mean time, they share some ideas of thier own. The two designer we interviewed: Quuen: UI/UX designer. Mist: Product Manager. First, let's check out the interview of Quuen. About design As an outstanding designer, Quuen believes that UI designer's job is not just user interface designing.

From Rookie to Master, There Are Only Three Questions

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How to become a qualified UX designer, how to change from rookie to design master. Every day countless designers are thinking about the same problem. To do everything well, you have to answer these three questions: What to do? How to do it? What shall we use? 1. What to do? Since you are a UX designer, first of all, you need to know what is UX, the difference between UX and other positions. The Difference Between UX and UI Design-A Layman’s Guide This article tells you the difference between UX and UI. The author not only points out the difference, but also makes a further comparison (including salary). UX vs UI vs IA vs IxD : 4 Confusing Digital Design Terms Defined If your question is not just about UX and UI, you also don't understand IA and IxD, then Becky's article will definitely help you. Here you can find explanations the meaning of UX, UI, IA, IxD. What's more, for the different content of the work Becky recommend a number of simple and useful

10 Prototyping Tools Recommended For UI/UX Designers

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Recently, I've read some articles about sharing books and websites for UI/UX design. I think it might be useful to write an article about prototyping tools and share with you. So, I collect 10 prototyping tools this time and put them into 3 different categories. Category A: Easy and fast. Category B: Light and flexible. Category C: Comprehensive and functional. Let's have a look. Category A: Easy and Fast. Tools: Chainco, InVision, Flinto Lite. Learning Curve: Low. Just like the slogan of Chainco, these tools are great demonstration tools for UI designers. All the three tools are based on the web. Although, they look different from each other, but, in fact, they have so many similar features. The interaction setting is about creating hot spots, and taking the page-switching as the main function. There's nearly no cost for learning or operation. Designers in China like Chainco better, but it is only available in Chinese

Duke's: Overcoming The Three Phases of Prototyping Flow

Duke's: Overcoming The Three Phases of Prototyping Flow : Everyone has his/her own way of working, but not all of ways are scientific and effective. Having worked as a UX designer, and learnt k...

Axure vs Balsamiq vs Mockplus vs Justinmind - Which Is The Idealest Choice of Chinese Designers?

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Nowadays, there are many prototyping tools on the foreign lands, such as Pidoco, UXPIN, Proto.io 6, and InVision, etc. It makes you dazing when you have so many choices. However, do you know which of them are the common prototyping tools in China? How the Chinese designers think of the performances of them? Generally, there are mainly four desktop prototyping tools in China: Axure RP, Balsamiq, Mockplus, and Justinmind. These four tools technically have taken control of a pretty large number of Chinese users. Today, I'm gonna try to analyze the reasons why those four prototyping tools could have nice performances in China from the view of user experience which is the first thing of "Innovation 2.0". Axure RP : Broadly speaking, the "Axure" we talking about is Axure RP, equaling to Axure Rapid Prototyping. The reason why Axure has a good fame in China is not only the using inertia, but also the comprehensiveness of its function. Such as the s

Overcoming The Three Phases of Prototyping Flow

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Everyone has his/her own way of working, but not all of ways are scientific and effective. Having worked as a UX designer, and learnt knowledge from some books, I come forward with a useful work flow. I hope this could help the rookies and juniors who still have no idea about how to work as a UX designer. 1. Thinking and drafting This is the first step of making a prototype. What we need to do here is springing out our inspirations like a fountain. Hence, all the tools we are going to use are whiteboard and mark pen, even just paper and pencil. Anything else could be a rock on your way to inspiration. We need to focus on brainstorming, write down every relevant idea on the whiteboard. 2. Selecting and combining The second step is to select and combine the ideas on whiteboard according to usability. Now, what we need is...a group of cute and picky colleagues. In fact, many UX designers like to design something impractical, that is very annoying. So, after we wri

Duke's: Preview Function of Four Prototyping Tools

Duke's: Preview Function of Four Prototyping Tools : In these years of working as an UX designer, one of the things I have understood is ...

Preview Function of Four Prototyping Tools

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Preview Function of Four Prototyping Tools In these years of working as an UX designer, one of the things I have understood is that: Prototyping design is an essential part of upgrading product development. So, it is very important for us to demonstrate our prototype in a right way. I made a comparison for the prototyping tools that we daily use, the comparison shows that each one of them has its own merits. Well, today, let’s talk about the preview function of Axure, Justinmind, Mockplus and Proto.io 6. Axure : Axure should be the most common tool of prototyping, after years’ accumulation, it has become a really powerful software. Also, the preview function of Axure is absolutely not the weak spot, and we could say that Axure has the most available options of exporting HTML. Axure supports two ways of preview on mobile device, one is exporting HTML which is especially made for mobile device, you could open it with Safari on iphone, the other one