Just a super quick heads up for a new Experimental category on this blog. The idea is to collect ideas for design documentation, deliverables, and other posts that are seeds for things to come. Maybe it’s an idea you had on how to better communicate through your UX deliverables but have never tried it on a real project? Perhaps it’s a napkin sketch for a new wireframe format, or a new way to represent live data in wireframes. All these potential things could make their way in this open brainstorming like space. I’ll post a few more items in this category in the near future, but would again welcome anyone to contribute if they have emerging ideas of their own. Sounds good?

Hello. We basically want to peak over your shoulder as you use our software to make it better. We’re doing a few tests this week which should take around 30 minutes each and we’re giving out $30 Amazon gift certificates as a thank you. The test can take place either remotely (in the comfort of your own desk) or we could come and visit if you’re in around Toronto. Interested? Please answer the following questions and email me at usertest@linowski.ca

The questions are as follows (short answers are great):

1. What’s your business name and website address?
2. How many employees are at your company?
3. What’s your title and what do you do?
4. What invoicing method do you use today?
5. How do I get in touch with you (phone, email & city)?
6. When would be a best time for the test this week (time and time zone)?

Please let me know.
Jakub Linowski
usertest@linowski.ca

UPDATED: Thanks to all the people who replied and signed up. The test is now over and I received some awesome feedback. I really appreciate it.

Just thought I’d stir up the readers in here and see if I can get some interesting submissions in. Although I’m always on the look out for any type of design deliverables or tools to write about, I thought perhaps I’d throw out a concrete request for example visualizations of usability testing results. Perhaps you came up with a cool way of conveying findings to your team, or you invented a new way of prioritizing issues? If so, and eager to share, please send me an email (visible on the right) and I’d love to post it up in here. Cheers. Jakub

Peldi of Balsamiq is opening up the floor to a design discussion around how the upcoming “components” feature might work. Reusing objects or items across a UI program is quite important and so it will finally be making it’s way into an implementation plan. There are a couple of use cases on this feature already publicly available but he’s looking for more ideas from the community of course. So if designing in the open or giving feedback is your cup of tea, feel free to jump right in. :)

Thinking about improving the user interface of this site, I did a couple of minor adjustments over the weekend which I thought I’d share. Basically I focused on how the left menu with all the posts works (accessible by pressing CTRL). The improvement is that an open left menu navigation is now persistent across pages, which allows for easier browsing of posts. The left menu now also focuses to the selected post when opening. Finally, the menu does not come into view when pressing CTRL while typing inside a textbox or input box (users can still press CTRL twice to force the menu to open in such a situation).

I also visually brought out the two ways to subscribe to the site in the top right hand corner by means of stronger Twitter and RSS icons. Oh right, and also added an easier way to retweet directly by means of the TweetMeme WP plugin.

Just thought to share and perhaps hear out what other ideas for improving this site readers might have. Feel free to comment here or add ideas to the uservoice page.

Cheers,
Jakub

Justinmind has recently kicked off the beta phase of their next version of the Prototyper application. These guys are also running a contest for testers which will last up until February 26 and are giving away free licenses. Have a look, as the 3.0 version brings forth a new “Expression Editor” which allows to specify interactions by means of drag and drop. The instructions for downloading the beta apps for either MAC or Windows are available on their blog.

I’m planning to update the little sketching project I started a while ago and I was curious if perhaps some people might want to contribute any ideas. I’m already planning to take in Nathanael’s feedback but am also open if perhaps others made use of this, and would like to share their thoughts. Ideas in the form of text or sketched samples, all are good. Let me know (email listed in the right hand column) :)

Cheers,
Jakub

Here we go. Five people entered the recent contest for a chance to win three accounts to Creately. This time I just used random.org to get the winning numbers. :) The winners are: Juan Jose Vidal (post coming up), Daniel McQuillen and Chris Neale. Congratulations! And thanks for creately.com for providing the accounts.

It has been a while since the last giveaway, so here we go. In return for some new sample submissions (from you), we’re giving away three full year accounts of Creately – the online diagramming tool. The winners will be determined randomly. Want to join in? If interested, here are the requirements:

1. Submit your own work of wireframes, sketches, a UI design technique, user flow, persona, time based interactions, or any other UI/UX design documentation or technique, by email to me. (any standard formats such as PDF, PNG, JPG, GIF, etc are fine)
2. Your sample has to cover a technique, visual, symbol, representation or approach previously not seen on Wireframes Magazine :)
3. By submitting, you should also be comfortable with me posting your work or approach online.
4. Optionally, feel free to describe what you did.

The draw will take place on December 14. Please send em in …

If you are a PHP or Javascript developer that is, and like the world of open source, please talk to me (yup that email on the right). The fluidia.org project sets out to create an online prototyping tool, which a group of people has been dabbling in for a few months now. I think we’re at a point where it would be nice to find another pair of eyes and brains to look through the code that is publicly visible over at github. There is a server component that Alex is leading (PHP + REST), and a front end Javascript counterpart (jQuery heavy) that I’m pushing through. Chris is also around to refactor code, increase code quality and eventually integrate some of his own awesome Claypool work. There are still a few open issues before we can release 0.1, so if this sounds interesting to you, do let me know. :)

For the non-programmer types who are eager to sketch and generate UI / UX ideas of what this tool could become, I also welcome you to submit your thoughts by means of posterous. Therein lies the information on how to submit ideas in the form of text, visuals, storyboards, wireframes or sketches. Believe it or not, whatever is submitted will magically appear for all to see over in the sketching section.

Keeping fingers crossed as 0.1 crawls into view.

Best,
Jakub