UX

Using UI System Fonts

For perhaps the first time since the original Macintosh, we can get excited about using system UI fonts. They’re an interesting, fresh alternative to web typography — and one that doesn’t require a web-font delivery service or font files stored on your server. How do we use system UI fonts on a website, and what are the caveats? System UI fonts being amazing kind of snuck up on us. Google has been toiling away at Roboto with great success (including regular updates), Apple made a splash with San Francisco, and Mozilla asked renowned type designer Erik Spiekermann to create Fira Sans.

CSS

font-family:
/* 1 */ -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont,
/* 2 */ 'Segoe UI', 'Roboto', 'Oxygen', 'Ubuntu', 'Cantarell', 'Fira Sans', 'Droid Sans',
/* 3 */ 'Helvetica Neue', sans-serif;

The first grouping is CSS properties that map to the system’s UI font. That covers a lot of ground, and there is no chance that these fonts will be mistaken for something else:

  • -apple-system targets San Francisco in Safari on Mac OS X and iOS, and it targets Neue Helvetica and Lucida Grande on older versions of Mac OS X. It properly selects between San Francisco Text and San Francisco Display depending on the text’s size.
  • BlinkMacSystemFont is the equivalent for Chrome on Mac OS X.

The second grouping is for known system UI fonts:

  • Segoe UI targets Windows and Windows Phone.
  • Roboto targets Android and newer Chrome OS’. It is deliberately listed after Segoe UI so that if you’re an Android developer on Windows and have Roboto installed, Segoe UI will be used instead.
  • Oxygen targets KDE, Ubuntu targets… well, you can guess, and Cantarell targets GNOME. This is beginning to feel futile because some Linux distributions have many of these fonts.
  • Fira Sans targets Firefox OS.
  • Droid Sans targets older versions of Android.
  • Note that we don’t specify San Francisco by name. On both iOS and Mac OS X, San Francisco isn’t obviously accessible, but rather exists as a “hidden” font.
  • We also don’t specify San Francisco using .SFNSText-Regular, the internal PostScript name for San Francisco on Mac OS X. It only works in Chrome and is less versatile than BlinkMacSystemFont.

The third grouping is our fallback fonts:

  • Helvetica Neue targets pre-El Capitan versions of Mac OS X. It is listed close to the end because it’s a popular font on other non-El Capitan computers.
  • sans-serif is the default sans-serif fallback font.
Source link
Using UI System Fonts In Web Design: A Quick Practical Guide — Smashing Magazine
Tags
Typography
Fonts
UX

Empty States: The Most Overlooked Aspect of UX Design Could Be The Most Important

[T]he basic questions an empty state should answer are:

  • What is this screen?
  • Why am I seeing it?
  • How can I fix this problem?

On top of this, you should aim to:

  • Communicate personality. Make your app a joy to use and connect feelings with features.
  • Explain the benefits. This is critical for your first-use empty states so your users know why they should care.
Source link
https://techcrunch.com/2015/11/22/the-most-overlooked-aspect-of-ux-design-could…
Tags
UX

A/B testing can't tell you why a change is better

I think this is a good example of the is-ought problem in philosophy, transplanted into the world of software development:

A/B testing is a great way of finding out what happens when you introduce a change. But it can’t tell you why.

The problem is that, in a data-driven environment, decisions ultimately come down to whether something works or not. But just because something works, doesn’t mean it’s a good thing.

If I were trying to convince you to buy a product, or use a service, one way I could accomplish that would be to literally put a gun to your head. It would work. Except it’s not exactly a good solution, is it? But if we were to judge by the numbers (100% of people threatened with a gun did what we wanted), it would appear to be the right solution.

Source link
Adactio: Journal—Hooked and booked
Tags
Testing
Testing - A/B
Ethics
Dark patterns
Design patterns
Best practices
UX

Favicon Generator

Need a quick way to generate the necessary icons for your site, from the lowly favicon.ico to high resolution icons? I found this really helpful:

No hard decision

With so many platforms and icons, it’s hard to know exactly what you should do. What are the dimensions of favicon.ico? How many Touch icons do I need? RealFaviconGenerator did the reseach and testing for you.

Done in 5 minutes

You spent hours on design, colors, graphics… How much time left for the favicon? Probably not much. But no worries, you only need a few minutes to tackle this task.

Compelling design, a platform at a time

Each platform comes with its own design requirements. You can’t just use the same picture everywhere. RealFaviconGenerator knows this and lets you craft your icons platform per platform.

Instant feedback

How will Android display my icon? How will iOS round my Touch icon? No more guesswork. RealFaviconGenerator instantly shows you how your icons will look like.

Source link
https://realfavicongenerator.net/
Tags
Favicons
Tools - Development
UX
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