Usability Archives - schmengler-se.de

4. January 201713. January 2020

Usability for Programmers – UX Is Not Just Frontend!

If you consider a developer as a user, reading a book about usability engineering is mind-blowing, related to your code.

— Tobias Zander (@airbone42) 14. Februar 2015

This Tweet in 2015 blew my mind. I learned a bit about designing interactive systems and psychology in design, so I could relate immediately. It inspired me to a talk “Usability for Programmers” at WebCon Aachen, that unfortunately never went public because the event was cancelled, and I am yet waiting for a new chance to deliver it.

But I find the content too interesting to leave it hidden any longer, so here’s a blog post!

Continue reading “Usability for Programmers – UX Is Not Just Frontend!”

5. October 201613. January 2020

5 Minute Tips: Form Usability

Learning coffee break! Today some tipps on “form usability”, a topic that even backend developers should not leave alone.

The final, one and only way to validate email addresses:

And for form validation: check if there is an “@”. Nothing more, nothing less. If you want to know why, read: The 100% correct way to validate email addresses.
But in one point I have to disagree:
Continue reading “5 Minute Tips: Form Usability”

14. April 201513. January 2020

Dear Extension Developers: Your Menu Is Not THAT Important

Recently on Twitter, Guido Jansen addressed a topic that I had on my mind for a while:

@gxjansen Sounds familiar from Magento if every other extension shop thinks they need their own tab in system configuration. As if WHO>WHAT

— Fabian Schmengler (@fschmengler) 16. Februar 2015

Continue reading “Dear Extension Developers: Your Menu Is Not THAT Important”

16. September 201413. January 2020

Free Icons and Online Icon Generator Tools

Need some icons for your (web) app but have nobody with Mad Photoshop Skills™ at hand? These three sites will help you:

Iconfinder.net

My first icon resource on the web is www.iconfinder.net. It is a very large database of icons and icon sets in various formats and sizes. They are licensed differently, so not all sets are free but even for free commercial use there are plenty. And you can filter by license.

ICONSDB.com Icon Customizer

Icons DB has thousands of completely free, monochromatic customizable icons. If you need some quick simple flat icons you probably find them here. The clou: you can chose to download all of them in any color and any size as ICO, PNG, GIF, JPG or ICNS

Iconizer.net Icon Generator

Iconizer is a big icon database very similar to iconfinder but adds icon customization on top. So even complex multicolor icons can be changed almost arbitrarily in color and size.

Another tip:

Choose your icons carefully to be easily recognized by most if not all of your target audience. Even widespread icons like chains for “link” only seem to be natural for geeks like us but are not for your average Joe.

I recommend this article as food for thought: http://stiern.com/articles/usability/usability-in-icons/