Articles

When Does Emotional Design Cross a Line?

Designing for emotion in and of itself is not a problem. Websites are bound to elicit an emotional reaction from visitors, even if it’s as simple as them feeling at ease because of the soft, pastel color palette you’ve designed the site with.

I don’t want to outright villainize emotional design. Unless there is some form of unethical manipulation at play, designing for your visitors’ emotions can actually provide them with a more positive experience.

So, here’s what I’d like to look at today:

What is emotional design?
When does emotional design cross a line?
What’s the right way to design for emotions?

1. What Is Emotional Design?

When we look at emotional design in the context of a website, we’re focused on three types of emotional reactions:

a. Visceral Reactions

Visceral reactions are instinctive ones. Usually, visitors experience these as their first impressions of a website or web page. For instance, a cluttered or otherwise poorly designed homepage might leave visitors feeling overwhelmed, hesitant, or wanting to flea.

A minimally designed homepage interface, on the other hand, might have visitors not feeling much of a reaction at all. In this case, no feeling is a good feeling.

Like Irene Au said:

Design is like a refrigerator. When it works, no one notices. When it doesn’t, it stinks!

— Irene Au (@ireneau) February 14, 2015

b. Behavioral Reactions

Behavioral reactions stem from the usability of a website. There’s a lot that can stir up negative emotions here, like:

Extra-long contact forms
Confusing menus
Error-ridden content
Slow-loading pages
And more

Again, if a website is easy to get through and attractively designed, visitors aren’t likely going to “ooh” and “aah” with every step they take on the site. And that’s a good thing. If they’re focusing more on how the design looks, they’re not paying attention to the brand’s actual offer.

c. Reflective Reactions

Reflective reactions are the third type of emotions we design for.

This is complicated because there’s a lot wrapped up in how visitors feel about a website after the fact. Sometimes the most well-designed interfaces and experiences can’t save them from a bad experience, whether they realized too late that the products were overpriced or they were treated poorly by a live chat representative.

As a web designer, all you can really do is to make sure you’re working with reputable companies and then aligning the designs of their sites with their values.

When Does Emotional Design Cross a Line?

There’s already enough social pressure online; your website doesn’t need to be one of those places, too

Emotional design shouldn’t be about manipulating consumers’ emotions. In most cases, emotional design is about controlling the environment of the website so that emotions don’t go spinning wildly out of control — in either direction.

It’s when we take what we know about influencing someone’s emotional state to monetarily benefit from it that emotional design becomes problematic.

Here are some ways in which you might negatively impact the emotions of your visitors through design:

FOMO

The fear-of-missing-out isn’t always a bad marketing strategy. However, when FOMO is used for the purposes of rushing consumers to take action now and without time to really think it through, it definitely can be.

Chances are good they’ll feel badly no matter what. Either because they regret the rushed (and probably unnecessary, or expensive) decision or they blame themselves for missing out on an opportunity to be like everyone else.

There’s already enough social pressure online; your website doesn’t need to be one of those places, too. So, be careful with how you present customers with limits (on time, on products, etc.) or how you frame the call-to-action (“If you don’t buy this now, expect to fail/be miserable/suffer even more”).

Analysis Paralysis

It doesn’t matter why people specifically seek out your website. They have a problem or a hole in their life, and they’re looking for something to fix it.

Now, you can’t help it if the website has too much to offer in the way of options or solutions. Companies have to provide every possible solution/option so their users don’t feel like they have to go somewhere else to get what they need. However, the way you design these options can lead to a negative emotional state if you’re not careful.

For instance, your visitors might experience analysis paralysis, where there are so many options that it becomes impossible to take action. Similar to FOMO, this can lead to regret either with the decision they made or the one they were incapable of making.

By simplifying how many choices are presented at once, or designing a clear and supportive pathway to the right option of many, your website will leave visitors feeling much more positively about the whole experience.

Trendy Nostalgia

Nostalgia can be a great way to play upon the positive associations and emotions consumers feel towards an era gone by or a place they once knew. But, again, it depends on how you design with it.

For example, if you design a vintage website for an agency launched in 2019 and run by a group of 20-somethings, it might come off feeling disingenuous once customers start to catch on.

For a restaurant known as the oldest bar in the state, that would be a different story. That nostalgically designed website would be a real part of its story; not just done as a sales gimmick. As a result, customers would likely embrace those warm feelings for the “good ol’ days” they get from the website.

Also, think about how quickly nostalgia fades if it’s done to align with a trend. Unless you’re committed to redesigning a website the second that nostalgic feeling falls out of favor, you could be condemning your client to an outdated website mere months after launch.

What’s the Right Way to Design for Emotions?

Like I said before, there’s nothing wrong with designing for emotions. You just have to make sure your website visitors don’t feel manipulated and that they welcome the pleasant feelings the site gives them.

make sure your website visitors don’t feel manipulated

It might seem harmless at the time. After all, what are they doing on the site if they weren’t interested in the first place? And it’s not like they were bullied into spending their money, right?

But if they sense in any way that their response was driven by an emotion they wouldn’t have otherwise felt, they’re not going to be happy. While it might not be enough for them to cancel their subscription or services, or to return products they bought, it will definitely leave a bad taste in their mouth. And, ultimately, it can cost your website loyal visitors and customers.

So, if you’re going to use emotional design on a website, do it to improve their experience, not to put more money into your clients’ pockets. That means your emotional design choices need to be honest, transparent, and focused on eliciting naturally positive emotions like:

Satisfaction
Feeling impressed
Trust
Calm
Feeling valued

Go back to the three emotional reactions I brought up earlier. If you can design a website to give off a positive first impression, and to be pain-free and usable, you can spend the rest of your time injecting small bits of happiness and positivity into the website with color choices, friendly micro-interactions, personalized content, and more.

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

23 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

La gentillesse est la contagion qui nous rassemble

Actualités, ERP & Applications, SAP

Avec l’afflux de stress et d’anxiété provoqué par les défis mondiaux critiques de 2020 – y compris la pandémie COVID-19, la lutte pour la justice raciale et un sentiment croissant d’incertitude économique – la détresse psychologique est en augmentation.

Quatre-vingt-dix pour cent de la main-d’œuvre actuelle est touchée par des problèmes de santé mentale. Même avant que la crise ne frappe, une étude de SAP, Qualtrics et Mind Share Partners, publiée dans la Harvard Business Review, a révélé que près de 50 % des personnes âgées de plus de dix ans et 75 % des membres de la génération Z ont quitté leur emploi pour des raisons de santé mentale.

L’état actuel du monde et son impact négatif sur la santé mentale pose un risque encore plus grand pour le bien-être et les performances des employés. Une étude récente menée par SAP, Qualtrics et Thrive Global a révélé que plus de 70 % des employés se sentent moins productifs et que plus de 85 % s’attendent à ce qu’une distraction accrue ait un impact négatif sur leur travail. Les entreprises ne peuvent pas se permettre d’ignorer ces sentiments.

Alors que le travail de n’importe où devient la norme et que le numérique se transforme en nouveau social, les dirigeants doivent trouver de nouveaux moyens de favoriser de manière proactive les relations humaines et les interactions sociales positives entre collègues. Auparavant, lorsque les rassemblements physiques n’étaient pas aussi menaçants, ces types d’échanges avaient tendance à se produire spontanément.

En tant qu’optimiste, je crois qu’il y a un bon côté aux difficultés existentielles et historiques auxquelles nous sommes tous confrontés. Il y a une opportunité générationnelle de créer un avenir meilleur en donnant la priorité à un nouveau style de leadership, qui favorise et crée une culture de la bonté sur le lieu de travail afin de se prémunir contre le déclin de la santé mentale.

Il a déjà été prouvé scientifiquement que la gentillesse est contagieuse. Et si nous utilisions l’idée de la gentillesse comme une contagion de manière positive pour lutter contre la contagion physique et mentale négative causée par le virus ?

Comment la gentillesse favorise le bonheur des travailleurs

La bonté est associée à l’amabilité, la générosité, la compassion et la bienveillance. Pourtant, ces mots doux ne reconnaissent pas la force et les compétences interpersonnelles de ceux qui pratiquent la bonté envers les autres et envers eux-mêmes. La gentillesse est la capacité surhumaine que nous avons tous. Elle est gratuite, facilement accessible et illimitée. La bonté ne signifie pas toujours être au service des autres ; elle peut aussi signifier être bon envers soi-même. Même un simple petit acte de gentillesse a le pouvoir exponentiel de changer le monde et d’améliorer considérablement notre bien-être émotionnel et physique.

Pour renforcer notre engagement et notre dévouement à diriger avec gentillesse, SAP participe à la troisième campagne annuelle #BeKind21, organisée par le réseau de partenaires SAP Purpose Network, la fondation Born This Way de Lady Gaga. La campagne, qui se déroule du 1er au 21 septembre, invite les universités, les entreprises et les organisations à but non lucratif, ainsi que les particuliers, à participer à des actes de gentillesse quotidiens et à contribuer à la construction d’un monde plus gentil, plus courageux et plus juste.

En s’engageant dans un acte de gentillesse intentionnel tous les jours pendant 21 jours, la campagne #BeKind21 encourage les participants à faire de la gentillesse une habitude, à s’engager à faire preuve de compassion et à favoriser un lien authentique. Elle permet aux gens de traiter la gentillesse comme un verbe et d’agir consciemment pour remonter le moral de leur entourage.

Tout au long de la campagne, nous partagerons notre calendrier avec 21 suggestions quotidiennes sur la façon de pratiquer la gentillesse. Organisez un déjeuner virtuel avec un ami, faites rire quelqu’un ou envoyez un mot gentil à un être cher. Commencez votre journée en notant trois choses dont vous êtes reconnaissant. Prenez du temps pour vous et lisez un article inspirant ou quelques pages de votre livre préféré. Offrez-vous un moment de détente en faisant de la méditation. Jouez un rôle actif en exprimant votre compassion pour vous-même et pour les autres.

Ces actes de gentillesse se perpétueront et inspireront les autres à faire de même.

#LifeatSAP

Chez SAP, nous nous sommes engagés à construire un lieu de travail où les employés peuvent se mettre entièrement au travail. En tant que dirigeants, nous pouvons donner l’exemple de la transparence et et de la vulnérabilité comme des forces. Commencer une réunion en demandant simplement comment vont les collègues ou en les remerciant pour leur travail crée un sentiment de connexion, en particulier dans un lieu de travail virtuel, où il est facile de se sentir distant. En partageant nos propres défis, nous pouvons ouvrir la porte aux autres pour qu’ils fassent part de leurs préoccupations en matière de santé mentale et fournir un chemin d’accès aux ressources pour y répondre.

La technologie peut être un allié pour renforcer la culture et la rendre plus tangible. Un exemple en est une nouvelle application développée pour faciliter l’interaction humaine et atténuer la solitude et l’isolement ressentis par de nombreux employés de SAP. L’application interne connecte les travailleurs à distance via un chat vidéo pour des déjeuners virtuels et a organisé un barbecue virtuel pour 1700 employés, avec un boucher, des recettes et des instructions détaillées. Des chats virtuels au coin du feu, des dégustations de vin en ligne et des projections de films ont également permis aux employés de se connecter. Ces types d’activités peuvent améliorer considérablement la santé et le bien-être des employés.

Passez à l’action

Rejoignez-nous pour déstigmatiser la santé mentale et répandre la contagion de la bonté sur le lieu de travail et dans le monde, en commençant par les personnes avec lesquelles nous interagissons chaque jour.

Engagez-vous à #BeKind21.

Vivek Bapat est Senior Vice-President et responsable de l’expérience de la marque et de l’objectif de SAP.

Publié initialement sur news.sap.com en anglais.

The post La gentillesse est la contagion qui nous rassemble appeared first on SAP France News.

Source de l’article sur sap.com

2 septembre 2020/par Service comm.

The Most Appreciated Web Solutions of 2020

Actualités, Actualités

In this article you will find the most appreciated web solutions of 2020.

To create this list we took into account the following considerations: The popularity of the product or the service; How many users it has; How many times it was downloaded or installed; The level of efficiency; What you get for your money.

You’ll find WordPress themes and plugins, an affordable logo design contest, logo creators, website builders, web development services, and even more. Let’s get started…

1. WooCommerce Support

WooCommerce is the most popular e-commerce plugin for WordPress, being used by all kind of merchants, both small and large companies.

WPcustomify is 100% focused on WooCommerce, having huge experience. They will help you with everything you need:

WooCommerce Plugin Integration
Configuration Support
Support Services

Get in touch with them and let the experts manage all the issues and errors of your WooCommerce. Make the best out of your store, and help it get more traffic and convert better, by using the experience of WPcustomify.

2. actiTIME

Design and development projects require a high degree of precision and organization. To meet desired goals on time and budget, teams should adhere to initial estimates and deadlines impeccably. Besides, to be efficient and productive, they need to manage tasks and monitor progress in a systematic way.

actiTIME can assist developers and their managers in attaining these objectives effortlessly. As a high-quality and user-friendly timesheet app, it allows users to keep a detailed record of hours spent on multiple tasks and, in this way, collect data for consequent client billing and invoicing, as well as performance and productivity analysis.

However, actiTIME is more than just another time tracker – it includes powerful project management functionality that can help you:

Manage project scope by adding new tasks and creating a detailed work breakdown;
Allocate tasks to different team members;
Set up estimates, deadlines and budgets;
Review current work progress and modify task statuses on the Kanban board or in a simple list format;
Receive notifications whenever the risk of cost and time overrun arises.

actiTIME’s flexibility makes it an excellent choice for both individuals and teams of any size. The tool can be configured to meet varying management needs and integrated with many other useful apps through Zapier or API. In addition, you can always use the actiTIME timer through the Chrome extension in Jira, Github and GitLab, which will allow you to track hours without any distractions from the primary work process. Sign up for a free actiTIME trial and bring your productivity to the next level.

3. Total

Total is one of the most complete WordPress theme that you can buy in 2020, being filled with 80+ builder modules, 40+ premade demos that you can install with 1-click, and over 500+ styling options.

This theme has over 43k happy users and it is used by some of the best websites in the world.

This theme is developed and maintained by WordPress experts that have been a part of the WP community for over 10 years.

4. Webdesign Toolbox

Webdesign Toolbox will become a web design tools encyclopedia, currently featuring 965 resources in 78 different categories. Everybody was waiting for such a place and now it is live and heavily updated each month.

I just found out about this place and I can say that it is super. Having all the tools and services in a single place, very well categorized is super helpful. Now you don’t have to lose time on search engines and on ads (who pays more will get in front), you have everything at your disposal, in front of you.

Using Webdesign Toolbox is super simple to find the right web tools and services, just browse the website.

5. TestingBot

Trusted by some of the most innovative companies in the world (Microsoft, Disney, FOX, Grammarly, and many others), and with over 8 year’s experience in this market, TestingBot is a super solution that you can use for automated and manual testing.

It supports cross browser testing, live testing, real device testing, and tons of other things.

Start a free trial and see TestingBot in action.

6. Codester

Codester is a huge marketplace where designers and developers will find tens of thousands of premium PHP scripts, websites templates, apps, plugins, and much more.

Always check the flash sale section where hugely discounted items are being sold.

7. Taskade

Taskade is a super technologically advanced remote workspace (works from anywhere where there’s an internet connection) that you and your team can use for chatting, organizing, and getting things done.

You can build a workspace from scratch using the included editor, use a ready-made templates, or edit the one you want.

This collaboration platform is free to use for 10 projects.

8. Bonsai Invoice Templates

Bonsai is a the best suite of software for freelancers, being the top choice of tens of thousands of freelancers from all over the world.

They help you with everything you need, and they even provide invoice templates for freelance professionals – designer, developer, writer, marketer, contractor, consultant, photographer, etc.

9. Mobirise

Mobirise is the most powerful offline website builder in 2020, being loaded with 3500+ awesome website templates, with sliders, galleries, forms, popups, icons, and even more.

Use it to create a unique website, no coding or design skills needed.

10. Goodie

Goodie was created by a team of experts that have super experience in the web development world.

This service is used mostly by web designers that need a reliable web development partner, and by customers that need to amplify their online presence.

11. MailMunch

MailMunch helps you create eye-catching forms and landing pages in seconds – no coding or design skills required!

It is quick to set up, easy to learn, and packs a punch with built-in email marketing features and integrations with any email marketing service of your choice.

Boost conversions by up to 400% with this complete lead generation software.

12. Email Template Builder

You want to let your website visitors create awesome emails and pages directly on your website? With Unlayer it is possible and it is super simple to implement this feature on your website.

This plug and play email editor and page builder can be embedded it in 5 minutes on your website.

13. Rank Math SEO

Every WordPress website needs a powerful SEO plugin to take care of it. There is a huge difference between these plugins, some being extremely efficient.

One such efficient SEO plugin is Rank Math. This free WordPress plugin will make your website rank higher and get more traffic from your existing content.

Get it now, after a basic configuration the plugin runs autonomously.

14. Schema Pro

Schema markups will make your website rank higher and get more traffic. To quickly add them, use Schema Pro. You press 1 button, and you select all the pages on which you want the schema markups to be added. It is so simple.

15. Landingi

Landingi is a brilliant landing page builder that will help you create awesome designs with no experience, no coding skills and no design ideas.

Create a landing page that converts and which is engaging, with Landingi is a simple task for everybody.

16. CollectiveRay

CollectiveRay is specialized in providing super in-depth tutorials and articles for WordPress, hosting, themes, tools, and all kind of platforms.

You should always browse it whenever you are looking for detailed and accurate information about all kinds of stuff.

17. ContentSnare

ContentSnare is the smart way to collect content. Why is that? Because it is an automated service that will help you quickly gather content from your customers and partners, without losing time on this aspect of your business.

Configure it in a few minutes and right after ContentSnare will be on autopilot, collecting materials in your place.

18. XStore – The King-Size WooCommerce Theme

XSTORE is the most complete WooCommerce theme that you can get in 2020. It has included over 90 shop designs, and it also includes several plugins that are worth $407.

Get it now and build a high converting store.

19. FixRunner

FixRunner is your personal WordPress support team that will take care of your website 24/7.

They offer several services:

One-time fix – As the name says, they will fix a problem that you encounter on your WordPress website.
Several packages for WordPress support and maintenance
Speed optimization service
Custom development
Malware removal
Site upgrade
White label for agencies

Let the experts help you with everything you need so your WordPress website can get the best conversion rates.

20. Heroic Table of Contents Plugin

Heroic Table of Contents is the easiest way to add a table of contents to your WordPress website.

Are you using tables of contents? Everybody loves them, in articles and on websites.

Get your website to the next level with Heroic Table Of Contents, it’s free.

21. WrapPixel

WrapPixel is a popular name in the React templates world. They offer high-quality themes that look awesome and which are lightning fast.

Browse WrapPixel and pick what you need for your projects.

22. Pixpa

Pixpa is a professional website builder that people use to create all-in-one websites: a store, a blog, and a client gallery.

The editor is filled with tons of designs and elements, and it is super simple to use.

23. Astra

Astra is the fastest growing theme of all time, having almost 1 million users.

Why does everybody love Astra? Because it has pixel-perfect included designs, it is fast, SEO optimized, it is simple to use and configure, and it is optimized for conversions.

24. uKit

Meet a very affordable and convenient website builder uKit. It allows you to quickly kickstart your online presence. Prices start from 2.5 USD/month, you get a stable hosting, unlimited storage space, and a free technical domain. Lots of colorful up-to-date templates, responsive technical support, and the ability to connect your external domain. You can try it for free on a 14-day trial – no credit card required.

25. Fotor Online Photo Editor

Fotor is an online photo editor that is used by tens of thousands of web designers, online entrepreneurs, marketers, and people that have an online presence. Creating graphics and pictures that are engaging and converting is simple with Fotor, no need to have any design skills.

The interface will guide you every moment.

You can use Fotor also as a background remover.

26. stepFORM

stepFORM is a first-class freemium service for building forms, quizzes, and various online surveys. The whole process becomes seamless and takes a few minutes because due to the visual intuitive interface no programming skills are needed. With stepFORM, you can add a calc to your website, enable online payments, manage your orders with built-in CRM, and more. Try it out today! Free!

27. Opinion Stage Facebook Quiz

OpinionStage is a brilliant quiz maker that you can use with zero experience and zero design skills to create high-engaging quizzes.

Use the included editor and the beautiful elements to start designing your own content.

28. SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com

SuperbWebsiteBuilders.com focuses on reviewing and comparing website builders that refer to various business niches and make it possible to cover a broad spectrum of web design tasks. This information will be of great help to users looking for a professional web building platform to adhere to their needs. The resource also contains ratings and examples of websites created with popular website builders.

29. pCloudy

pCloudy is the right service to use for mobile app testing from anywhere and anytime. It has over 100k happy users and it is used by top companies like Philips, Honeywell and Jio.

Start a free trial to see pCloudy in action.

30. Bonsai Contract Templates

Bonsai is offering contract templates that will help you save time and look like a huge corporation.

You will find tons of templates to choose from, you will have the possibility to e-sign the contracts, and use automated reminders. It is super simple to use Bonsai for generating the right contracts for your projects.

31. uSocial

uSocial is an elegant, lightweight social media icon design tool. Don’t waste time on manual assembling of icons or ordering them from freelancers – now you can design them yourself with uSocial. Make them float, follow the user as they scroll, or simply make them bigger and/or styled in the theme of your website.

32. Controlio

Controlio will help you monitor your employees’ PC activity from anywhere, being the first choice of both small companies and enterprises.

Improve your company security and productivity by using this technologically-advanced software.

Start a free 14-day trial to see Controlio in action.

33. Wix2WP.Pro

Wix2WP.Pro is the all-in-one website migration platform that makes it possible to successfully transfer Wix-powered websites to WordPress. The service is a perfect solution for newbies as well as for web design pros, who lack time to handle the migration process independently. They employ qualified pros, who are ready to tackle all the special nuances of the website transfer procedure with precise attention to details.

34. WhatFontIs

WhatFontIs is the best font finder that you can use in 2020 to identify fonts for free, from any picture and from any website (or email).

This is the only software that has a huge database (over 620k indexed fonts) and which can identify both free and paid fonts, including Google Fonts.

Identify fonts like pros with WhatFontIs.

35. FoxMetrics

FoxMetrics is a super smart cloud-based web analytics platform that empowers businesses to collect, enrich, transform, and explore their mobile, web, and offline customer journey data.

It is much better than everything else.

36. Creative Tim

Creative Tim creates some of the best React, Vuejs, Angular themes, UI Kits, and elements.

They offer both free and paid stuff, take a look on what they offer. Once you use a Creative Tim product, you never go elsewhere.

37. SiteBuilders.PRO

When it comes to moving your website from one website builder or CMS to another, hiring the best SiteBuilders.Pro specialists will surely be an advantage. The platform has rich experience in transferring websites between popular web design systems. What they offer is text and graphic content transfer, web store data import, manual design replication along with SEO, web design and copywriting services.

38. uCalc

uCalc is a real catch for those who don’t want to splash out on a developer or web designer to build a calculator or form for their website. The service provides you a library of attractive thematic templates and basic elements that you can add, delete, modify, and duplicate. Plus, you can connect the form/calculator with CRM systems. Try it out for yourself!

39. UPQODE

UPQODE is an eCommerce development agency based in the US. The company offers cost-effective services for all types of businesses. They use Shopify, WordPress and Woocommerce platforms to design user-friendly websites.

In addition to this, the agency offers digital marketing services. These include Google Ads setup, social media advertising, conversion optimization, online store optimization and eCommerce SEO solutions.

UPQODE comprises a team of experts who offer support services for eCommerce platforms with complex functionalities.

40. IP Geolocation API

Abstract is an online tool that will help you get the location of any IP with a word-class API serving city, region, country and lat/long data.

There are over 10,000 developers using Abstrat’s APIs because:

It is easy to implement and maintain
It has speed and it can scale
This tool has reliable uptime and great support

41. Moderated group chat for live Q&A and Web Events

RumbleTalk will help you add a moderated chat on your website for free, in no time. The platform is filled with tons of features that you will love.

42. WordPressToWix.PRO

WordPressToWix.PRO focuses on ensuring easy, convenient and fast website transfer from WordPress to Wix. The platform also offers quality project promotion and preservation of search engine positions upon the completion of the task. The team of proficient web designers will gladly assist you with all the steps of the procedure, ensuring a top notch result.

43. uCoz

Get your online presence started with uCoz – a time-tested website builder that already powers millions of websites worldwide. It gives you the complete control over the code, and yet simplicity of the visual editor and a solid pre-built base. It offers you full creative freedom. Create the website of your dreams now, and for free with uCoz!

44. HTMLtoWordPress.PRO

When it comes to reliable, safe and professional HTML to WordPress website migration, it makes sense to contact HTMLtoWordPress.PRO experts. This is a team of professionals, who possess niche-specific knowledge and can boast years of expertise. This guarantees a safe and quick result that matches up to client requirements.

45. Blabber

Downloading the Blabber WordPress theme, you get an all-inclusive pack of tools and designs apt for the launch of a blog, online magazine, newspaper, or any other content-rich online resource. This is an ever-growing WordPress theme. It features a collection of 20+ homepage demos, which a new design added to the collection every week. The theme is fully based on the Elementor page builder and features full compatibility with a variety of WordPress plugins. It’s easy to set up the Blabber theme even if you are not a design or coding expert. The theme offers a rich selection of ready-to-go page sand layout styles, which you may adjust according to your specific demands.

46. FC United

If you are looking for a ready-made WordPress theme that can become a rock-solid foundation for your sports-related website, then FC United will handle this job perfectly well. The theme is ready to be used for the launch of football and soccer clubs, as well as basketball and NFL web projects. The multi-functional layout of the theme includes all tools and features that you may need for the launch of a professional sports website. This includes match reports, league tables, team and player profiles with stats, outstanding galleries and shortcodes, and more. Whenever it’s needed, the theme can be enhanced with the eCommerce features owing to its full compatibility with WooCommerce.

47. Craftis

If you are looking forward to launching handcraft services and goods websites, then Craftis WordPress theme will perfectly suit for this purpose. This is a multi-functional ready-made design featuring a collection of 10+ homepage demos under the hood. The theme is compatible with the Elementor page builder, which lets you apply all the necessary changes to the pre-built page in the intuitive visual mode. The theme also features a selection of ready-made pages that are suited for many different purposes. Using the Craftis theme, you may start selling online without any difficulties. The theme is also compatible with the Elegro Crypto Payment plugin that is perfectly suited for the launch of web stores.

Conclusion

There are lots of super-efficient and easy to use tools in this article. Make a schedule starting with today and start testing them.

Many times, simple solutions like this ai logo maker can make wonders for your website. Take your time to see these solutions in action.

[– This is a sponsored post on behalf of Mekanism –]

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

21 août 2020/par Service comm.

Exciting New Tools for Designers, August 2020

Actualités, Actualités

The common theme in this month’s collection of new tools and resources is “things that help you show off your work.” Many of these tools are made to help you better web products or apps or showcase designs with others.

Here’s what new for designers this month.

Naturaltts

Naturaltts is an online text to speech converter, that allows you to download an mp3 recording. The tool has more than 60 voices to choose from in six languages. There’s a free plan for personal use (based on characters converted) and affordable paid plans for higher volumes and commercial users. One application of this tool is voiceover for videos or tutorials.

Handz

Handz is a library of hands with different gestures in three-dimensional shapes. The collection includes 12 gestures with nine skin colors, and three different sleeve types. Put all that together and you have 320 potential combinations that you can use for projects. The library is completely free and works in a variety of formats with different tools.

Isoflow

Isoflow allows you to create isometric diagrams for presentations and illustrations with ease. You can edit and then export diagrams for print or website use, thanks to vector rendering.

Device Shots

Device Shots is a small web app that helps you generate a high-resolution device mockup using a screenshot of your website or mobile application. It supports almost every device type you can think of and resizes for social media platforms.

Barchartrace

Barchartrace is a simple MIT open source bar chart generator. Use it to create some of the animated charts you see on social media. Just insert your information (upload via CSV file), choose animation settings, and go.

Zettlr Markdown Editor

Zettlr is a free and open source markdown editor for Mac OS. Zettlr supports simple notations, references, includes a dark mode, and tagging. It’s made for note takers who need a tool to amp up their projects, and is used primarily in higher education.

CSS Leaning Card Effect

The CSS Leaning Card Effect replicates the bookshelf feel you get when rectangles lean with a shadow against planes. Lynn Fisher does it in the pen with code that you can see and work on with your own images.

Lemon.io

Lemon.io is a tool that matches you with freelance developers to get projects moving more quickly. You are guaranteed a match in 24 hours and there is no risk if the match doesn’t work out. Just tell Lemon.io what you need and the algorithm will match you with a dev from the database. Prices for development through the platform start at $35 per hour.

Papercups

Papercups is a customer messaging tool that lets you chat in real-time. The customizable widget works with your favorite tools, such as Slack and Gmail, and is free to use. Chat apps are one of the most in-demand website features right now.

CSS Click to Animate Gif

Christian Heilmann has created a great guide/experiment in pure CSS that adds a play button on top of animated GIFs so that users can control the motion. He developed the concept because GIFs can get overwhelming and annoying. Learn how he did it and see it in action.

3D Book Image Generator

Here’s another little bit of CSS magic with a 3D Book Image Generator. Just input your image and set some specifications and get a 3D book cover image that you can use in projects. (There’s also an accompanying tutorial if you want to learn how to generate the CSS on your own.)

Luckysheet

Luckysheet is an online spreadsheet – it’s a lot like Microsoft Excel – with powerful data functions and tools. It’s user-friendly and open source. It even has quite a few built-in mathematical formulas and supports various table types.

RevKit

RevKit is a design system UI kit that works with Sketch, Figma, and Adobe XD. It includes plenty of organized components that you can pop right into designs to help get them started faster. It also includes a style guide, elements, and form controls. The download is free.

Card

Card allows you to store social media profiles, websites, and files in a customized profile. Share it in one click. Replace awkward contact exchange and multiple usernames with a simple QR code or link.

Scale Nucleus

Scale Nucleus helps visualize data, curate interesting slices within your dataset, review and manage annotations, and measure and debug model performance. This tool claims to be “the right way” to develop ML models.

Previewed

Previewed is a mockup generator to create beautiful promotional graphics for your app. Browse a variety of templates, pick one, customize, and download your design to show off.

NSFW Filter

NSFW Filter is a browser extension that blocks images that aren’t safe for work. The best part is that it runs locally in-browser and doesn’t access any of your data. Plus, it saves you from on-the-job embarrassment.

ColorFlick for Dribbble

ColorFlick for Dribbble is another browser extension that makes it easy to copy hex codes from the tool to your clipboard with ease. You can also create palettes you can share from your favorite shots using Coolors.

Tabler Icons

Tabler Icons is a collection of more than 550 SVG icons that you can customize. Change the color, size, or stroke width with on-screen controls and then click to copy the icons you want to use. It’s that simple!

Teenyicons

Teenyicons might be some of the cutest icons out there. This collection includes minimal 1px icons in outline or solid fills. And there are plenty of icons to choose from. Adjust the size and grab the ones that you need for projects.

Basicons

Basicons is a set of simple icons for product design and development. Plus, they are updated weekly.

Chozy Mermaid

Chozy Mermaid is a super funky novelty typeface to close out summer. The characters feature beach themes within slab characters. It might be hard to find an application for this one, but it is too fun not to share.

Dotuku

Dotuku is a dingbats font with a back to school theme. The limited character set features filled and outline styles that are perfect for classrooms.

Margin

Margin is a fun retro style typeface with a 1970s vibe. It’s a “chubby serif” with 60 characters and 58 glyphs.

Rollanda

Rollanda is a signature-style script with a thicker weight and rough stroke. The character set is pretty robust.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

17 août 2020/par Service comm.

How to Integrate AI Into Your Toolset

Actualités, Actualités

Artificial Intelligence is the use of computers or machines that have been created to work and react like humans. Some of the computers that have AI, are designed to include speech recognition, and learn user behaviours so they can predict activities or decisions before they happen.

AI creates a bridge to a new kind of interface, making work processes easier for businesses and customers alike.

Why is AI Important?

There are constant AI technological advances being made, so why not make the most of them and start integrating them into your toolset today? Read on to find out just why AI is important and how you can benefit from it in your work too.

Lower Costs

By integrating Artificial Intelligence into your toolset, you can stand to both save and earn more money. AI will leave you spending less time on various aspects of website management and development, freeing some of your time up and allowing you to finish websites faster. It will also leverage your set of skills and allow you to build greater sites that people will be willing to pay more money for.

Improve Customer Experience

Artificial Intelligence can be used to analyse data in much more depth than the human eye, so will greatly improve the customer experience. It will allow a more personalised and streamlined experience that users will be grateful for. By integrating AI into your toolset, you will soon learn about certain trends and patterns that AI picks up and utilise this with future sites you build, as well as being able to make suggestions to improve the customer journey on the site.

It’s The Future

With so many devices in our everyday lives tuning in to AI, it’s important websites are no different. Just look around many homes and you will likely see a device such as Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home. Phone’s have Siri or Bixby and many laptops have AI systems such as Cortana. As our technology continues to develop, websites need to do this too. Soon we will expect everything to be integrated and be able to control websites in a similar way to our AI devices with voice control and recognition.

How To Integrate AI Into Your Toolset

Chat Bots

One popular example of AI that is integrated into many different websites now, is the chat bot. A feature on a number of major sites, chat bots allow customers to ask and receive answers to questions without an employee having to take time out of their day to answer menial questions that they get asked all the time. The use of AI cuts out the middleman and recognises certain phrases and words to give the most relevant and comprehensive answer.

The first chatbots used to rely on simple, pre-programmed conversational pathways, but these had disappointing and often irrelevant results. More recently they use sophisticated natural language processing (NLP) systems which are a lot more complex and don’t follow just a scripted path, but allow for more meaningful conversations.

Sketch to Code

If you’ve just started in web design, or there are certain elements you are still learning about, AI can help with “sketch to code”. This clever piece of AI can transform a handwritten note, sketch or diagram into a valid HTML mark-up code that maintains itself. This can work from something as simple as a new design for a quote system, to something more complex.

Background Systems

AI can work in the background of a site in the run up to events and collect key aspects such as website analytics. Once this data is complete, the AI can take final instructions from you such as the content, theme and color preference and create a design from scratch that it thinks will perform the best due to the intelligence and knowledge it has been gathering in the background.

Voice Recognition

Back in 2012, the W3C Community introduced the Web Speech API specification with the aim of enabling speech recognition and synthesis in modern browsers. At present, Google Chrome is the only browser that has introduced this, however there is a HTML5 Speech Recognition API will allows JavaScript to have access to a browser’s audio stream and to convert it into text.

It’s important to get up to speed with voice recognition API’s as it’s predicted voice control will be huge in the future. If populating websites, think about how people speak and be sure to include some long-tail keywords that sound more natural. This will help those sites to rank when voice control is adopted more widely.

Adobe Sensei

Adobe Sensei is an AI and machine learning framework that is powering Adobe tools. It is a handy option to add to your toolkit to manage and work on your files.

If you are sourcing images for a website in Adobe Stock, there are over 100 million assets to sift through. Adobe Sensei uses AI and deep learning to understand what exact objects are within an image as well as deeper components such as the aesthetic quality, composition, color palette and even the emotional concept behind the images. This means it can quickly find the image most matched to your needs, saving you hours of time you would have spent sorting through to find the image you want.

Yossarian

Yossarian is a great tool that allows you to craft mood boards. With an aim to generate new ideas faster, it cites itself as “discovery with a twist.” Yossarian uses AI when creating mood boards to return “diverse and unexpected concepts” that share loose associations with what you have searched for, allowing you to be more creative. It will source different ideas and inspiration around what you are searching for, including many you might not have thought of associating with your initial search term.

Brandmark

If you create logos and design templates within your work, Brandmark logo maker is a great AI tool to add to your library. They cite themselves as the most advanced AI logo design tool on the market at the moment. Whether logo creation is something you currently offer, or something you are looking to do, this AI tool can make it easier.

Autodraw

Autodraw is another useful tool you can use for design jobs, where you draw a rough sketch and it will turn it into a neat graphic. This is a handy one to use in association with the concept of sketch to code above. It pairs the magic of machine learning with drawings to help you create professional looking graphics and visuals, quickly.

Featured image via Unsplash.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

5 août 2020/par Service comm.

Popular Design News of the Week: July 27, 2020 – August 2, 2020

Actualités, Actualités, Business

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the most popular designer news that we curated from the past week.

Stroke Text CSS: The Definitive Guide

Code Snippets for Easier Coding

Textdb – A Simple Way to Share Small Amounts of Data

10+ Favicon Generators to Make your Brand Stand Out

12 CSS Grid Layouts

Applying Disney’s Basic Principles of Animation to UI Design

Curiosity Creates

Previewed – Beautiful Mockups & Graphics for your Next App

We’re in a Golden Age of UX. Why is Video Chat Still Stuck in the ’90s?

18+ CSS Book Effect

How to Promote a Mobile App with an Animated Explainer Video

Hyperlog – Portfolios for Developers

Site Design: Looks like You Need to Let it Out

Doing Stupid Stuff with GitHub Actions

Is it Good Design? Well, Yeah.

15 Free Adobe XD UI Kits for Web and Mobile App Designers

The Office as You Know it is Gone

How Interactive Content will Increase your Visitor’s Time on Page

What do Web Design Clients Need from Designers?

Truthmark is a Photography Database Aiming to Stop Misuse in Fake News

200+ NoCode Tool List by WeLoveNoCode

Designing for ‘Why?’

10 Tips Before You Buy a Domain Name

Making Memories to Last (August 2020 Wallpapers Edition)

Design Constraints are not Restraints – They Stoke Creativity

Want more? No problem! Keep track of top design news from around the web with Webdesigner News.

Source

Source de l’article sur Webdesignerdepot

2 août 2020/par Service comm.

Quality Sense Podcast: Mobile App Performance With Sofia Palamarchuk

Actualités, Méthodes et organisation des process IT

In today’s Quality Sense episode, Federico Toledo sits down for a chat with a colleague and friend, Sofia Palamarchuk. She’s a Director and Board Member of Abstracta and the co-founder and CEO of Apptim, a tool that helps you to test and analyze native mobile app performance.

After beginning her career as a performance engineer at Abstracta, she led our expansion to the United States – heading up business development. After seeing the challenges that mobile development teams face, in 2019, she embarked on a mission to transform the way global mobile teams create quality apps.

Source de l’article sur DZONE

24 juillet 2020/par Service comm.

Chatbots : la discussion ne fait que démarrer

Actualités

Les nombreux chatbots aujourd’hui disponibles, en particulier sur Facebook Messenger, ne constituent que les prémisses d’un nouveau type d’interface appelée à essaimer. Avec des enjeux économiques majeurs pour les entreprises.
Source de l’article sur ZDNet

14 novembre 2017/0 Commentaires/par Service comm.