How to awaken your creativity?

Hellow Folks, how is it going ?!

Today i gonna give for you a good advice about how to start a ui/ux project.
Starts a project sometimes could be the hardest thing to do in the whole development. Even the best WebDesigner in the whole world have problems to get good ideias and to be inspirated. Those kind of things you couldn’t do/get whenever you want to, those are things you have to work out to awaken creativity. But the biggest question is “How to awaken your creativity?” sometimes this thing are impossible to do, I know, but in my experience i can say that listen a good music, read the blog of you favorite writer, paint something or even cook your favorite food, you could awakening your creativity. This tips could help you, but not always work! My advice is do not worry to much about it, write down all of your ideias and see what is better for the project, will that really match with what the user wants to ?! Search for some projects related of yours on the internet, the internet is the best place to get inspired. I’m not say for you copy other projects, but sometimes you can get the best part of your site just looking at elements of the other sites. Take a look in these follow links bellow, they could help you to get good ideas and get inspired to starts your ui/ux project:
The Favourite Website Awards
FWA claims to be the world’s most visited website award program, receiving more than 4 million visits per month. FWA selects a Site of the Day, a Site of the Month, and a Site of the Year. Recent Sites of the Day are shown as thumbnails on the FWA front page. FWA bases its selections on: Design 40%, Navigation 25%, Graphics 15%, Content 15%, and Personality 5%. As a result of the emphasis on design and graphics, winning websites tend to be strikingly designed and visually attractive. In addition to the Site of the Year, there is an annual People’s Choice Award decided by online public vote.

The most popular and the most awardeds websites you will for sure find there. You could search for categories, most recently awarded, awerdeds by dates, etc .. I’m pretty sure you could get inspired our get a lot of good ideas from there. Take a pick in the whole website. worth to check it out.
Good-Tutorials
Good-Tutorials is the largest source of tutorials on the web today. It has been featured on the BBC, SkyNews, TechTV (now G4), in the British magazine iCreate, PC World, and has been linked to by thousands of sites, blogs and forums. There are also a wealth of new social additions, including gravatar support, formatting of comments in discussions, activity streams for users, and more.

Got no ideias ?! start trying to use a tutorial step-by-step from good-tutorials, you dont must to follow the tutorial untill the final, but, maybe start using that you could find the base for you project. why not ?! hehe
Pattern Tap
Designers don’t design in a vacuum. They find inspiration and influence from the world around them. They collect other designs besides their own. Designs they love. Designs they hate. They pore over these designs, picking them apart to understand the techniques behind them, learning what works and doesn’t work. That’s what Pattern Tap is all about, collecting specific designs and patterns of user interaction. It’s a living classroom, where designers learn what is working well on the Web and why. But what designers are really doing is continuing their education and improving their design literacy. Which is something that we’re very committed to helping other product designers do here at ZURB.

My favorite spot to get inspired and ideas. Worth take a pick in this site before starts any web project. They have updates trends about the new webdesign area, and could help you A LOT to find the heart for your developtment. I used to see this in the majority of mine jobs, and always get something awesome from there.

That’s all ppl. I hope that could help you to start your project. Please lemme know about your questions, suggestions or complaints. Use the comment field to share whatever you want!

Valeu!
~lucasteixeira

52 Weeks of UX – by Joshua Porter & Joshua Brewer

Amazing program that all web designers should take.
Thanks Joshua Porter & Joshua Brewer for this good content.

http://52weeksofux.com/tagged/week_1

Tchau!
~lucasteixeira

The Difference between Web Designer & UI/UX Designer by Michael Locke

Michael Locke is a famous instructor, designer, brand developer and creative leader specializing in all areas of the web.
He explain within the follow video the difference between Web Designer & UI/UX Designer. Very interesting, worth checking out.

You could also Take a peek on his channel on youtube, you’ll find a loot of good tips/advice for the web design area.

Tchau!
~lucasteixeira

What the hell is a UI/UX Designer, dude ?

Hi Folks, how is it going? I’m Lucas Teixeira, a UI and UX Designer, but what does “UI/UX” means, you might is asking for yourself? And why should you know about it?

Well, lets first start talking about UX. This slang means “User Experience” ( you can also find some texts saying UXD or UED), that is a broad term used to explain all aspects of a person’s experience with the system, including the interface, graphics, industrial design, physical interaction, and the manual. The term specifically “User Experience” came in to existence in early 90’s with the proliferation of computers at work places. It was Donald Norman, User Experience Architect, who coined and brought this term to wider knowledge.[4] The term also has a more recent connection to user-centered design, Human-Computer Interaction, and principles and also incorporates elements from similar user-centered design fields. User Experience also refers to the application of user-centered design practices to generate cohesive, predictive and desirable designs based on holistic consideration of users’ experience. In most cases, User Experience Design fully encompasses traditional Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users.

UX is something anyone can do. The problem is not everyone can do it well. I can undertake the visual design for a website, but I guarantee you that it will look dreadful and unprofessional.

If you learn nothing else about UX I ask you to remember these two things.
– Know thy user.
– You are not the user (in most cases).

If you don’t know your user base, their habits and tendencies, and why they do or do not perform certain actions, then you can’t be expected to design a good experience for them. Even if you are very similar to your users, remember that you are only one person and that does not define the qualities of your user base as a whole. Get to know your users and design the experience with them in mind. The role of a UXer is to have that knowledge, constantly expand it, and then design with those users in mind, crafting amazing experiences that will delight and fulfill them, people like facility and comfortability, then use your creative to develop somethings with this principles.

About UI ( User Interface ) Design, is the design of computers, appliances, machines, mobile communication devices, software applications, and websites with the focus on the user’s experience and interaction. The goal of user interface design is to make the user’s interaction as simple and efficient as possible, in terms of accomplishing user goals—what is often called user-centered design. Good user interface design facilitates finishing the task at hand without drawing unnecessary attention to itself. Graphic design may be utilized to support its usability. The design process must balance technical functionality and visual elements to create a system that is not only operational but also usable and adaptable to changing user needs.

User Interface Design should organize purposefully, in meaningful and useful ways based on clear, consistent models that are apparent and recognizable to users, putting related things together and separating unrelated things, differentiating dissimilar things and making similar things resemble one another. The structure principle is concerned with overall user interface architecture.

With these explanations, we can define that UI and UX is who has specif skills to build a web applications/interactions, some one that understand different flows from page to page, wireframes, design icons, form designs, creative interactions, and create a great experience for different kinds of users.

Now that you know that, let’s start to do it! Browse around, take a peek at some good ui/ux web pages design, like a facebook, twitter, netflix, etc, use these good principles and always remember to make something usable.

And if you have some questions or comments, please dont hesite to share with me!

Let’s Desgin!!

~lucasteixeira

sources:

– http://www.wikipedia.org/
– http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/