Development By Simon Sterne Today WordPress is the web’s favourite CMS (content management system), renowned for its low-entry level and vast array of themes and plugins. WordPress’s open-source nature allows for endless flexibility, catering to diverse needs and technical skills. Unfortunately, 10,950,000 websites are hacked yearly, and 4,708,500 of those belong to small businesses. WordPress’s… Continue reading Rock Solid WordPress Security: Keeping Your Business Safe
Tag: changes
Google Maps: a refreshing turn in the right direction
Finally! Google Maps gets a much-needed makeover… and we’re here for it. Sometimes, a reroute is all it takes to rediscover the joy of the journey — Google Maps’ latest update is a testament to that. What’s New Since My Last Rant A few months back, I ripped into some serious user experience flaws in Google Maps. Google Maps: about that… Continue reading Google Maps: a refreshing turn in the right direction
Design Systems Teams: Understand Your Users So They Can Serve Theirs
Welcome to the next edition of my Design Strategy blog series. Today, I’ll be sharing a story from some recent client visits that will help y’all recognize WHY you should do things differently to mature and scale your digital accessibility program quickly. I will once again skip the “how-to” dry laundry lists of tactical “do… Continue reading Design Systems Teams: Understand Your Users So They Can Serve Theirs
Making Waves in India 2023: Why Accessibility Deserves a Spot on Tech Giants’ Radar
India has a new rising economy that is catching everybody’s attention with its development, innovation, and growth. But we won’t be talking about what’s out there on the internet. We will be diving deep into a topic that’s making waves and deserves a prime spot on the radar of tech giants – Web Accessibility. Now,… Continue reading Making Waves in India 2023: Why Accessibility Deserves a Spot on Tech Giants’ Radar
Name/Role/Value – Whose Role Is It Anyway?
Welcome to the next edition of my Design Strategy blog series. Today, I’m sharing a client story with the hope that y’all will focus on thinking about WHY you should do things differently so that your program can rapidly mature and scale quickly. I will once again skip the “how-to” article formula and dry laundry… Continue reading Name/Role/Value – Whose Role Is It Anyway?
Designing safe and trustworthy AI systems
Designing for safe and trustworthy AI Why human oversight to make up for AI errors doesn’t work and what we can do instead Illustration created by Cara Storath in Midjourney As much as AI is powerful, in some cases it can be misleading or wrong. A realization that came too late to a New York lawyer,… Continue reading Designing safe and trustworthy AI systems
Designing a colour system
Building multi-brand colour systems that support light and dark modes with minimum effort. It is all about organizing, naming and choosing the right colour values for the system to work. I would like to share my view on the issue and tell about the methods I choose to make the system. Made with design tokens Design tokens are… Continue reading Designing a colour system
Design for meaningful outcomes
Aim for quality outcomes, not just outputs — that’s how we can drive customer and business value! Designing for outcomes enables us to focus on customer needs and meaningful business results. “Start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology,” Steve Jobs once said. To write a compelling story, start with the ending as a meaningful destination.… Continue reading Design for meaningful outcomes
Accessibility of the Button: Should We Fix It or the Root Cause Problem?
Let me tell you a story along the lines of…Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button? Typical “how to” articles are dry laundry lists of tactical “do this/don’t do that” mechanics that do nothing to help you think about WHY you should do things differently. Today, I’m going to share a more strategic accessible design approach… Continue reading Accessibility of the Button: Should We Fix It or the Root Cause Problem?
Almost Ready! WCAG 2.2 is one small step away from being officially done!
A new version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is almost ready. WCAG 2.2 should be finalized in August 2023. This is a minor version update. If you are already familiar with WCAG 2.0 and/or 2.1, you probably have a number of questions. And we’ve got up-to-date answers! Why isn’t WCAG 2.2 ready yet?… Continue reading Almost Ready! WCAG 2.2 is one small step away from being officially done!
Designing for AI: beyond the chatbot
Guidelines and strategies for meaningfully leveraging AI in your applications With the recent advancements in AI, we as designers, builders, and creators, face big questions about the future of applications and how people will interact with digital experiences. Generative AI has unleashed huge possibilities with what we can do with AI. People are now using… Continue reading Designing for AI: beyond the chatbot
WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers
This year, Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) was a big deal! Among the many announcements this year, Apple introduced the new Apple Vision Pro headset which has arguably and understandably stolen the show this year. Although Vision Pro may be the big talk of the town post-WWDC, there was also a myriad of exciting… Continue reading WWDC 2023 Accessibility Goodies for Developers
3 Essential Design Trends, June 2023
That’s a big part of the reason so many designers are stripping down menus to more minimal styles. (Plus, it can create a cleaner, more sleek overall design.) Here’s what’s trending in design this month – and it is all about navigation. 1. Pop-Out Navigation There’s an obvious connection to mobile-friendliness here – website designs that use… Continue reading 3 Essential Design Trends, June 2023
Are we there yet? WCAG 2.2 is at the Candidate Recommendation v3
If you’re a regular reader of the Deque blog, you may be asking yourself, haven’t I read this already? Well my friend, you may have. In September 2022, WCAG 2.2 reached the Candidate Recommendation (CR) stage for the first time. Then on January 25, 2023, WCAG 2.2 entered a second round of CR. And, you… Continue reading Are we there yet? WCAG 2.2 is at the Candidate Recommendation v3
How high-fidelity prototypes can enhance user testing
During the usability testing phase, gathering as much information as possible about how users understand designs/product is essential. The objectives of usability testing often differ across studies. They typically uncover product or service design issues, discover opportunities for enhancement, and gain insight into the target user’s behaviour and preferences [1]. Tools like Figma and Sketch… Continue reading How high-fidelity prototypes can enhance user testing
10 Key Principles of User-Centered Design
Many firms’ design and development decisions are increasingly oriented toward human-centered innovation. Instead of rushing goods to market, these firms are using a user-centered design approach. Design and development teams build high-performing digital products or websites that uniquely meet customers’ demands by concentrating on the user experience. After all, a good web design is helpful… Continue reading 10 Key Principles of User-Centered Design
Handling cross-team feedback loops on design work
Escape the siloing trap when you are both part of a design team and a product team, involve people early and often, and foster the right conversation at the right time If you are a designer working in a product organization you are maybe also part of two teams at the same time: a design team… Continue reading Handling cross-team feedback loops on design work
How to create responsive cards with the help of auto-layout in Figma?
Auto Layout is one of the most powerful features of Figma and today we will be creating a card design inside Figma using Auto-Layout which will be fully responsive, i.e would respond to the screen size. demonstrates the responsive design of the card Before we get started, there are 3 main things we are talking about in… Continue reading How to create responsive cards with the help of auto-layout in Figma?
WordPress Product Founders on What They’d Do Differently
Incredible as it sounds, WordPress was initially released back in 2003. And it has evolved quite a bit during that time. It has become a mature, if ever-changing, platform for building websites. Its massive theme and plugin ecosystem have also seen its share of changes. We’ve witnessed solo entrepreneurs launching products, nurturing their growth, and… Continue reading WordPress Product Founders on What They’d Do Differently
How to Let Users Dynamically Change the Number of Posts per Page in WordPress
Consider the following scenario: you have a WordPress blog with hundreds of posts. On your blog archive page, six posts appear at a time. Of course, there’s pagination for moving between older and newer posts. But what if you want to give users the option to choose the number of posts they want to display… Continue reading How to Let Users Dynamically Change the Number of Posts per Page in WordPress
How to Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Page
The checkout page is one of the most important pages on any eCommerce website. All the effort that you put into your website content, design and marketing will amount to nothing if your customers keep abandoning their carts and never complete the checkout process. Some statistics show that cart abandonment rate can vary in range… Continue reading How to Customize the WooCommerce Checkout Page
Choosing a WordPress Website Builder and Why You Should Use One
There are a lot of tools and services for creating websites today. However, none of them are as popular as WordPress. In fact, WordPress powers around 43% of all websites: that include hobby sites, official government websites, and the biggest news websites. Some examples of websites built with WordPress are The White House, Rolling Stone,… Continue reading Choosing a WordPress Website Builder and Why You Should Use One
8 Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Image Editors
The internet is filled with countless images uploaded by users. This is especially true for social media websites—and it is very rare for people to post original unedited images anywhere. It is also common to need to post images with a specific size or format. While there are a lot of full-fledged image editing apps… Continue reading 8 Best Free and Open-Source JavaScript Image Editors
How to Customize the WooCommerce Shop Page
People who have created WordPress websites know that there are different kinds of pages that you can create in WordPress. WooCommerce follows a somewhat similar structure. There are single product pages like single post pages and then there are archive type pages to show a list of products. The WooCommerce shop page falls in the… Continue reading How to Customize the WooCommerce Shop Page