User Experience (UX)
If you love UX as much as we do, then you’re in luck! We’ve scoured the web for content and searched the globe for experts to give us compelling User Experience advice. And if you ever need to bolster your argument on the importance of UX, be sure to pull up our handy infographic.
15 Tell-Tale Signs You Work in UX
This post from UserCentric was so good (and true) we couldn’t help but share. The 15 Tell-Tale Signs That You Work in UX. #1.
You’re totally comfortable around one-way mirrors. #3. Your spice rack is organized by frequency of use and is within arms-reach of the stove top.
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Check Out the Webby Award Winners!
While we were celebrating our 2nd Anniversary yesterday, the World Wide Web was also celebrating its anniversary (20 years to be exact), and our friends the Webbys were announcing their 2013 Webby winners, People’s Voice winners, and the other nominees.
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10 Tips for Designing Mobile UX
The folks over at UK digital experience company Red Ant have this nice blog post on how to design better mobile experiences. The author, Alex Sbardella, refers quite a bit to apps (he is, after all, their Mobile Products Manager), but he points out his advice applies just as well to mobile sites.
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Vitamin of the Week, Alex C. (Talent)
Alex is a terrific User Experience Architect with an impressive agency and client roster including TBWA/Chiat Day, Blitz, Genex, Microsoft Game Studios, Johnson & Johnson, Acura, and Ford. In this interview, he tells us the skills needed to be a great UX Architect, his #1 tip for anyone trying to improve their site’s user experience, his latest project, and more.
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Vote to Give Your Favorite Site a Webby!
It’s that time once again for the Webby Awards, and for YOU to vote for your favorite site, video, and app to receive a People’s Voice Award.
Unencumbered by an Electoral College or annoying clinging chads, the People’s Voice process guarantees winners will not be duking it out in Florida to determine who’s really number one.
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The UX Conference You Want in Your Hometown
If you didn’t get a chance to attend our UX Thursday event in Chicago this past January, we’ve put together this nice little recap to show you what all the fuss was about. (And there was quite a bit of fuss about this sold-out conference.)
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LONDON SERIES: UX with Ben Logan from Spotless Interactive
We’re proud to announce our new London Series videos filled with news you can use, all about the UK. In our first video, we interview Ben Logan, director and owner of London’s hot usability and user experience agency Spotless Interactive.
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5 Ways to Run Your UX Team Like Phil Jackson
This recent blog post from the fine folks over at UX Magazine shows how to use the management lessons of Phil Jackson (arguably one of the best coaches in NBA history) to lead your a UX team. If the guy can handle Dennis Rodman, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O'Neal, then he’s got some management skills, wouldn’t you say?
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Get Expert Tips on UI from Stephen P. Anderson
We interview UI Expert, speaker, and author Stephen P. Anderson to get his take on everything from “Why is UI Important?” to “What’s Next for the World of UI?”
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Vitamin of the Week: Heather Young (UX Specialist)
You’ll be ecstatic that our UX Specialist answered our 11 Quick Questions, because you’ll find out what advice she has for UX folks, how she stays up on the world of digital, and important stuff like her guilty song pleasure.
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4 Reasons Why Your UX Investment Is Failing
Everyone knows that Good UX means Good Business, right? But even if you are investing in UX, it may not pay off, no matter how much time, money, and resources you’ve put into it. (Think of the Boeing Dreamliner 787, if you will.) Here’s a list of UX team killers.
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Confused About What UX Is? Don’t Be!
Does UX by any other name still smell as sweet?
Well, not if it’s actually referring to something else.
UX Matters has a compelling post about the current state of confusion of terms in the field of user experience.
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UX Perspectives From Chicago’s Best!
UX experts from Chicago share their insights on the user experience field.
Will Hacker, User Experience Architect, Cars.com
Jeff Steffgen, User Experience & Design Director, SuperConnect
Mark Meeker, UI Engineer, Orbitz Worldwide
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Get the Latest, Greatest UX News!
Well before the NCAA declared March to be a mad month, this little guy pictured on the right was out in the fields cavorting with his friends, celebrating in their own crazy way (thus the expression “mad as a March hare”).
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UX is Not a Joke (Or Is It?)
Joshua Porter, writing about a New York Times video piece on Jerry Seinfeld, posits how eerily similar UI design is to the comedian writing a joke. A bit which, no kidding, he’s been working on for two years.
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Don’t Be A UX Statistic [INFOGRAPHIC]
Our love for UX is exactly why we produced this fun (and interactive!) infographic chock full of UX statistics to help you avoid being a UX statistic, in a bad way. Just scroll down to see the grizzly UX stats and find advice on how to keep customers on the right track.
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UX-pert Shay Howe on Freelance Front End Developers & Networking
Get the lowdown on boosting your freelance career, how to hire a freelance front-end developer, and more from Shay Howe, former user interface engineer for Groupon.
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5 Great Design and Development Resources
We unveil our newest feature:
Digital Creative Resource Roundup!
Once a month we’ll showcase a brand new batch of amazing resources for you to use for all your web design, graphic design, web development, etc., etc. projects.
Best of all, each of these offerings are gluten and calorie free!
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How to Explain UX to Other Designers
Way back in 2006, Dan Saffer drew a Venn diagram called The Disciplines of User Experience Design for his book Designing for Interaction. Updated in 2009 for the second edition of his book, it’s now been given new life in this beautiful makeover by designer Thomas Gläser.
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The Importance of Multi-Device Web Design from @lukew
Listen to former chief design architect at Yahoo! and author of Mobile First, Luke Wroblewski talks about the explosion of web-enabled devices and how designers, developers, and everyone else in the web world need to work to get to a world where one design works across all screens.
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How to Help Your Parents Understand UI and UX
Thought we’d post this on the heels of spending a lot (too much? Nah, not too much...) time with our families.
Bassett & Partners created this great video showing how UX and UI design is a part of the objects we use every day - phones, games, Facebook - and how it’s poised to change the world we live in the coming years.
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Learn from Chicago’s Leaders at UX Thursday
We’re proud announce our partnership with Jared Spool and UIE to present USER EXPERIENCE THURSDAY in Chicago in January. What a way to start the year!
Rub shoulders (or elbows or other HR-approved parts) with Jared, Stephen Anderson and many other Chicago UX luminaries.
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Vitamin T Agent of the Week: Heather Young (UX Specialist)
With over a decade of experience as an Interactive Designer, Heather is as passionate about user experience anyone in the UX community. She’s so passionate in fact, she’s specialized: she works with our agents throughout North America to help awesome UX talent find work!
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The Most Essential UX Tip You’ll Ever Get [VIDEO]
User Experience A-Lister Whitney Hess (whose clients have included American Express, The New York Times, Allstate Insurance, Claritin, Tropicana, and EarthLink) gives you the one tip that you’ll need to remember for every project you work on that involves users - whether it’s a mobile app or responsive website.
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Expert Series: @SchneiderMike Tells All
Introducing the Vitamin T Expert Series.
We seek out the best and brightest minds in the creative community, load them up with coffee, and then turn on the video camera and ask them lots of pertinent questions.
And a few impertinent ones.
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What’s Next for Digital Freelance Jobs?
We don’t need to tell you that the interactive world is fiercely competitive, right? Keeping ahead of the curve should be part of everyone’s career action plan since changes are constantly afoot.
That’s why we chatted with Los Angeles agent and former interactive producer Robin McKee-Clark to pass along some of the inside information she’s seeing on the emerging jobs landscape.
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The Shoreditch Interviews: Get Inspired by London’s Top Creatives [Part 4]
Check in with Jonathan Lovatt-Young, UX Director from London's LBi in this segment from our Shoreditch Interviews.
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What The Karate Kid Can Teach Us About UX
Like many of us who grew up in the 80’s, Jeff Gothelf loves the first version (and, he insists, the better version) of The Karate Kid.
So it was it was either a Facebook-inspired trip down memory lane or hearing Joe Esposito’s “You're The Best" on a local classic rock station that led him to write a post about how the Karate Kid relates to UX and Agile.
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Designing Homepage Takeover Skins 101
“A skin by any other name...”
(No, this is not a zombie post.)
Regardless of what you call it: homepage takeover skin, wallpapers, wrappers, gutter ads, left & right rails, when you’re trying to educate yourself on how to create one, there’s shockingly scant information out there in the interwebs.
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Explaining the Difference Between UI and UX to Your Friends
We know you get this question.
Because we get it all the time, too.
Someone comes up to you at a party, the office, or while you’re working out and asks you, “What’s the difference between UI and UX?”
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Hot or Not Jobs: What’s Trending for Interactive
Since we’re always getting asked this question, we reached out to our stellar Vitamin T agents to find out the hottest jobs they’re working on RIGHT NOW. We knew you’d appreciate a timely snapshot, what with interactive trends changes so quickly and all!
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We’re Nominated for a Webby!
It’s been a great first year for us at Vitamin T. Getting to work with incredible talent, clients, staff, attending amazing events with our partners, and now, to cap it all off, our site is nominated for a Webby Award!
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An Event Apart Video: Luke Wroblewski’s Mobile First!
You already know (if you’re not entirely new to this site) what huge fans we are of An Event Apart. Such huge, nerdy fans, in fact, that we’re proudly sponsoring all seven events this year from Atlanta to San Francisco.
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SXSW is HERE (and Streaming Live!)
The Vitamin T team is on the ground in Austin and ready for action at SXSW Interactive.
If you’re at the event, be sure to look for (and ride in!) one of the mirthful, yet hopefully speedy Vitamin T branded pedicabs. Scan the QR code on the back and then go pick up a cool free t-shirt at our booth #722.
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Real Time and Personal [Webby University VIDEO]
If the folks at The Webby Awards had their way, not only would your TV tell you what your friends, and people with similar tastes, thought of a movie, it would save you tons of time by doing it.
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Inc. Magazine Predicts the 5 Hardest Jobs to Fill in 2012
Good news, the year is looking up for creative freelancers!
Though the US (and European) economies continue to jump high hurdles in other areas, 2011 had two groups that outperformed the rest: tech companies and startups. The great news? Both look like they'll be continuing their strong run in 2012.
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SXSW Update #2
POP QUIZ: Remember when we told you last week that SXSW Interactive was a mere 8 weeks away. So guess how far away it is this week? (Yes it’s math, but it’s easy math.)
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SXSW is Rapidly Approaching!
Holy smokes, SXSW Interactive is a mere 8 weeks away!
Which means if you have tickets, the planning part of your brain should be kicking into high gear right about now (and if you don’t have tickets, it’s time to switch to panic mode).
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Build Your Digital Creative Team with our Team Builder!
You can imagine, as a creative talent agency, how often we get calls from clients who need help building digital creative teams, what with technology changing literally every day.
(If you just imagined “a lot”, give yourself two points.)
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UI 16: The UX Conference You Don’t Want to Miss
Called a mecca for UX folks, if you’ve been dreaming about a thought-provoking, intimate (read: no wristbands or lines) and fluff-free conference on User Experience, look no further!
Here’s some reasons why we feel this UX conference is so important for you to attend and so vital for us to sponsor...
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Where will your skills take you?
The world of a digital creative is a heck of a lot like a video game.
Navigating through increasingly difficult levels, picking up new skill sets, wearing different hats, battling zombies, stealing cars and rising through the ranks of an organized crime ring...
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Vitamin T Starter Upper
With all the startups we’ve been seeing of late, one might get the impression that creating them is as simple as coming up with a grammatically questionable name and a sweet logo. In truth, you need so much more than that; employees, for instance.
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Aquent launches new division Vitamin T
Aquent, the global leader in marketing and design staffing, is excited to announce the launch of its new division, Vitamin T, making it easier than ever to connect design-minded companies with exceptional digital creative talent for contract assignments.
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The showdown continues: HTML5 vs. Flash
The critical vulnerability Adobe recently discovered in its Flash Player has got to have Steve Jobs smirking. He’s long contended that Flash is one big security headache and is “the #1 reason Macs crash”. He’s certainly not alone. Many a developer has cursed Flash for being a CPU hog, while users rail against the diminished battery life of devices when using Flash.
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Get your next UX job: Create a killer sample deck
When you set out to land your next UX gig, you’ll want more than a stellar portfolio. Today’s hiring managers also want UX sample decks—a simple set of deliverables showing your skills. Looking to illustrate your depth of experience, tech abilities, visual skills, and versatility? Here’s your shot!
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