Today in Design - Top Articles RoundUp 26 November 2014

The day’s best and most impor­tant design- and design business-focused arti­cles, tuto­ri­als, and resources hand-picked by Pariah Burke.

  • Tablets Aren’t Killing Laptops, But Smartphones Are Killing Tablets

    Tablet sales growth is declin­ing, and Apple is sell­ing few­er iPads every quar­ter. PC sales are improv­ing. Ever-larger smart­phones make great con­sump­tion devices. Microsoft has even real­ized Windows should be a desk­top oper­at­ing sys­tem, because PCs aren’t going anywhere.

    Tablets used to seem like the future. Everyone would aban­don lap­tops and desk­tops — or, at least, every­one would have a smart­phone, a tablet, and a PC. But tablets are now look­ing more like a niche product.

  • A lit­tle late? 6 Reasons to Combine Content and Community on Your Website

    Visit any web­site today and they’re much the same as those in the 1990’s. They’re entire­ly one-way: the pub­lish­er of the web­site pro­vides infor­ma­tion to vis­i­tors. The vis­i­tors, on the oth­er hand, have few options to inter­act, save for a “con­tact us” form or a hand­ful of social shar­ing but­tons. Those same vis­i­tors are afford­ed no options to engage with one another.

  • UX Sketching: Why is it necessary?

    In the begin­ning It’s just about brain­storm­ing. I list out a jum­ble of words and draw tiny sketch­es relat­ed to what I’m work­ing on (and find the par­al­lels lat­er). Personally, I pre­fer paper with a grid so I can con­vey things respon­sive­ly. Most of the time per­fec­tion isn’t an issue and the sketch­es are just for me.

  • UX Sketching: Why is it necessary?

    In the begin­ning It’s just about brain­storm­ing. I list out a jum­ble of words and draw tiny sketch­es relat­ed to what I’m work­ing on (and find the par­al­lels lat­er). Personally, I pre­fer paper with a grid so I can con­vey things respon­sive­ly. Most of the time per­fec­tion isn’t an issue and the sketch­es are just for me.

  • Cisco Developing Cloud-Based Virtual Meeting Rooms

    Sixty-six per­cent of the 200 event orga­niz­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Meeting Professionals International’s second-quarter Meetings Outlook sur­vey this year indi­cat­ed they expect­ed a year-over-year increase in vir­tu­al atten­dance, and more than half of the respon­dents indi­cat­ed their orga­ni­za­tions were using vir­tu­al and hybrid tech­nol­o­gy to enhance in-person meet­ings or incor­po­rate onsite and remote event elements. 

  • Designers: 7 Ways To Be More Prolific

    Clients are look­ing for design­ers who can not only exceed their expec­ta­tions, but do so in record time. Here’s how to get more design done in less time, earn­ing your­self more mon­ey and loy­al clients in the process.

  • 3 Rules to Follow When Someone You Live With Works From Home

    Work was now home, and home was work. Not to men­tion, shar­ing our small space became a whole lot more complicated.

    Over time, we’ve man­aged it bet­ter, but look­ing back, here are three things I learned that helped us nav­i­gate the transition.