Super huge thanks to Amy Jo Kim, who came to talk with the SF LUXr teams about “gamification”, and what comes after. Her eye-opening talk, deconstructed the gamification hype and provided a great framework for understanding why some companies have had dramatic success employing game attributes while others’ attempts fall flat.
Factory Joe’s (aka Chris Messina) is using Flickr’s collections and tags to create a huge library of design patterns, interfaces, and usre flows. If you need to see how someone else has solved a UI design problem, this will give you some pointers. It’s a great way to cobble together quick concept “sketches” of a UI.
Alexa Andrzejewski and Adaptive Path put together best practices for sign-up systems on the web. It’s useful, but remember that best practices are stereotypes — your situation may require something different.
Luke Wroblewski is the voice of reason for so many web app design issues, particularly form design. Read his guidelines and apply them rationally — voila! No more religious arguments over left-justifying form labels. Hallelujah.