This is version 2 of the Better Defaults library, expanded to sixty five (or so) interactive and cleanly styled widgets. Use it in place of the standard widget set.

Reasons to use these widgets include:

• Consistent and improved styling.
• Polished interactivity.
• Standardized labeling.
• Expanded set of shapes & controls.
• Rollover, MouseDown, Selected, and Disabled styles for most controls.
• Includes all defaults.

This is for version 5.5 and above. Put the extracted .rplib file in your “My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\” folder (Windows) or your “Documents\Axure\Libraries” folder (Mac).

Preview |  Download

Want to make your own Axure libraries? This is a short how-to guide on getting the most out of it. Read More…

I attended the #ixd10 conference last weekend in Savannah, and while better bloggers have summarized and analyzed the event, I’d like to share my own brief takeaway lesson.

Let your passion out into the world. Every single one of us is great at something unique, and we owe it to ourselves to share that with the greater community. That’s why I produce all this Axure stuff – because I’m good at it, and it makes people happy. Seriously: happy! That’s a damn good feeling.

Few professions provide this opportunity, this interconnectedness and openness that allow people of any age or location to make an immediate, positive impact across the world. Throughout the conference, as I sat through presentation after presentation of really cool people making really cool things, I realized yet again that the world is there for the improving. For each of us. So take some time outside of work to make something awesome – you’ll get back a thousand times what you put in.

Thanks.
-Loren

Kevin Wick has posted a very nice sketchy-styled Axure library.  I highly recommend it.

Prototyping in a very low-fidelity visual style generally helps your stakeholders provide feedback at the right level, as discussed in this article, and has been adopted by many other design tools, notably Balsamiq.

I recently joined a wave of about seven user experience professionals, with all of us participating and discussing, in real-time, the merits of Wave. In fairness, if you send seven UX snobs to review almost any interface, you can expect some berating. And this is a closed “preview” (read: beta) version. But what occurred was an absolute evisceration. In this post I attempt to distill the feedback by providing three criticisms and three suggestions about how Google Wave can be improved.

Read More…

Like using Axure as much as I do? Check out the first Axure-centered conference, AxureWorld 2009, on October 10. It’s all online, and completely free.

I’ll be presenting two panels: Variables and Conditional Logic; Raised Events, and Axure Tips and Tricks. There are a bunch of other great panels hosted by Axure ninjas: Fred Beecher, Jeff Harrison, Luke Perman, Mark Johnston, Dhawal Shah, and a Q&A session with the Axure folks themselves.

And a huge thanks to Ezra Schwartz for organizing the whole thing.

Web applications and sites these days are using many social features. This library, compatible with Axure versions 5.5 and up, contains many of the standard widgets you will need to prototype basic social functionality.

You’ll find a lot more than nice looking stencils – these widgets have polished interactivity, for your prototyping and usability testing needs. And always feel free to contact me if you have any requests or additions!

Preview | Download the Widget Library

(place the .rplib file in \My Documents\My Axure RP Libraries\ for it to load automatically when you start Axure) Read More…

Need a case study to help justify the ROI of performing even the most basic user testing? Look no further: The Dallas Cowboys’ new $1.2 billion stadium includes a vastly expensive, 180 foot HD screen that, besides its intended uses, hangs so low that punted footballs hit it (video). The estimated costs to fix this vary (one places the cost at $2 million), but it’s pretty easy to see the value of some perfunctory usability testing here.

When you’re building a football stadium, put football players in it and let them play. This also shows why user testing your own designs isn’t sufficient: I doubt Jerry Jones can punt a ball high enough to hit that screen.

I continually see folks asking for examples of Axure wireframes. We just relaunched engagebig.com with a fresh design and some simple interactions. The prototype for the site is now here for your perusal:

Engagebig.com v2 Prototype
Read More…

A Clean Design is now a lot cleaner. After some hard evenings spent sketching, wireframing, polishing, and coding, this site reflects, as much as possible, my own work and my views on the web in general. Let me know if you enjoy the graphic design – it’s the first full one I’ve ever done.

I invite you to check out some new content and some reorganized content at the work and projects pages, a better footer, and one miserable defeat to Internet Explorer’s vicious bug engine (can you find it?). I should also mention that IE6 is dead to me.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments, expect more good content to follow.