Running The Ladder is the company blog of Bainbridge Studios, a tiny runt of a design practice based in lovely Tacoma, WA.
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Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing
Tuesday, May 25th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
It’s often overlooked, particularly on small-scale projects, but even the most basic user testing can provide a wealth of invaluable information for both designers and clients. We all think we know and understand how our users will interact with a product or feature, but until you sit down and spend some time observing real people in real interactions with your site or web app, you’re probably greatly overestimating its ease of use and underestimating potential sticking points for the end user.
Nate Bolt discusses a range of easy-to-implement user testing options in the latest issue of A List Apart. There’s lots of great information crammed into his piece, both on tools we’re already familiar with (e.g., Silverback, CrazyEgg) and a host of alternatives. It’s definitely worth checking out.
Quick and Dirty Remote User Testing (via A List Apart)
Crunching Numbers
Monday, May 24th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
We may have to hire this one to do our taxes next year.
Links of the Week: May 21st
Friday, May 21st, 2010 | Tom Carmony
Google Font Directory
The full listing of Google’s newly embeddable webfont selection.
Pictaculous
Generate custom color palette from a image upload (link courtesy of Dan Benjamin).
Linear Gradients
One of a number of excellent tools on the site for generating CSS-based visual effects.
You can see all of our recommended links on del.icio.us »
Links of the Week: April 23rd
Friday, April 23rd, 2010 | Tom Carmony
jQuery Masonry by David DeSandro
An excellent twist on the standard CSS “float” approach to arranging page elements (courtesy of Cameron Moll and Daring Fireball).
Smooth Scroll Effect with Local Anchors
More jQuery magic.
Keynote Presentations on the iPad
Best practices for creating a Keynote presentation on a Mac for use on an iPad (link courtesy of Daring Fireball).
Twitter HTML Widget Customizer
Generates the old-school, unstyled version of the Twitter feed widget.
Postmark
An email delivery service for web applications.
22 CSS Button Styling Tutorials and Techniques
Pretty self-explanatory.
You can see all of our recommended links on Delicious »
How to Give Yourself a Raise Without Losing Business
Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 | Tom Carmony
As a freelancer, you can give yourself a raise by increasing your hourly or per-project rates. This part is simple, but setting up the right preconditions for the change is a trickier process. How can you raise your rates while making sure you still get plenty of work?
FreelanceSwitch explores the topic in a well-written piece »