User Experience Design

User experience design (UXD or UED) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product. User experience design encompasses traditional human–computer interaction (HCI) design, and extends it by addressing all aspects of a product or service as perceived by users.

Everyday designer’s question to pay Adobe Creative Cloud (CC) Tax or pay for individual third party design apps

Mandar Apte Adobe Creative Cloud, Adobe Systems Incorporated, Art & Design, Personal Experience, User Experience Design Leave a comment

Today I used Adobe XD for whole day. Felt it’s really competitive to Sketch app on Mac.

I really avoided using Adobe XD all this years because of Adobe Subscription TAX which normally cost me INR 5,000/- here in India. But loved Sketch App’s payment model which is almost INR 5,000/ for year then you can renew subscription or use it without update as long as you want.

But loved Adobe XD compatibility and integration with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop, it is real smooth and well done. Adobe XD’s prototype tool is smooth.

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Best Design Advice that I ever received

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Graphic Design, Personal Experience, Typography, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Best advice I ever received about designing logos and symbols is use humanistic elements / curves / lines in your design and totally avoid mechanical drawings. As mechanical drawings can be taken care by computer itself.

This advice was given to me by Shirbhavikar sir and Pawar sir when I was doing BFA Applied Arts at Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art.

It seems I don’t follow this advice totally in my drawings / designs and illustrations. Even after 4 years of my graduation when I met Mahendra Patel sir at his SID office he told me the same.

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In-depth Review of Matrimony Website by Suyog Ranade Vivaha aka Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Reviews, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

Here I have written complete in-depth review and analysis of Suyog Ranade Vivaha or Shree Suyog Vivaha Mandal Matrimony website that I used for 6 to 7 months that was mainly on WhatsApp groups because of bad user experience on website format. I reported the following issues to them but they were not ready or in the right frame of mind to accept it.

So I just unregistered myself from their portal and get out of their WhatsApp groups.

Following are the points that I noticed about their matrimony service:

Point 01: No or Failed Business Model. Matrimony section mainly runs on WhatsApp Groups of 250 people. The group is unmanaged sometimes people post their profiles multiple times some peoples even post a political or comic forwards. Because of all members in open WhatsApp group, there is no contact number security or number privacy. Sometimes admins or business owners posts repeated WhatsApp Messages to asking every user to register and pay a fee to use WhatsApp group or website. Admins even warn users they will remove everyone who never pays matrimony section fee which showcases the main point that there is no thought behind Successful Business Model or Revenue Generation.

Point 02: No Privacy or Security: Because of the open group with visibility of contact numbers to everyone users are prone to scammers and fake profiles or spam calls

Point 03: Suyog Ranade Vivaha had a loss of complete user profile data and even registered accounts data three times while upgrading their website and also transferring the website to their new domain. They had to ask every user individually to reregister for their website again and again. A failed system.

Point 04: Website owners had to change Web Domain as similar web domain was used by its competitor with small name difference. It shows no thought about branding or company structure. Because of this duplicate domain by competitors, Suyog Ranade Vivavha’s Matrimony users were registering wrongly to competitors website thinking competitor that they are original company. This sows loss of identity and company branding. And a loss of revenue.

Point 05: Even you can see in screenshots website structure is broken and faulty with buggy coding and development.

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Choosing between Cloud Storage And Having Multiple Computers i.e. one at home, second at the office and another for being on the move / Tablet or Mobile.

Mandar Apte Apps, Art & Design, Hardware, Reviews, Tutorials, User Experience Design Leave a comment

So for the last two-three days, I started preparing for User Experience (UX) Professional Certification from a reputed institute.

 
So I have books from them for the course that I attended, then I have notes collected through websites like nngroup.com & usability.gov that I want to chunk information in short notes & collect them for future reference.

 
So the problem is every material that I collected is in physical paper form, or in digital format on my desktop computer but when I am on the move travelling from office to home or to some other place those notes are always unavailable to me.

 
So what is the solution to this problem?

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Irregularities of AdSense Advertisements Delivery, Why smaller 300×250 unit ads are delivered in 336×280 ad unit. Here is why?

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Google, Google AdSense, User Experience Design, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

For a while I was observing unusual behaviour of my 336 by 280 Ad units where smaller sized ads were get delivered in the size of 300 by 250 units.

 
I even report this issue to Google AdSense Support Team but received no reply & currently they were not accepting any new support request but any how I got the solution that I wanted.

 
I got the solution to the problem why smaller unit ads were get delivered in bigger size ad units & there by ruining my ‘Website Design Layouts’

 
Here is what Google Says about that:

 
(Source: Adsense Resource Tab)

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Search Engine Optimisation for Title Tag & How it works & How it is crawled by Google, A lesson learned from my own portfolio website

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Google, Google AdSense, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, Tutorials, User Experience Design, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

Here is what I learned from Google’s Web Crawling algorithm over the years,

 
For last three to two years I was using just ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’ as my title tag for my personal design portfolio website’s homepage i.e ‘Page Name | Website Name’. Nothing more than that to explain the people to give them full insight of website by just looking at title on google’s search result’s page.

 
But for last few days I was getting this result when I searched my name on Google, Yes I was listed first when I searched for name i.e mandar apte,

 
But result was something like this, ‘Mandar Apte: Design Portfolio’ instead my curated title ‘Design Portfolio | Mandar Apte’. It seems google altered my website homepage’s title tag on their search results. I was amassed why should this happen, then I contacted google support for the same…

 
mandar-apte-search-results-before

 
& I got this answer from them…

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How Odd Numbers are out & Even Numbers are in for Web Designer & Icon Designer or even for any designer

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Graphic Design, Tutorials, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

While I was designing Icon for my client I realise as it is true in website design as it is in Icon Design you can work in odd numbers,

 
When you have even numbers like 14px Square or 16px Square you can easily fit a round box inside it but in 15px Square Icon it’s really hard to manage…

 
Here is The example…

 
Odd Pixels with 15px by 15px

 
15pxicon

 
Even Numbers of Pixels:

 
10px by 10px, with 1px of rounded corners it fails to generate illusion of circular when viewed at actual size or at maximum size

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Updates about Online Social Networking Plugins Integration on Mandar Apte Website

Mandar Apte Art & Design, Open Source, User Experience Design, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

 
I have removed all Social Network integration from my website as I found out that website was taking too much time to load & react to user’s interactions.

 
I have removed Shared button & Widgets of respective websites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus from my website as this share plugins & widgets were utilising more bandwidth of my server taking more pressure on server’s processor threads & even found out my self that every webpage was taking 3 or more seconds to load which I don’t permit to happen with my website. (more…)

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Social Networking Integration in WordPress Websites A Review

Mandar Apte Open Source, User Experience Design, Web Design, WordPress Leave a comment

I integrated Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus & Flickr widgets inside my WordPress websites for good of online networking & integration,

 
But later found out that widget mainly like Facebook widgets are throwing 404 errors multiple times that my website & mainly users are suffering from it. (more…)

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Design Schools or Design Institutes in India

Mandar Apte Animation Film Design, Art & Design, Drawing, Graphic Design, Painting, Photography, Sketching, User Experience Design, Web Design Leave a comment

India’s Education System (mainly Mumbai University from where I belong) is based on 10 + 2 + 4 years of graduation program.

 
For applying to graduation program in Art you need to have following qualification, You must have 10 + 2 passed certified program that means you must pass Secondary School Certification (SSC) & then 2 years of Higher Secondary Certification (HSC) then only you can apply to Art Institutes like Sir J. J. Institute of Applied Art & Sir J. J. School of Art for graduation in Art.
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