In every sector, it’s possible to notice growing efforts towards innovation. More and more organizations do not take their market and own relevance for granted, and realize that some [widely applied] strategies to maintain and grow their businesses [like plain price competition, and aggressive portfolio expansion, among others] may incubate serious near and long term… Continue reading Driving innovation [1/2]: a portfolio perspective
Category: UX
Women in UX, YouTube channels for designers, Bots from Hell, and more UX this week
What’s hot in UX this week: 30 Women Rocking in UX to Celebrate the International Women’s Day → Last Wednesday was International Women’s Day. According to Wikipedia, in different regions the focus of the celebrations ranges from general celebration of respect, appreciation and love towards women for their economic, political and social achievements. That’s what we’re… Continue reading Women in UX, YouTube channels for designers, Bots from Hell, and more UX this week
How UberEats could make ordering for groups of friends simpler — a UX case study
The Problem — I find myself using UberEats (launched early last year) more frequently than the likes of DoorDash primarily because of two reasons: Continuous promotions — They have had some really cool promotions all this while. (No delivery cost upto $5 for an order) Ordering experience — From searching for food to ordering and waiting for it, the… Continue reading How UberEats could make ordering for groups of friends simpler — a UX case study
The best YouTube channels for designers and developers
I just recently realized how much time I spend on YouTube everyday. To be more precise, about 50 minutes every single day. About three years ago I started developing the habit of opening the YouTube Subscriptions page every day to check out new videos from the channels I had subscribed to. More recently, I decided… Continue reading The best YouTube channels for designers and developers
As a Designer I want better Release Notes
The perfect release note ???????? Finally what you’ve being waiting for. How you piece all this together, and it’s broken down for you in nothing more than plain text: The introduction. A short paragraph. Make this personal if appropriate. Eg. “Season greetings, everyone! You asked, Santa listened – this update is exactly what you ask for… Continue reading As a Designer I want better Release Notes
Overcoming Material Design.
Okay, I’m going to start this off with one statement; Material Design is great. It has helped unify user interfaces across platforms, and it provides designers with awesome resources (the icons especially ????????). And while some of you may use aterial Design as your UI-North-Star (why are you doing that to yourself), I am not… Continue reading Overcoming Material Design.
Form is Functional: Why Design is More Than Gold Plating
When budgets are tight in the software world and companies want to save money, form is usually the first to go. In these situations, the design tends to be considered ‘gold plating’ and not a necessity. It’s thought to only make the product ‘look nice’. This assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. Form has… Continue reading Form is Functional: Why Design is More Than Gold Plating
A letter from Sol LeWitt about creative block, read by Benedict Cumberbatch
In 1960, pioneering American artists Sol LeWitt and Eva Hesse met for the first time and instantly clicked, quickly forming a strong, deep bond that would last for ten years and result in countless inspirational discussions and rich exchanges of ideas. In the video below, Benedict Cumberbatch reads a letter sent from Sol to Eva… Continue reading A letter from Sol LeWitt about creative block, read by Benedict Cumberbatch
Interaction Awards, Chatbot Interactions, Empathy as Faux Ethics, and more UX this week
What’s hot in UX this week: Notifications: an Interview with John Saito, from Dropbox → We dream of a future with connected and ubiquitous experiences, but we still feel overwhelmed with the notifications across all our devices. In this last piece of our series we interviewed John Saito, ‘designer of words’ at Dropbox, about how we… Continue reading Interaction Awards, Chatbot Interactions, Empathy as Faux Ethics, and more UX this week
Why human-centered design is an expectation.
Human-Centered Design, in short, is the practice of a management and problem solving process that places people (your customer) at the center of every decision. It requires curiosity and contextual observation, empathy, ideation, iteration, and implementation. “Human-centered” is the core of user, customer, and service experience design (UX, CX, SX). Almost every company has a… Continue reading Why human-centered design is an expectation.
Digital suffocation.
It’s dawned on me how incessant and intrusive phone notifications are. I may be realising this late. About two months ago I installed an app called 360 Security on my Android phone. One of the many functions it had was a ‘Notification Manager’. I switched it on and let it do it’s thing. A week… Continue reading Digital suffocation.
You can plan design sprints, but you can’t plan “insights” or “innovation”
Image via unsplash @firmbee The best stories tumble out of a customer’s mind when you are walking them out after an interview. When they are relaxed. When they have had time to introspect. When they don’t have to please you anymore. They come when you meander on to an unrelated topic. They come when people are… Continue reading You can plan design sprints, but you can’t plan “insights” or “innovation”
A few things I learned from the second day at #Interaction17 #IxDA17
Interaction 17 is one of the biggest UX conferences in the world. Organized by IxDA, it brings together design leaders, professionals, and students from different continents to discuss the future of Interaction Design and our role and responsibility as designers in creating experiences for our users — as well as the larger impact the products we create… Continue reading A few things I learned from the second day at #Interaction17 #IxDA17
Learnings from my 6-month design internship at a startup
Your job title is just the first part of the story ???? At tado° nobody cared that I was just an intern. There was so much going on, that it wasn’t important what I was really appointed to do. We just tried to “get shit done”. I was given a lot of responsibility and wore hats… Continue reading Learnings from my 6-month design internship at a startup
Designing Anticipated User Experiences
Anticipatory Design is possibly the next big leap within the field of Experience Design. “Design that is one step ahead” as Shapiro refers to it. This sounds amazing, but where does it lead us? And how will it affect our relationship with technology? I’ve dedicated my Master thesis to this topic to identify both ethical… Continue reading Designing Anticipated User Experiences
UX Interviews, Stop Trump’s Wall, What Designers Can Learn From Gyms, and more UX this week
What’s hot in UX this week: Designing Beyond Screens: an Interview with UX Author Dan Saffer → Dan Saffer is a product leader, designer and the author of the books Designing Devices (2011), Designing Gestural Interfaces (2008), Designing for Interaction (2006, 2009) and Microinteractions (2013). Since 1995, he has been helping shape our field, working with… Continue reading UX Interviews, Stop Trump’s Wall, What Designers Can Learn From Gyms, and more UX this week
Honing Crazy Eights with randomness
We use Crazy Eights often during ideation at Philosophie including during our Design Sprints (as does Google Ventures). They are great for diverging to lots of ideas before we start to build prototypes. You run the Crazy Eights exercise by quickly sketching a bunch of ideas as a team. Often it is done on a… Continue reading Honing Crazy Eights with randomness
What’s Your 2016 Overview as a Designer?
Image Credit I looked back at what I’ve accomplished in the past year as a designer and wanted to share some insights. Here is an overview: Golden Gate Bridge icon created by Sunny Wang What have I accomplished? 1. I’m now a writer on Medium and an Invision Blog contributor. 2. I led a few redesign… Continue reading What’s Your 2016 Overview as a Designer?
Google Home: first impressions
This is my Google Home making friends at my place Last Black Friday I couldn’t resist the temptation to buy a Google Home, and I’m in love with it. I can justify my shopping spree by saying I am a designer and really needed to feel how it is to interact with a device only by… Continue reading Google Home: first impressions
What does simplicity in UX design look like?
For over a decade, designers have debated what constitutes simplicity in user experience design. As Robert Hoekman Jr. points out in his article When It Comes to UX Design, Simplicity is Overrated, the variation in semantics is confusing. Simplicity could refer to a clean design (then there’s the disparity of what “clean” actually looks like), the… Continue reading What does simplicity in UX design look like?
A Closer Look at the Best UX and UI Tools and Apps
There are various ways to build a prototype, and a prototype can be used as a measure of design progress or to test final result. In most instances, a web designer goal is to create a high-fidelity prototype has the look and feel of the end product, and is also capable of supporting team collaboration… Continue reading A Closer Look at the Best UX and UI Tools and Apps