How to Add Sound to Your Site, Without Infuriating Users

Once in a while, every professional comes across a challenge so great, so ridiculous, that they just can’t help themselves. They just have to go for it. It’s like the story of David and Goliath… if David was just bored and Goliath wasn’t threatening his entire nation. As for me, I’m about to argue for… Continue reading How to Add Sound to Your Site, Without Infuriating Users

Raising a Design System in a team

DDesign systems have been around for quite a while. They’ve arisen with the need of designing for not only one thing, but for a whole set of elements, keeping the same look & feel among them, so all the individual parts look as though they belong to the same family. Design systems were first developed… Continue reading Raising a Design System in a team

Competitive analysis is a method, not a solution

Pineapples might look cool, but that doesn’t mean that every fruit should be spiky. (source) We all have been there: you have been with your team in a room for a couple of hours now, and it seems you hit a dead-end while discussing one design problem. Suddenly, someone brings up the solution for it all:… Continue reading Competitive analysis is a method, not a solution

The 6 types of user segmentation and what they mean for your product

MYOB People by Nick, https://dribbble.com/shots/3322055-MYOB-People Marketing helps you understand your user, focus your product on your user needs and take the product to market. This post is set up to mimic what would you go through when segmenting your customers. Marketing segmentation Only few companies are big enough to supply the needs of an entire… Continue reading The 6 types of user segmentation and what they mean for your product

Enterprise design stack: the tools we use to design the datacenter operating system

I love reading about how other Design teams are working together and what tools they’re using. It’s reassuring to know teams you admire and respect use the same tools you do. It’s also usually a trigger for me to try some other tools that either I haven’t heard of or that I’ve been meaning to… Continue reading Enterprise design stack: the tools we use to design the datacenter operating system

Slack iPhone UI redesign concept

This Slack UI kit for iPhone has been released by Kevin Lanceplaine and carefully explained on an interesting Medium article. It is basically a redesign concept that tries to solve some of the UX pain points.   Freebie includes 15 app screens and provides interaction capabilities allowing you to view an interesting preview at this link. Download freebie

Build A Pomodoro Timer ― Scotch

Last week on the code challenge #5 we looked at building a movie player using a provided API. Here is the solution to the challenge built with Vue.js. This week we’ll be building a Pomodoro timer. A Pomodoro timer is a time management tool which breaks down task completion time into intervals of about 25… Continue reading Build A Pomodoro Timer ― Scotch

CSS Lightsaber Checkbox ― Scotch

Welcome to our Code Challenge #3. Way back when about five years ago when we started Scotch.io, one of our very first articles was to create lightsabers using plain CSS. Let’s bring that back and see how we can build out the same thing in this week’s code challenge. The Challenge The challenge is to… Continue reading CSS Lightsaber Checkbox ― Scotch

How to Write Helpful User Tutorials and Onboarding Guides

Writing user tutorials is essential to launching any new software project. But writing helpful user tutorials requires a careful hand, with a correct understanding of the user’s needs and expectations. With a solid foundation of empathy and understanding, we can build user tutorials that will educate our users without losing their attention or going over… Continue reading How to Write Helpful User Tutorials and Onboarding Guides

When AI gets in the way of UX

Interest for “Artificial Intelligence” over the last 5 years, according to Google Trends. Artificial Intelligence is the big buzzword of today. If you are a digital designer, there are good chances that a quick scroll through your RSS reader, Twitter feed or Slack channels will show you more instances of the term “AI” than you would… Continue reading When AI gets in the way of UX

Notification overload and coping with dark design patterns.

Design in 2017. Here’s how most of ours days start. We wake up swearing because we need another 2 hours sleep, turn off the alarm and check our phone. When we swipe down the notifications drawer, we see tonnes of work emails, Instagram and Facebook notifications, Slack messages and calendar invites. Even Medium notifies me of… Continue reading Notification overload and coping with dark design patterns.

The age of empathy, Slack groups, designing with AI and more UX links this week

If you like the links, don’t forget to ???????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Stop doing user interviews; start having conversations → There’s something I’ve realized lately, that’s making my user interviews go smoother and getting deeper, more nuanced insights. The key is this: relax. Take a step back, for a moment. What is a user interview? If yours are… Continue reading The age of empathy, Slack groups, designing with AI and more UX links this week

When Copy Loves Itself Too Much

One time, I nearly lost my mind while brainstorming copy for a holiday print ad. I was writing for Havenly, an interior design company, and we were advertising in a popular home decorating magazine. “Keep it simple,” I told myself, “this has been done hundreds of times before.” An ad that took way too long… Continue reading When Copy Loves Itself Too Much

5 Key Areas to Help Manage Your Design and Content Creation Team

Even more radical than funny cat videos and memes in GIF form, the rise of the Internet has really empowered companies of all sizes to work with remote teams all around the world. This has dramatically impacted how modern business is being conducted because you could have team members everywhere from Sacramento to Sri Lanka. In addition… Continue reading 5 Key Areas to Help Manage Your Design and Content Creation Team

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.

Visually Build Native Apps Right In Your Browser With Dropsource

Dropsource is a brand new mobile application development platform that was built with the developer’s needs in mind. What does this mean exactly? It means that its sole purpose is to make a developer’s job easier and to make building a data-driven native mobile app as simple as drag and drop. Dropsource comes equipped with… Continue reading Visually Build Native Apps Right In Your Browser With Dropsource

Popular design news of the week: November 14, 2016 – November 20, 2016

Every week users submit a lot of interesting stuff on our sister site Webdesigner News, highlighting great content from around the web that can be of interest to web designers.  The best way to keep track of all the great stories and news being posted is simply to check out the Webdesigner News site, however,… Continue reading Popular design news of the week: November 14, 2016 – November 20, 2016

Eye Candy User Interface Design Inspiration

Advertisement When designing a web-based app or mobile app, you must not only think about the content of the app but also about the functionality. In many cases, you must focus even more on the functionality of an app and use a great UI design in order to create an app that is not only… Continue reading Eye Candy User Interface Design Inspiration

How Designers and Developers Can Collaborate Using Sketch and Zeplin

Collaboration between designers and developers is essential to the success of a web project, and it’s a measure of a team’s success. Whilst sharing the same workspace is invaluable, having an online source of truth that helps with this collaboration is incredibly helpful. In this article we’re going to look at Zeplin and how it… Continue reading How Designers and Developers Can Collaborate Using Sketch and Zeplin

Chartd – Responsive and Retina-Compatible Charts

Advertise here via BSA At StatHat, they make a lot of charts. They creates dynamic, autoupdating charts using JavaScript, but we also send charts via email and to external services like Campfire and Slack. Plus, they let users embed charts on their own web pages. For these situations, JavaScript charts either won’t work, are overkill, or could get… Continue reading Chartd – Responsive and Retina-Compatible Charts

Developing a Static Site Generator Workflow

Nobody likes finding bugs. Even worse, no one enjoys finding bugs while shopping for digital products. That is why, as a company providing a web-based bug tracking tool to tens of thousands of users, we have to ensure a bug-free environment. With our increasing number of web pages – and therefore increasing lines of code… Continue reading Developing a Static Site Generator Workflow

How to Grow Your App Team

You can find a lot of online resources that help you on your way to make a successful app. Once you reach that point, you’re looking to retain or even expand on that success. This is the moment that you, a single person who has built an app, grows into something bigger, a team that continues… Continue reading How to Grow Your App Team

7 Slack Integrations Developers Should Use

How to customize Slack to enhance your development workflow using integrations and bots It certainly feels like Slack is gradually becoming the standard for modern office communication. While you may argue that technically Slack is no different than, say, IRC – the polished experience is what makes it stand out in the crowd of messaging… Continue reading 7 Slack Integrations Developers Should Use