I’ve been fascinated by critique lately. It’s a fabulous tool to help the entire team – designers and non-designers alike – learn more about what makes great design great. I’ve learned that you can tell that a team is taking advantage of well-done critiques by the new, personalized language they are now sporting. They have [...]

We’re seeing that the move to designing for mobile can be a real challenge for many UX Professionals. Once they get past the initial thinking that it’s just another screen size, they are hit with all the different dimensions of what it takes to create a great mobile experience. That can seem overwhelming at first. [...]

Imagine two designers. One is really imaginative and inventive, but hasn’t spent any time learning how to use any of the prototyping tools available today. The other has mastered multiple prototyping techniques quite proficiently, but isn’t particularly imaginative or inventive. Which one would more likely produce a portfolio of great designs over time? Our research [...]

A lot of folks don’t know this, but we start planning for each UIE conference about eighteen months in advance. This year’s new event, UX Immersion was no different. With this new program, we’re trying to fill a huge unmet need: How do we bring today’s UX Professionals to a new level of producing great [...]

If your team is transitioning from static documentation to iterative HTML prototypes, then Nathan Curtis’ March 7 seminar, Start Full Screen, is right up your alley. Nathan will talk about how his team at EightShapes brought it’s renowned modular philosophy of modular components and libraries for producing PDFs to prototyping using simple HTML, CSS and [...]

[This is part 2 of a two-part post. For this article to make sense, you probably want to read part 1. This article was originally published on JohnnyHolland.org.] In the last installment, we talked about the distinction between Hands contractors and Brains consultants. Hands are brought in by the team as an extra resource to [...]

A designer can never have too many tools and methods for creating their designs. Many times conveying interactions in a static wireframe is difficult. So designers have turned to HTML and CSS to create wireframes and prototypes to provide a richer interaction. JQuery can also be thrown into the mix to further this process along.

Natural talent isn’t hard to spot. We see it when someone walks up and accomplishes something with ease, something that we ourselves struggle with. Look at any young and accomplished musician or artist. Or at those twenty-something sports stars. They are obviously talented. Yet, how much of a role does their talent really play in [...]

Because my son is a professional magician, I’ve picked up a bit of magician’s lore over the years. Amongst the pros, they have a saying: “If you want to learn a new trick, read an old book.” Turns out, there’s a lot of excellent illusions which have been lost for years that, when you bring [...]

At times, getting a team to produce good ideas is like pulling teeth. You try to inspire, create, promote, even cajole people to dream up great design ideas. Some times it works. Other times you’re sitting around a conference table feeling clueless. That’s not the case when you bring Adapative Path’s CEO, Brandon Schauer into [...]