Often, when we talk of finding inspiration for our visual design techniques, we turn to the discipline of fine arts. From the rich history of the arts, we can see many parallels between the artist’s work on the canvas and the designer’s work on the screen. Because much training in visual design often comes out [...]

There’s an on-going debate in the design community: are teams better off with generalists or specialists? Those taking the generalist side argue that a breadth of abilities helps more. On the specialists’ side, they claim it is the depth of specific abilities delivering the benefit. From our research in what makes up the most successful [...]

The User Interface Conference is a 15-year tradition of building up the designer’s skill set. Each year our team of expert instructors gets better and better. These are people so rich in experience, we could just sit around for days listening to their stories on how they’ve achieved their success. This year’s topics are an [...]

The airline industry is well-known for the wrath and frustration it inspires in its customers. Usually this manifests itself in shouting at gate agents or long, angry blog posts about being trapped on the tarmac for hours without rescue. Recently, a new kind of manifestation has emerged: redesigning. Professional designers, frustrated by the experiences they [...]

Hugh Griffith from Boise asks Jared and Robert, what happens when you swap radio buttons and checkboxes with more stylish graphic replacements?

The skills you need to discover and fix many common visual design problems don’t require an art degree. The term “web design” implies knowledge and understanding of visuals, creative, even artistic ability. But not everyone practicing web design comes from this background, and the process of improving your site’s design can be daunting. Thankfully, Dan [...]

This is exciting. We’re putting the finishing touches on our upcoming UIE Web App Masters Tour. An event this momentous takes months to make happen. And now, we’re just days away from having every detail lined up. Here’s the facts: We’re going to 4 cities between March and July, 2010: San Diego, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, and [...]

What can a non-designer do to harness the power of visual design without calling professional help? Quite a lot, says internationally-regarded visual designer Dan Rubin. We called Dan to talk about what design techniques are accessible to mere mortals. He also gave us a preview of his day-long workshop for non-designers at our User Interface 14 Conference, this November.

There’s an on-going debate in the design community: are teams better off with generalists or specialists? Those taking the generalist side argue that a breadth of abilities helps more. On the specialists’ side, they claim it is the depth of specific abilities delivering the benefit. From our research in what makes up the most successful [...]

This week’s episode features a shadowy UI Designer from a secretive organization located somewhere in Texas. He asks, “how should you style links that trigger different types of interactions?”