Category Archive: Quote
Group Sketching
“Group sketching allows a team to get on the same page very quickly. In addition to preventing confusion or conflict, group sketching can circumvent the need for more time-consuming documentation or higher-fidelity design assets, which means faster time-to-market for product improvements.” –Giffco
I’m a big fan of sketching and whiteboarding while considering new features or rethinking existing page components. Sketching outlines the big idea of the product, it allows for different solutions to be shared quickly without a big investment of time.
Its important for product teams to sketch together. With a developer, a designer and project manager discussing and whiteboarding everyone can have their say and leave the meeting more confident about where they’re headed.
When finished the session take photos of the whiteboard or whatever you used for sketching. Use these resources for future reference when questions arise while building.
Here is a video called Sketching a Better Product by Idan Gazit. It will open your mind to how good design requires sketches.
Skeuomorphic is Metaphoric
“Essentially, every user interface on Earth is ornamentally referencing and representing other unrelated materials, interfaces and elements. The only questions are: what’s it representing, and by how much?” @Hladecek
Good article on Skeuomorphism in UI design. I specifically liked his notion that Skeuomorphic is metaphoric.
The Slow Web
Timely not real-time. Rhythm not random. Moderation not excess. Knowledge not information. These are a few of the many characteristics of the Slow Web. It’s not so much a checklist as a feeling, one of being at greater ease with the web-enabled products and services in our lives. – Jack Cheng
Every few months or so I come back to this article. It’s a good reminder to take time to reflect on what your working on and how your how building it. It helps me consider my approach for decision making on projects.
Boxes and grids, oh my.
“I feel like responsive design has sucked the soul out of website design. Everything is boxes and grids. Where has the creativity gone?” – @motherfuton
“After years of textures, backgrounds, shines, reflections, drop shadows, letterpress, and “faking it” by stitching together elements derived from Photoshop, I think a return to browser-native design is refreshing.” – @fanelli
The @branch discussion offers some good points around the current state of responsive web design. I have to agree with this sentiment by @jordanmoore:
“You can’t generalise anything in design. Design is subjective by nature therefore you can’t make blanket statements that are true to all circumstances and that everyone agrees with. It’s wrong to say “all responsive designs are flat”, “flat design lacks soul” just like it’s wrong to say “skeuomorphism is bad” and “you should never use comic sans”.” – @jordanmoore
20% creating, 80% refining.
I’ve found that if you want rough indication of a designer’s experience, look at the time they spend on different stages of the design process.
Novice designers spend most of their time creating a solution, and maybe 20% refining it.
Intermediates split the time roughly evenly.
For senior designers, the ratio flips: 20% creating, 80% refining.
And the experts realise that creating and refining are actually the same thing.
- @cennydd