Design

Ever been in a house so nice, you’d like to settle down there for a month...or more? A well-designed product is like that. It’s appealing. It’s functional as heck. And it makes you want to linger for a long time. From UI to UX to teardowns, here are our hard-earned tips on creating this experience.

The thumbnail for a featured category post.

How design is helping Scope Security communicate ROI

How a new dashboard aids sales and expansion for a growing healthcare security solution.

The thumbnail for a related category post.

Accessibility is simply good design

Accessibility is something our team really cares about The way we think about accessibility in the US is a little, well, weird.

Yeah, but did your coffee do THIS?

Because your brain, like mine, is wired to look for patterns, simplicity, and organization. So out of those shades of brown and bulging bubbles, we both see a simple smiley face.

Paint or photoshop?

Microsoft Paint and Adobe Photoshop do essentially the same thing. They both create computer graphics. But one is so simple your five your old can learn it without any instructions. The other can take years of training and practice to master.

Custom integrations are a total headache. Here's why they're worth it.

What an integration is, how it works, and benefits you probably haven't thought of. If you're non-technical and considering an integration, here's everything you need to know.

Write Your API With UX in Mind

You probably write bad APIs. I’m not saying that to be offensive or inflammatory. I’m saying it because writing good APIs is really hard. Like really, really, ridiculously hard. Take a couple seconds to count the number of APIs you have used that were intuitive and easy to work with. My list fits comfortably on one hand: Stripe, Twilio, and v2 of Sendgrid’s mail API. So you probably don’t write good APIs. If you did, my list would be a whole lot bigger.

Don't Be Bashful: A Designer's Intro to Bash

For anyone who’s new to the command line, starting from scratch can cause the kind of intense fears and paranoia typically reserved for found footage horror films and clown conventions. But worry not. Once you know a few key commands, you’ll be up and running in no time like a true Bash champion.

How to bot... a UX teardown of the Botcamp application

Last night around 3 a.m., I was doing some research into chatbots and the bot ecosystem. Why? Because yesterday I started working on building a bot for an upcoming blog post and I have an addictive personality. On a whim I decided to apply to the Betaworks Botcamp program. Naturally, you apply to Botcamp through a chatbot (how many times am I going to use the word bot in this post?*). So today I thought it would be fun to do a quick UX teardown of their application.

Finding inspiration sitting on the can

How often do you go to the bathroom? If you don’t have health issues and are being honest, your answer is probably every day. When you interact with something that often, it can be difficult to notice brilliant design when you see it, but that’s exactly where I found a bit of great design the other day.

How to use Snapchat for design critique

Yes, that Snapchat. You may be wondering how in the world Snapchat can be used for anything other than sending selfies and showing your friends what you’re eating, which song you’re singing along to in the car and the band you’re watching.

Take it like a designer: How to get the most out of a design critique

Last week, I wrote about how to give an effective design critique. This week, I’m turning it around and focusing on how to get the most out of a design critique. Getting feedback on your work takes time, so you need to make sure you’re making the most of it. Follow these guidelines and you’ll be well on your way to making the best use of design critiques.