How To: Good UI Demo Videos
Whether it’s for demoing an existing feature, recording a “how-to”, or for a product launch, the quality of the demo video you record matters.
The Beauty Trap in Design
My primary responsibility as a UX designer and creative director is to get inside the mind of the client and their customer. To think like they do, anticipating stumbling blocks they may encounter even if a trained professional web designer would sail briskly through.
Pickers & Clickers
Alternate title: Pick-a-little, Talk-a-little Over the last 18 months or so, I’ve logged 200+ hours of moderating, watching, and reading user research sessions. Entrepreneurs with dreams of success, bloggers who love murder mysteries, and everyone […]
The value of quick visual storytelling
Story telling matters as a foundational part of communication between people. You can tell stories by writing, speaking, filming, drawing, coding, and much more. When dealing with humans, assume miscommunication. If you’re trying to explain something, […]
A widget becomes a block
For the past few months we’ve been converting WooCommerce widgets in WordPress to blocks. Widgets allow you to add a small feature, such as a paragraph of text, onto your website. I recently did a […]
Synthesizing usability test results
This week we got another usability study in the books by testing the most recent iteration of our signup and onboarding flow. Thanks to some help from our design operations team I was able to […]
Offline Principles
Cowritten with Megs Fulton Many of us design and build apps in air-conditioned offices in major cities, using the latest devices with perfect internet connections. We don’t often think about how apps should work without […]
What is a Creative Technologist?
Within Automattic Design, we have two communities of practice: “creative technology” and “product experience”. Every designer falls into one of these two communities. Having this distinction helps us to create balanced teams, as well as […]
🌶 Spicy topics
Recently, the design team I lead was going through a period of low morale. I noticed this through conversations in 1-1s, our team Slack channel, and most notably in our team meetings. The designers were […]
