Archive for Design

Don’t violate fundamental design laws - even if you’re Apple

Design, News on November 3rd, 2009 Comments

When the iPhone O/S update brought a voice recording feature to the device, I was happily surprised because I love using recorders to take voice notes on the go then transcribe them later on.
When I started using the application, I liked the visual skin of the application but was frustrated by its usability: the application, [...]

D3 - Designing with Clients

Design, News on October 10th, 2009 Comments

Few months ago, we started experimenting with a new Design workflow that we called D3. D3 stands for Deep Dive Design. Prior to D3, we used a communication-intensive process where we involve clients and users in the input and output of each design iteration: vision, usability metrics, stories, tasks, requirements, brainstorming, sketches, wireframes, and visual [...]

The Feature is Not The Experience

Blog, Design, News on September 17th, 2009 Comments

Design thinking for startups

Blog, Design, Learning, News, Tools on September 9th, 2009 Comments

During the 2008 web 2.0 expo in San Francisco, I held a round table discussion about design thinking for start-ups. The premise of the discussion was to 1) learn the difference between design (the artifact) and design thinking (the mindset), and 2) to discuss how to integrate best practices for design thinking into the product [...]

Client testimonials’ word cloud

Design, News, Tools, review on September 9th, 2009 Comments

During the last startup weekend, a friend pointed me out to a fun tool for creating  typographic word clouds called wordle. Today, I decided to play more with it and I gave it the testimonials that clients left in my LinkedIn profile.
After some tweaking to the fonts and colors, here is what the output looks [...]

Delve Networks ranked among the top 50 Most Usable RIAs

Design, News on September 6th, 2009 Comments

Last year I worked with Delve Networks to design their user experience. This week, O’Reilly’s InsideRIA blog mentioned Delve as one of the most usable Rich Internet Applications.
Here is what Theresa Neil thought of the design:
Delve designers realized content creators weren’t interested in navigating through a bunch of screens to accomplish tasks. They have [...]

How to spot a good designer in an interview

Advice, Design, News on April 18th, 2009 Comments

Few weeks ago, one of my friends asked me to help him hire a full time designer for his startup. As it takes a theif to spot a thief, it takes a designer to spot a designer.
There are of course questions that I ask about the person’s background, experience, style and ethics. There are the [...]