The most important lesson I learned this past year is that when I don't understand something, I need to ask questions. I've found that overcoming any embarrassment, shame, pride, or ego, and pushing myself to ask seemingly ignorant or naive questions is actually my responsibility as a professional.
Design Education is a series of interviews that explore the expectations and experiences of today’s designers. Ethan Resnick studies design with a focus on systems at New York University’s Gallatin School of Individualized Study, and has worked with design legend Khoi Vinh and big names like 20th Century Fox.
Ben Blumenfeld contributes his thoughts to our exploration of expectations and experiences about design education. Ben managed part of the design team at Facebook for 2 years and recently moved back into a lead lead role.
In the first interview of this series, I interviewed Nathan Shedroff, an educator and design professional about the expectations and experiences surrounding design education. Now, I welcome the thoughts of Dina Ravvin, a fourth-year design student at The Cooper Union and an aspiring art director who has learned the importance of perfecting process before the outcome.
Coming to the Bay Area not long after graduation, I met many young and highly successful designers both with and without college degrees. I’ve heard some people say that it’s hard to find a ‘good’ designer. That me to wonder what they mean by ‘good’ designer and how much of a role, if any, formal education plays into that. My first interview on design education is with Nathan Shedroff, both a design professional and a design educator.
Structure is how elements and components of an interface are grouped, defines relationships between those elements and components, and is the domain of the information architect. Layout is concerned with proportions and placement and is the domain of the visual designer.
As a designer who produces wireframes on a regular basis, I’ve experienced confusion about how design decisions are to be documented. I would like to share some clarity I now have on this issue by discussing how progressive stages of design thinking can be captured by different degrees of wireframing. From low-fidelity, in which it’s about sketching some boxes and writing down the goals of those boxes, to high-fidelity, in which interface and functionality are diagrammed and annotated for designers and developers to create comps and prototypes. High-fidelity wireframes are optimally created through collaboration with visual designers and developers.
Becoming a better designer is a lot like becoming a better soccer player. You have to play a lot. If you don’t play you don’t gain experience, you don’t train your muscle memory, and you don’t get better. But you can only go so far on your own. Young players who become excellent get better from playing and being coached. Becoming a better designer requires you to work with clients and be mentored along the way.
This post is part of a series, Brief Interviews with Assiduous Mules. I share how I got the first job I interviewed for, how my master's degree has influenced my work, and my perspective on an information designer's most pressing concern on every project.
Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler clearly explain the details of UX project processes and deliverables. This book review was published in the February 2011 edition of Technical Communication.
Framed in the context of the web, UD is concerned with people’s capacity to access content when, where, and in what format they need it. I drafted this review of Wendy Chrisholm and Matt May's book in July 2009 for submission to Technical Communication.
This book by industry experts stresses the importance of semantic, well-structured HTML to provide good hooks for your CSS and clearly lays out the fundamentals of CSS syntax. This book review was published in the February 2011 edition of Technical Communication.
Archived content listed by date is the standard because of blogging platforms like WordPress; packaging archives is not even a consideration, and overlooking all that history is missing a valuable opportunity.
Part of a series on how the principles of rhetoric might apply to web design, I use Facebook interactions as examples of how thoughtfully crafted messages offered up at the right time can improve the user experience.
At Mule, we want to do thinking and design work together, so that afterward our IAs can document the decisions that come from discussion, whether through site maps, concept models, user flows, or wireframes.
This is a tangent from my series about using rhetorical principles to develop effective communication in your web project. For the moment, let’s consider the timely rhetorical concept of kairos.
This is the second post in a series about using rhetorical principles to develop effective communication in your web project. In this post I explain the rhetorical principle of invention.
Constraints give us focus. In graphic design, we use grids as an instrument for ordering text and images on the page and screen. Similarly, rhetoric, the art of using language to communicate effectively and persuasively, offers constraints to help us focus on designing information that effectively communicates to our users.
The mobile market is more competitive than ever and smartphones and tablets are becoming pervasive. It's past time we start thinking strategically about mobile web design; we need to be aware of how a site behaves on mobile devices, and determine whether users need a mobile-optimized site, a web app, or a native app.
I had the opportunity to be the first user experience design intern to participate in Viget Lab’s new 6-week rolling internship program. It’s a great model for other design studios to follow.
An Event Apart boasts a stellar panel of speakers that, literally, set standards in web design. But it’s expensive. So is it worth the expense and what should you expect?
When I came across a tweet about a summer web design internship, I followed up with a comment on Viget Lab’s blog post. One thing lead to another and I gained a fantastic internship experience.
In general, when you are engaging prospective employers or new clients through social media, you will be safe if you keep something private that could be public, rather than sharing something publicly that should be kept private.
Ever notice in comment threads how some non-breaking text strings flow outside of a div boundary? These non-break strings can decrease readability and break a design. Learn by example how to use CSS3 to keep text strings from overflowing divs.
