Design Thoughts

Here we are, entry three of the ‘Dear Developers’ series and so far I’ve explained why I’m learning to code, asked my stupid questions and have done the first basic few lines of code which are building the first page of my website. I’ve been excited this week – not just because my website is currently looking as bland as… Read More ￫

Turning your app idea into a real product isn’t as far from reality as you might think. It can so often just come down to getting started— and to do so, “all you need is paper, pens, scissors and your imagination” (Shawn Medero, Alistapart). “All you need is paper, pens, scissors, and your imagination.” For example, when Jack Dorsey had… Read More ￫

Customer journey maps with the intent of proto-personas In Using Proto-Personas for Executive Alignment, Jeff Gothelf writes: “Proto-personas give an organization a starting point from which to begin evaluating their products and to create some early design hypotheses. They’re also helpful in initiating and reinforcing corporate awareness of the customer’s point of view to ensure it’s included in strategic planning…. Read More ￫

It’s been two weeks since I announced to the world I’d be learning to code from scratch and documenting it all here on the internet…for everyone to see. And if that isn’t a motivator, I don’t know what is. The past couple of weeks have flown by, as they always do. You’ll be proud to know I stuck to my… Read More ￫

It’s the dawn of the new year and I can only imagine how many posts there are which are centered around the theme of learning to code. There are a few people who might think that New Year’s Resolutions are a total farce, I am not one of these people. In fact mine seem to be going pretty well this… Read More ￫

Color is a powerful force in the hands of a designer. It draws your eye, evokes emotion, and communicates meaning. To give you an idea of how important color is, in a widely cited study titled The Impact of Color on Marketing, researchers discovered that for some products, 90% of snap decisions people make about products could be based on… Read More ￫

We’ve hooked up with our friends at Swifticons to give away over 100 outlined avatar icons for free. The icons come in PNG, SVG, Sketch, EPS and AI formats. Great for all screen sizes! Want the full-set of 2264 icons? Head over to Swifticons and use the code MARV40 for a whopping 40% off! Download icons

There has been a monumental shift in the design atmosphere, where more and more designers are moving into freelance work. In the UK alone, freelancing has grown 14% in the past decade and 34% of the U.S workforce are now working as freelancers. It’s not hard to understand why, there are a bunch of appealing aspects to working freelance. From… Read More ￫

It’s not “sexy” but who says it can’t be? Complexity and ambiguity can offer valuable moments for inspiring beautiful novelty in enterprise UX. It’s 2015. As I gaze back upon my circuitous career path, for over a dozen years, I’ve largely designed for desktop virtualization, corporate financials, and now cloud analytics for IT admins. B2B. Verticals. Enterprise. Whoa. It wasn’t… Read More ￫

The whole “Homogeneity of Design” topic is creeping up again. That’s cool. We’re all special flowers in our own way. But I’d like to make a few points about product design, as I see it. “In digital product design, industry wide established paradigms are good” The first thing I’d like to say is that I am a very visual person…. Read More ￫

Deliveroo has been the talk of the town in design for the last couple of months. Their new visual identity sparked conversation and drove attention to the fast moving startup – which launched in 2013 and now has over 20,000 riders and operates in 12 different markets. Last month lead Deliveroo designers, Courtney McNeil and Simon Rohrbach, spoke to the… Read More ￫

Part I: Experience is everything The origin of imagination Around 70,000 years ago, Sapiens figuratively ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, and a mutation occurred that scientists still can’t explain to this day. According to Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, between 70,000 and 30,000 years ago, new ways of thinking and communicating… Read More ￫