Design Thoughts / Prototyping

Learn the ins and outs of prototyping and bring your bold new product to life with this ultimate guide to prototyping

When you’re working on something new, it’s exciting and unfamiliar, making it tempting to skip over the wireframing stage and dive straight into designing a solution. But, by doing this, you’re missing out on an opportunity to better understand the problem and may end up spending more time revising, editing or even recreating your design. Wireframing can sometimes feel like… Read More ￫

Using Shortcut app on iOS Voice UI was the hot topic last year and will continue to be so in 2018. Something I have wondered is how voice designers prototype conversational interfaces, especially voice UI. What is Shortcut? Shortcut is an application on iOS that lets you automate tasks as simple as calculating a tip to appending a note to a… Read More ￫

Recently I started seeing a trend where fellow designers skip wireframing/low-fidelity-mockups and jump straight into their UI work. While for “some” tasks this might be okay, I believe for majority of your tasks, this will hurt your final design. First, what do I mean by wireframing? When I say wireframing, I am not really talking about fancy wireframes built pixel… Read More ￫

To build prototypes in Marvel, all you need to do is import your designs. Whether they’re low-fi wireframes you drew on paper or hi-fi prototypes you built in Sketch, you can add these as static images to a project and make them interactive by adding hotspots. These hotspots link together your designs to create a flow which in the end… Read More ￫

In the world of digital design, we have a lot of different tools that make the process of prototyping really simple. But still pen and paper remain the most useful tools for UX designers. Paper prototyping can be extremely helpful during the early-stage conceptualizing — when a team needs to explore a variety of different concepts and choose the one… Read More ￫

There are lots of great tools for drawing wireframes today. However, I still prefer my good ol’ paper wireframing kit. In this post I’ll tell you why and explain how paper wireframing will make you a better designer. In 2012 I was planning on taking my wireframing skills to the next level. I had gotten the excellent app Paper by… Read More ￫

It’s hard to imagine a modern product design process without prototyping and testing. By following a technique “Show, don’t tell.” Many product teams use prototypes today to sell or test ideas. At the same time, quite often product teams fall into traps that reduce the effectiveness of their prototyping efforts. Here are six of the most common pitfalls. Prototyping without a purpose… Read More ￫

My last posts in the Dear Developers series so far have been focused on the lessons I’ve learned from various coding classes and the step by step basics of HTML & CSS. This post is a something a little more special as I’m going to share my progress in building my own website from scratch. I’ll be sharing some nuggets… 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 ￫

There are many “right” ways to design an application, so I want to be clear that this is my workflow (and the one I recommend), but it’s not mandatory. I know other designers who just jump right into Photoshop (or code) and produce great work. But if you find yourself having trouble visualizing a design or workflow in your head,… Read More ￫

Let’s cut to the chase. Powerpoint has gotten itself a bad reputation. Dubbed the “cornerstone of the modern corporate world” by Bryan Dove, Skyscanner, and can you blame it? Since the dawn of Microsoft Office, people of all ages across the globe have been encouraged to use it to present to their peers and colleagues. Powerpoint has made building presentations… Read More ￫