Viewpoint

For the better part of the last 5 years, I’ve spent my time leading and building design teams (with Jet Cooper for the first 4.5 years, and more recently with Shopify). However, it wasn’t until the shift from co-founder to director of design (a role that enabled me to focus and double down on my craft), that I was really… Read More ￫

A well-designed site isn’t how easy it is to use or how elegant it looks. A site isn’t well-designed unless the user is satisfied with their experience. An overlooked aspect of this experience is performance. A slow, beautiful site will always be less satisfying to use than an inelegant fast site. It takes a user just three seconds to decide… Read More ￫

Everyone can make use of code today: entrepreneurs, designers, artists, a 10-year-old girl, or a 90-year-old man. Also, anyone can learn to code if they try — I wrote about it before, concluding you don’t need a degree to be any good: I’m Not Smart, I Just Sat There for Longer Than YouIf anyone’s struggling with coding, or just learning… Read More ￫

If anyone’s struggling with coding, or just learning something difficult, this post might give you some sort of weird hope. I can code in a few languages and I have studied computer science, so why when people tell me I’m an awesome developer, do I have the feeling they’re wrong? I usually will respond with something like: “I’m not great,… Read More ￫

We are in an exciting age of design: Welcome to a new era in history where our bodies, heaters, cars, bedrooms, streets and well — just about everything is beginning to become an interface. “Just about everything is beginning to become an interface.” This article will present a number of exciting technologies and various interfaces to interact with them, as well as… Read More ￫

Style guides can give many benefits to the entire workflow, from design right through to build. In short… During the design phase style guides encourage consistency in the visual identity and help keep the interface system as logical as possible, which makes for a better UX. “During the design phase style guides encourage consistency.” During the development phase they streamline… Read More ￫

There’s no hard or fast rule here. You can find an illustration style that maps to both the voice of your core product, as well as your marketing voice. Particularly as a small startup — both sides are basically trying to say “we think this idea trucking rules, just give us a minute to show you.” At Shopify, however, because we are… Read More ￫

Usability testing is a helpful tool when it comes to informing and validating design decisions. What was once thought of as the responsibility of just information architects or user experience designers is now a tool available to anyone. This is great because the more accessible user tests are, the easier it is to incorporate data and analysis into your design… Read More ￫

Providing users with a seamless experience while using your interface is a popular goal when building digital products. Modern-day devices and software enable complex animated transitions between elements on your screen, and as designers, we should embrace this development for a better user experience. But how do you define good animated transitions? “Good animation is invisible. You shouldn’t notice that… Read More ￫

Design Doesn’t Scale is a statement that has bothered me for the last four-years. When I joined Spotify’s design team in 2012, the level of inconsistency and fragmentation shocked me. Up-close, the treatment of type, colour, imagery, layout, IA, and interactions just didn’t seem to align anywhere. And when I started talking about it, I realised the whole team was… Read More ￫

I took a short trip to Barcelona recently, and whilst that is of no significance to this post, it did give me time to relax, reflect AND read a book. One Small Step Can Change Your Life — The Kaizen Way by Robert Maurer, Ph.D. The book is called “One Small Step Can Change Your Life — The Kaizen Way” by Robert Maurer, Ph…. Read More ￫

My grandfather was a watchmaker. When I was a child, I used to sit next to his huge wooden desk, watching him design and assemble clockworks made of dozens finicky pieces. The amount of patience, determination and precision he put into every facet of his designs was something I have always admired. Watching a running clockwork for the first time… Read More ￫