UX & IA Design Thinking

By nature most people are resistant to change. I have learned the hard way that just because something has been working great for the last 10 years does not mean it is always the best solution now. So much has change with technology not only within the last 3 years but over the last 6 months I have seen drastic evolutions of the art of possible. Users are demanding more and in faster timeframes. We as designers have to keep up with the latest trends, patterns, and interactions or you will be left in the dust. I recently had a design challenge that required the ability to display a horizontal sub navigation for mobile. Since we already had a main navigation being taken up by the parent hamburger menu I was in a bit of a jam on what to do. My first instinct was to group all of the navigation elements into some sort of drop down so that when users clicked on the drop down they see the navigation list options. This would have been fine but was more of an old school way of looking at ...

The tools we use to help define UI experiences is constantly changing. The fact is that Photoshop and Illustrator are no longer the preferred tools in an XD designers tool kit. We have transitioned to more flexible and robust applications that allow both low fidelity sketch like concepts to Pixel perfect high fidelity visual designs. Sketch does a really good job at providing both of these levels as well as the in between. In combination with Zeplin and Invision these three applications provide a pretty solid output for creating great experiences for both desktop and mobile applications. Zeplin has been a great tool to lessen the burden on our visual designers for creating redlines to our developers. It has some really neat features that would take weeks for to pull together in a style guide around spacing, colors, fonts etc. They are even experimenting with providing HTML and CSS outputs from the designs. When creating wireframes I tend to use both interactions that provide some le...

As time goes on we learn, grow and explore in new areas that make us happy and inspired. I am very lucky to have found that path. Since 2003 I focused on providing great experiences to my clients around a specific tool known as Microsoft SharePoint. I was so invested in this tool that I even wrote a book on how to stretch the limits on customizing it. Over the last couple of years SharePoint has changed to be more stand alone through Office 365. Within the last few years I have had the pleasure to not only wok for the best company Slalom Consulting but also work for some really amazing clients! My most recent projects have been outside of the world of SharePoint and in all honesty I could not be happier. It is sad to see it go but I think it is time to pass the torch to other great and amazing bloggers that will keep posting technical posts on how to configure and explore new ways of making SharePoint do what they need to present the right information to users at the right time. My p...