UX & IA Design Thinking

I have recently had the need to create some different data visualizations for recent clients. I really enjoy the challenge on how to create new design elements that are both visually compelling but also provide really valuable data to the user. The need was to create some conceptual examples of different data visualzations to compare local wifi usages. I usually start out by sketching a few ideas out and here is an example of that. After I have a pretty good idea of what it should look like based on the user needs identified I then jump into either Sketch or Axure. I found a really easy way to create donut charts in Axure by converting a ellipse shape to a dynamic shape that you can adjust the handles to resize the size of the pie. This shape will be your variable percentage. This is really great because it is super easy for you to change the size of the pie without having to re-draw the circle. The next step is to create a light gray fill circle the same height/width as your other obj...

Wow, look at me go! A blog and two video posts all in one day… I just wanted to put out this quick video to showcase some of the core UI controls within Sketch. I have to be honest for the longest time I did not give Sketch the credit it deserves because I was so focused on Axure. However Sketch is so simple and easy to use that I now use for almost all of my projects. It is really basic but provides all the right things to quickly throw together some concepts or designs.

This video is the first of many tutorials that will get you started with learning a new tool for your designer toolbox. Take a moment to check it out and subscribe to my channel .

Great news! On April 17th 2014 @ 10am EST (2pm GMT) I will be presenting at the FREE SP24 SharePoint Conference . My session topic is: SharePoint 2013 Creating the Ultimate User Experience Here is a 1 min overview of my session! In this session I will walk you through best practices and tips and tricks for defining, designing and building a SharePoint 2013 UX project. These activities include: Identifying what users want (Requirements). Taking those needs/wants and creating the experience with Axure interactive wireframes. Using current trends such as flat design to create mockups in Photoshop for a slick modern UI that is tailored to your business. And finally reviewing design concepts for both desktop and mobile through Responsive / Adaptive web design. My Co-worker David Lozzi also has a session talking about taking SharePoint Public. His 1 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htClwprrW-E I hope to see you all at my session!

My journey in and around the Microsoft SharePoint 2014 Conference in Las Vegas this year has many high’s and lows. The lows of course are all the times that the casinos took my money but we just wont go there… Here is a little user journey for you on my path to and from the conference. I have been to this conference before and had a really good experience both times. I learned a lot and had a good time doing it. This year was a little different… I was one of the lucky ones that knew on the day that registration opened that I was able to go fully funded by my company Slalom Consulting (More about how awesome they are later in this post…) When I looked at the sessions I was really surprised at the lack of User Experience sessions that were offered. The previous conference was pretty much loaded with UX sessions since the design manager was new and the buzz was all around the new branding look and feel. So I started building MySPC calendar and noticed a trend that I was adding a l...

I have been wanting to write this one for a while now. It is really amazing how UX is really finding is way into everything that we use and interact with. From Custom applications both mobile and on a desktop to document management or large data visualizations. There is always room for better usability and new concepts. SharePoint lists and library functionality really has not changed much for the past 10 years... I remember back in 2003 when I saw the same table/grid based views of documents and list items that exists in SharePoint 2013. But now we can look at them in a whole new way! In this video blog you will see how to create a responsive CSS table so that when the browser size is reduced it will hide specific columns. However hiding data is not always the right thing to do. What if a user needed those columns to filter on or to use for comparison to another document? Well that is where the custom jQuery Column chooser comes in. It allows you to see what columns are displ...

With the new year a lot of people are finally making the move to SharePoint 2013. They have either never used SharePoint before and are getting a brand new experience or they have ridden the waves of 2007 and 2010 and are taking the steps to upgrading to 2013. With all the new great features of SharePoint 2013 I am still scratching my head on why the product team removed some basic features such as a consistent breadcrumb, site title, and description. In the video below I describe how to add back in the SharePoint site title and Description and ways that you can transform your 2013 site to a more constant experience that you had in pervious versions of SharePoint. Below are the code snippets that you will need to do this on your own. Site Title: <span class="custom-sitetitle"><SharePoint:ProjectProperty Property="Title" runat="server"/></span> Site Description: <div class="custom-sitedescription"><Sha...

First off I would like to apologize for the lack of posts. I have been really busy with my new role as the UX Design lead within Slalom Consulting Boston. I will share more about that in another post. In a previous post Create Really Small Calendar I showcased how to do this for SharePoint 2007. However the 2010 and 2013 calendar views have changed and therefore we cannot use the same method or CSS as 2007. SharePoint 2010 Small Calendar: SharePoint 2013 Small Calendar: See video below for a video walk through on how to create a small calendar for SharePoint 2010 and & SharePoint 2013 with just CSS. Per the video above here is the code that I referenced: 2010 CSS link reference in Master Page: <SharePoint:CssRegistration name="<% $SPUrl:~sitecollection/Style Library/smallcalendar.css %>" After="corev4.css" runat="server"/> 2010 CSS: /**** Small Calendar ***/ .ms-acal-item{height: 10px !important;}...

In this session I will be going over how to configure your navigation to point to a managed metadata term service.

In this session I will be going over how to change your site using composed looks (Themes) and also creating your own composed look.

In this session I will walk you through creating a new HTML Page Layout and adding snippets.

In this session I will describe the process of taking an existing HTML file and converting it into a HTML Master Page within SharePoint 2013. The HTML file used is based on the Twitter Bootstrap responsive design.

In this session I will be reviewing what device channels are and how to use them.

In this second session I will be giving a brief overview of the 8 steps within the new SharePoint 2013 Designer Manager.

This is the first of a 7 part video blog series. Thank you for your patience. In this session I will be going over the SharePoint 2013 UI Overview and some of the design changes that have been made for the new version of SharePoint 2013.