Design Archives

Creative / Development Inspiration 57

17th December 201817th December 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Website Inspiration

Andy Allen

Portfolio of a designer. Simple. Quick to load. Gets to the point.

http://www.andyallen.co/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Adobe XD Auto Animate

It’s a fight to see who can get the best product out. Sketch is doing well, but Adobe keep upping their game. The newest feature seems pretty exciting!

https://www.behance.net/gallery/72065227/Auto-Animate-UI-Kit

How To Improve UX of Web Forms

By creating forms, you build an interface where dialogue happens. So, the goal here is to make sure that the form asks the right questions at the right time.

http://maxsnitser.com/blog/how-to-improve-ux-of-web-forms

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

An Empathy Lesson & Test on Accessibility for Developers

This article walks through 5 reasons why accessibility is so important when creating websites

https://www.ronaldjamesgroup.com/article/an-empathy-lesson-test-on-accessibility-for-developers

Rallax.js

I personally use a libary called Rellax. So when this came out I was pretty intrigued. Small. Vanilla JS. Dynamic parallax without dependencies.

https://chriscavs.github.io/rallax-demo

Coder

This web app looks like it is going to be a life changer for me. The full code editor, in the cloud. Starting with 3GB free, before any money is needed.

https://www.coder.com

WordPressify

A design system to automated your WordPress development. Looks a dream!

https://github.com/luangjokaj/wordpressify

A bit of everything

Only One Deliverable Matters

Too many people get precious about those documents—I know I’ve been guilty of it. Somewhere along the way, detailed wireframes, high-fidelity comps, and motion prototypes all got enshrined as critical deliverables. Those design artifacts are unimportant. Only one deliverable matters: the product itself.

https://bigmedium.com/ideas/only-one-deliverable-matters.html

Social Media Image Resizer

Need quick, clean image resizing? Promo has you covered.

https://slide.ly/promo/image-resizer/

Hand tremors and the giant-button-problem

This article looks at the accessibility problems with buttons, and how those with hand-tremors struggle with bad UI.

https://axesslab.com/hand-tremors/

Creative / Development Inspiration 56

10th December 201810th December 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Are you able to be the villain? What about if the product you are making has potential to harm? Also, on a more positive note. Here are some great examples of design systems, the state of UX in 2019, and more! Enjoy!

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Stop Showing Design Options and Commit

Normally create 20 different versions and let the client pick? But you are the expert, no?

https://medium.com/slite/stop-showing-design-options-and-commit-595d80bdb4aa

The State of UX in 2019

We have seen quite a lot this year. Here’s what to expect for UX in 2019.

https://trends.uxdesign.cc/

Humaaans

Mix and match illustrations of people with a design library. Definitely bookmark this!

https://www.humaaans.com/

A UX Guide For Designing Error Pages

404’s & maintenance pages. Use this checklist before you get started.

https://blog.prototypr.io/a-ux-guide-for-designing-error-pages-fb9ced1f1c8a

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Why You Shouldn’t Split Test During an eCommerce Redesign

Comparing the performance of the old and new site isn’t as useful as other exercises during the redesign process you can run. Don’t split test this!

https://www.goinflow.com/ecommerce-redesign-best-practices/

Awesome Design Systems

A collection of design systems, some open source. All the way from Audi, to Cloudflare. Some great examples.

https://github.com/alexpate/awesome-design-systems

React Create

Simple library to create component templates for React and React native projects.

https://github.com/obiwankenoobi/create

Tiny Details: A Look at Hamburger Menu Reveal Transitions

Examples of the hamburger menu done well, and also not so well. A few nice takes here.

https://speckyboy.com/hamburger-menu-reveal-transitions/

A bit of everything

Be the Villain

They’re not going to be fun conversations. It’s not going to be easy convincing others that these aren’t paranoid delusions best tucked out of sight in the darkest, dustiest corner of the backlog. Realistically, talking about it may even harm your career.

https://24ways.org/2018/be-the-villain/

8 Lessons from Creating a Design System

Mono created a design system. Here is what they learnt along the way!

https://mono.company/design-systems/eight-lessons-from-creating-a-design-system/

Raindrop.io

Think bookmarks, but your your team. Build collections of assets, or working on a new job that needs inspiration. Raindrop makes it simple.

https://raindrop.io/

Creative / Development Inspiration 55

3rd December 20183rd December 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week is more UI focused, due to a project that I am working on. I have still managed to include some brilliant development inspiration articles, and a few thought pieces at the bottom of the rundown. Have a good week!

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Adobe XD Wireframe Kits

A collection of Adobe XD wireframes to get you off the ground in your next web project!

https://newtodesign.com/xd-wireframe-kits/

Accessibility before Aesthetics

It’s time we start addressing accessibility before aesthetics in our design processes to create meaningful products for our diversified societies and cultures. Before diving into the Why, How and What of it, let’s revisit the definitions of these terms to set the context.

https://uxplanet.org/accessibility-before-aesthetics-9a0fb463e149

Montage

Fast, easy prototyping for everyone. Using a user-generated library of components, designs can be got of the ground quicker than ever.

https://www.trymontage.com/

Rememberly — A UX case study to help people affected by Alzheimer’s and Dementia

A brilliant case study for a apps UX that needs to do its job.

https://medium.com/tj-egbert-design/rememberly-a-ux-case-study-to-help-people-affected-by-alzheimers-and-dementia-6a5c17a1e690

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Zeroheight

This brings the design system closer to everyone involved. Starts with the designers, then can be fleshed out by the developers. Edited by everyone.

https://zeroheight.com/

The Dogs of CodePen

10 animated dogs. Thats all.

https://blog.codepen.io/2018/09/05/the-dogs-of-codepen/

Strategies For Headless Projects With Structured Content Management Systems

Using a Structured Content Management System (SCMS) can be a great way to free your content from a paradigm that begins to feel its age. In this article, Knut Melvær suggests some overarching strategies, with some concrete real-world examples on how to think about working with structured content.

https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2018/11/structured-content-done-right/

Getform

Not enough time to build in a form? Use Getform! Backend platform for designers and developers.

https://getform.io/

FreeCodeCamp – JavaScript Platform Game Tutorial

Lear how to build a Maria like platform game with this 3 hour video tutorial!

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/beaucarnes/platformer-game-turorial-javascript–m1JO9zlF4

Drop-Down Usability: When You Should (and Shouldn’t) Use Them

Deciding when to use a drop-down — or when to use another interface type, such as a radio button interface or open text field — for a specific input can be tricky. This article talks through the when and wheres.

https://baymard.com/blog/drop-down-usability

A bit of everything

Deep Dive Duck

Need to keep an eye on your competitors? Monitor changes on their site and get it set to you in a weekly email!

https://deepdiveduck.com/

Creative / Development Inspiration 54

25th November 201825th November 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week is a little more focused on UI design and development. And god damn they are pretty. Its all about those micro-interactions. On top of this, there are articles on Just In Time Design (it rhymes right!) and User Empowerment. Plus so much more! Enjoy this weeks design and development inspiration rundown!

Website Inspiration

BornFight

A digital agency that has been building websites and apps since 2009. Considering they have been doing it this long, I would have hoped the site would load slightly faster. However, it looks really good on desktop!

https://www.bornfight.com/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Design Dots

Another design and dev article curator. But this one is so much nicer. Build on Webflow, the auther only adds 5 pieces of content a day. Each from a different sector. Well worth a look.

https://www.designdots.co/

UI UX Interaction Design Week 16

A collection of UI and UX interfaces. Some great examples of websites done right.

http://gillde.com/ui-ux-interaction-design-week-16/

Building Your Colour Palette

An article on how to build a website colour palette. Well written, helps get the job done.

https://refactoringui.com/previews/building-your-color-palette/

User Empowerment Through Design

It’s not just about creating stunning visuals anymore, users are seeking whole experiences that make them feel more powerful and complete.

https://www.imaginarycloud.com/blog/empowerment-through-design/

The UX of Registration and Login

Two of the biggest barriers to entry. Registration and Login. If not designed right can lose a lot of users.

https://www.twotalltotems.com/blog/index.php/2017/12/20/the-ux-of-registration-and-login/

Mobbin

A collection of hand picked mobile design patterns that reflect the best in design. A definite bookmark.

https://mobbin.design/

Gestalt-Driven UX: The Patterns That Drive Our World

Gestaltism is a holistic philosophy that studies how humans recognize patterns and simplify complex, disparate information.

https://hackernoon.com/design-psychology-gestalt-driven-ux-64ac01cd257a

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Feather

Feather is a collection of simply beautiful open source icons. Each icon is designed on a 24×24 grid with an emphasis on simplicity, consistency and readability. Only loads the ones you need.

https://github.com/feathericons/feather

autoComplete

autoComplete.js is a simple pure vanilla Javascript library that’s built for speed, high versatility and seamless integration with wide range of projects & systems.

https://github.com/TarekRaafat/autoComplete.js

A bit of everything

Just In Time Design

Continuously delivering small iterations based on the team’s needs can transform the product development process. This approach shifts the focus away from highly-produced, out-of-date, difficult-to-maintain design, opening up the process to tighter collaboration and a higher standard of quality.

https://matthewstrom.com/writing/just-in-time-design.html

No I Don’t Want To Take Your Survey

In our industry surveys help with understanding the end user. The issue is how companies go about getting the information. Sometimes a survey on a website that interupts the user experience just isn’t the best way!

http://gerrymcgovern.com/no-i-dont-want-to-take-your-survey/

HolaBrief

Very few projects end up with exceptional results. HolaBrief makes it easy to ask all the right questions and nail your design brief every time. Built by designers, for designers.

https://www.holabrief.com/

Creative / Development Inspiration 53

19th November 201819th November 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

A massive selection this week. 2 great website examples to help inspire your portfolio designs. Some great JS frameworks and testing tools. A few articles to help designers design the good stuff, and even more articles to keep you busy. Enjoy this website design and developer inspiration rundown.

Website Inspiration

Tom Rush

A Leeds based digital creative website. Tom has built a simple, easy to read, and quick to load portfolio that does a great job.

https://tomrushworth.co.uk/

Tim Householter

First Tom, now Tim. A lead designer at Transom Design in Seattle. His site uses lots of white space and grids to display his work. Clean, simple, easy to read.

http://timhouseholter.com

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

In the dead of night we are drawn to dark interfaces

Distraction free, pretty, and amplification. What dark interfaces are a massive thing in product design.

https://uxdesign.cc/in-the-dead-of-night-a4c7fa98aec4

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Grid Tile Layouts with auto-fit and minmax

A new and easy way to make perfect responsive title layouts with CSS Grid.

https://gedd.ski/post/tile-layouts/

Building Your Colour Palette

You can’t build anything with five hex codes. To build something real, you need a much more comprehensive set of colours to choose from.

https://refactoringui.com/previews/building-your-color-palette

Creating Excellent UX Flow Charts

Flow charts, like any deliverable in the design process, is an excuse to talk to your team. As much as we like complaining about meetings and formal deliverables, the truth is that design work would come to a dead stop without (a) conversations and (b) pictures.

https://medium.com/eightshapes-llc/creating-excellent-ux-flow-charts-df6f1e46e524

Google Web.Dev

With actionable guidance and analysis, web.dev helps developers like you learn and apply the web’s modern capabilities to your own sites and apps.

https://web.dev/

Glorious Demo

The best way to create animated code for demos. Copy, pastable, and pretty.

https://glorious.codes/demo

Chromatic – UI testing for Storybook

A continuous UI testing tool that combines the accuracy of manual testing with the efficiency of automation. 21% of software budget is on bugs, and the cost of bug repair in production is 5-10x. This tool helps save time and money.

https://blog.hichroma.com/chromatic/home

Maizzle

Maizzle is a BYOHTML framework for rapid HTML email development. It’s like a static site generator, but tailored to email.

https://maizzle.com/

Svelte

The magical disappearing UI framework. I still need to have a proper look into this but it seems really interesting. Using vanilla JS, but the same functionality as major JS frameworks. Teeny tiny in size.

https://svelte.technology/

Why using `tabindex` values greater than “0” is bad

Using Tab Indexes in web development? Maybe you should stop doing that…

http://www.karlgroves.com/2018/11/13/why-using-tabindex-values-greater-than-0-is-bad/

A bit of everything

Web Typography Resources

A great list of resources all centred around typography. Perfect for designers and developers.

https://betterwebtype.com/web-typography-resources

Cacher

The code snippet organiser for developers. Integrates with most editors to store commonly used snippets from the whole team on the cloud.

https://www.cacher.io/

Heat maps 101: a complete guide with examples, tools, and case studies

Hotjar walk you through why, how and when to use heat maps. Mixed up with a few case studies and examples to show how valuable they can be.

https://www.hotjar.com/blog/heatmaps

Designing, laws, and attitudes.

I often hear from stakeholders who worry that “accessible” means “ugly.” Well here are resources that are accessible and visually beautiful.

https://ethanmarcotte.com/wrote/designing-laws-and-attitudes/

Creative / Development Inspiration 52

12th November 201812th November 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

Website Inspiration

Puree Maison

Although the designers have not considered usability at all, it is a good site to show the different animations and reveals that can be used across a website. Some brilliant hover states over images, and gentle fades on scroll.

https://pureemaison.com/en

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Palx

The last few week have been good for colour generators. Here is another brilliantly simple colour palette generator to sit in your bookmarks.

https://palx.jxnblk.com/

40 Orange Website Designs

Creative Overflow have pulled together 40 websites that are based on the colour orange. Some modern, some dated, but all good examples.

http://creativeoverflow.net/40-orange-website-designs-to-inspire-your-next-project/

Three Web Design Tools To Speed Up Things

While looking for tools to unify web designs and developers I came across three really interesting web apps. One not yet out yet. One that have been the block a few times, and the other new on the scene.

Webflow

Give you the power to design, build, and launch responsive websites visually, while writing clean, semantic code for you.

https://webflow.com/

Hadron

Hadron is a development environment for designers and developers who work together towards the same goal, moving ideas forward and learning from each other along the way.

https://hadron.app/

Bondlayer

Bondlayer empowers web designers to craft native apps and responsive websites. Without coding or template restrictions.

https://www.bondlayer.com/

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Spectre

A new lightweight modern CSS framework. It is under 10kb gzipped, responsive and uses modern elements and components.

https://picturepan2.github.io/spectre/

Markdown to JSX

A lightweight customizable component for Markdown within React

https://github.com/probablyup/markdown-to-jsx

Playroom

A simple design environment that allows you to simultaneously design across a variety of themes and screen sizes, powered by JSX and your own component library. Create quick mock-ups and share the work simply.

https://github.com/seek-oss/playroom

An Annotated Webpack 4 Config for Frontend Web Development

As web development becomes more complex, we need tooling to help us build modern websites. Here’s a complete real-world production example of a sophisticated webpack 4 config

https://nystudio107.com/blog/an-annotated-webpack-4-config-for-frontend-web-development

‘Atomic’ font size management with Sass

Atomic sizing with Sass should make styling fonts easier. It moves away from styling font elements like H1s, and focuses on specific classes.

https://iamsteve.me/blog/entry/atomic-font-size-management-with-sass

A bit of everything

Kill Your Personas

How persona spectrum’s help push real user needs.

https://medium.com/microsoft-design/kill-your-personas-1c332d4908cc?

We Do People Leave Your Website? Undecided Explorers

Trying to improve conversion rates? Maybe take a look at users that do convert… You may need to tailor.

https://www.hotjar.com/blog/why-people-leave-your-website

User Research? But Why?

If your job has anything to do with design, there is a good chance that you would have experienced the need to do some form of user research. If you happen to work with or for a group of people who have limited understanding of the design process, then you must have had your moments of frustration. This article helps answer these questions.

https://uxdesign.cc/user-research-but-why-2d399182637b

Meta Tags

A great tool to mock up Meta Tag views across social media platforms, as well as a teaching tool for those who are not in the loop.

https://metatags.io/

Netflix Web Performance Case Study

There are no silver bullets to web performance. Simple static pages benefit from being server-rendered with minimal JavaScript. Libraries can provide great value for complex pages when used with care. Netflix breaks down the process in this case study.

https://medium.com/dev-channel/a-netflix-web-performance-case-study-c0bcde26a9d9

Creative / Development Inspiration 51

4th November 20185th November 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week was a hard week to work out what not to put in this design development rundown. There were so many great choices. A brilliant website inspiration, some great design based tools, and all the articles. Enjoy!

Website Inspiration

St. Phillips Homes

A development company, specialising in building homes in desirable locations. The site is fast to load, and has a sleek look and feel. A nice change from tech sites.

https://stphilipshomes.co.uk/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Coolours

The super fast colour scheme generator that looks pretty!

https://coolors.co/

Dribbles 404 Page

Sometimes users do get lost. Dribble has created an interactive 404 page to get them back on track!

https://dribbble.com/404errorpage

Confessions of a Flawed Designer

A comic on some bad habits this designer is trying to fix.

https://thedesignteam.io/confessions-of-a-flawed-designer-11746ff42675

Refill me

A brilliant real world example of UX. Each table has a small painted area where you put your glasses if you want a refill.

https://www.waveguide.io/patterns/else/entry/refill-me

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

30 Seconds of CSS

A curated collection of useful (and not useful) CSS snippets that you can understand in 30 seconds or less. Some really helpful ones, like a load bouncer or how to make a Circle.

https://30-seconds.github.io/30-seconds-of-css/

Easier Scrollytelling with Position Sticky

Use minimal CSS to produce an engaging story telling process, without the weight of JavaScript

https://pudding.cool/process/scrollytelling-sticky/

The Architecture No One Needs

Why don’t you use React?! Make it a SPA! Hold up, maybe a single page app isn’t the right call for this project…

https://www.gregnavis.com/articles/the-architecture-no-one-needs.html

Turbolinks

Originally built for Ruby on Rails apps (look at the BaseCamp example) this JS script makes navigating a site super speed fast. All by not reloading the page. Simples.

https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks

Lozad.js

On the same vein of speedy loading. Here is a 0.9kb lazy loader for images and iframes. No dependencies. One of the better packages I have seen.

https://github.com/ApoorvSaxena/lozad.js

A bit of everything

Only One Deliverable Matters

So much varied work goes into producing a digital product. Mock ups, sketches, user flows. This is all incredibly important. The documents that it generates are not. Remember what you are creating.

https://bigmedium.com/ideas/only-one-deliverable-matters.html

The Web Accessibility Introduction I Wish I Had

Hello past self. Here is why web accessibility matters to your job. Turns out web accessibility affects all users, not just thought with disabilities. Sort it out.

https://dev.to/maxwell_dev/the-web-accessibility-introduction-i-wish-i-had-4ope

How (properly) Wasting Time at Work Increases Productivity

Our workaholic culture and the business epidemic tend to villainize time-wasting behaviours during work — like leisurely lunches and web browsing — but research proves that breaks can enhance your performance, on many levels.

https://medium.com/swlh/how-wasting-time-at-work-properly-increases-productivity-76272d651ef0

Pitfalls of Running A/B Tests

This is something close to my heart. I am a bit advocate of testing all data you can lay your hands on. However, remember to consider all the results…

https://medium.com/joytunes/the-pitfalls-of-running-a-b-tests-4da7141960d7

My First Taste of Grav

I have been looking for alternatives for small site development systems for a while now. I came across Grav. These are my first thoughts.

https://thoughtsandstuff.com/first-taste-of-grav/

Creative / Development Inspiration 49

21st October 201821st October 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

This week is more developer heavy, but with reason. There have been some brilliant tools and articles this week, and I really wanted to share them all! Enjoy this weeks design (little less) and development (little more) inspiration rundown.

Website Inspiration

ACLU — 50 State Blueprint

Not your typical website, but incredibly effective. ACLU have created this simple website showing each one of the 1,942,600 people in state prisons and jails in the US.

https://50stateblueprint.aclu.org/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Stop Solving Real Problems Once in a While

We sometimes take things too seriously and thus overrate people sharing their shiny design and code experiments with the world.

https://uxdesign.cc/stop-solving-real-problems-once-in-a-while-e7e1ecdaf9c1

Logo Lab

A tool to help you make your logo better. Checks balance, colour, accessibility, and more to ensure your brand is more able to catch that attention!

https://logolab.app/lab

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Introducing GitHub Actions

This makes me very excited. GitHub actions allows build and deploy (actually, any task you can think of) to be run when specific commit commands are made. Yes.

https://css-tricks.com/introducing-github-actions/

Experimental Gradient Editor

A great Codepen project by David A, showing colour gradient manipulation. Doesn’t really work on mobile, but looks great on desktop!

https://codepen.io/meodai/full/xyqoEO/

Rythm JS

Spelling issues aside. This JavaScript library is has an interesting take on using music on websites. Lets make your website dance.

https://okazari.github.io/Rythm.js/

Keys to Maintainable CSS: Order

Krisztian makes some great points on how CSS should be organised in a project. From ordering, layout, and simple spacing, this article helps developers write better, more readable CSS.

https://pyx.space/post/keys-to-maintainable-css-order

Relax – A Promise Based State Management Library

Think Redux, but smaller. Written from scratch, with no action types, switch statements or middle ware. It’s only 2.23kb gzipped!

https://github.com/relax-js/relax

CSS Border-Radius Can Do That?

When you use eight values specifying border-radius in CSS, you can create organic looking shapes. The article goes through how this is done, and also links out to a handy tool to help in shape creation.

https://medium.com/9elements/css-border-radius-can-do-that-d46df1d013ae

A bit of everything

How to Create a Design System

I am not going to give this up yet! I am big on this idea. This article covers the autonomy of a design system, and how you can build one.

https://medium.com/dev-channel/how-to-create-a-design-system-460b93a6565

The Inclusive Web – Why It Should Matter to Businesses

An article I wrote last week about how businesses seems to forget about accessibility. This makes no sense, as they seem to be missing a trick…

http://thoughtsandstuff.com/the-inclusive-web-why-it-should-matter-to-businesses/

Of Deadlines and Due Dates

This article stood out to be due to this one like – “Do not commit to a deadline you did not help set”. I think this sentiment is something that needs to be considered by a lot of people in this industry. Interesting read.

https://blog.calevans.com/2006/02/03/of-deadlines-and-due-dates/

So We Got Tracked Anyway

A brilliant article about how SSL means bugger all to the monopolies of the interwebs, and how Google and Facebook track you everywhere you go.

https://youbroketheinternet.org/trackedanyway

Realtime Board

I stumbled across this tool on Reddit. A real time, whiteboard like interface to keep everything in one place. A simple white boarding platform for cross-functional team collaboration

https://realtimeboard.com/

Creative / Development Inspiration 48

15th October 201815th October 2018 Robert Marshall 1 Comment

A focus on design systems this week, with a brilliant piece on Ubers rebrand, website inspiration, and micro nudges. Plus a few more in this weeks design development inspiration rundown.

Website Inspiration

Mawla – Mobile & Web Development Studio

Firstly, I love these bobble shapes used across the Mawla site. That, combined with the pastel colours makes it friendly, and welcoming. Lots of white space between sections allows the user to fully digest each point. And it works well on mobile!

https://mawla.io/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

Uber’s Undoing Part I: Whipping Boy

Uber has been through so many re-brands, they don’t seem to know who they are any more. Eli pulls apart the company, and looks at the way their re-brands have seemingly had no grounding.

http://www.elischiff.com/blog/2018/10/10/ubers-undoing-part-i-whipping-boy

A Guide to Colour Accessibility in Product Design

Accessibility is getting a lot of traction now, with more designers and developers trying to get the upper-hand. With that in mind, have you ever thought about colour accessibility?

https://medium.com/inside-design/a-guide-to-color-accessibility-in-product-design-516e734c160c

Micro nudge: a micro animation for behavioural change

A micro nudge is a well-timed small animation that prompts a user to complete a small task. This article includes examples from Instagram, and walks us through the process.

https://uxplanet.org/micro-nudge-a-micro-animation-for-behavioral-change-dd15ecd4fab3

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

Building an Image Generator for the Number 1 Track on Spotify

DJ Snake, Cardi B, Selena Gomez, and Ozuna have released their new song, Taki Taki, into the world and it has quickly soared to #1 on Spotify’s Global Top 50. Lee Martin was asked to create a marketing concept. This is what he came up with.

https://medium.com/@leemartin/taki-taki-eb45d03a8fb1

Cross Browser Testing Cloud

LambaTest allows you to test your website or application across 2000+ browsers and operating systems.

https://www.lambdatest.com/home

A11Y Style Guide

This application is a living style guide or pattern library, generated from KSS documented styles…with an accessibility twist. A well build, well documented style library.

http://a11y-style-guide.com/style-guide/

A Collection of Design System Articles

I have recently become interested in design systems. The concept makes complete sense, allowing all stakeholders to understand the brand – as well as making future design much faster!

Designing Design Systems

Clearlefts Jerlyn walks through the process of designing a design system, and how they run workshops to encourage stack holders to work through pain points.

https://clearleft.com/posts/designing-design-systems

Design Systems and Agility

A piece extended from a talk at UX Australia on design systems and their importance. Who do they serve? What is the point?

https://medium.com/interactive-mind/design-systems-and-agility-part-1-of-2-b96c188acfca

Understanding Design Systems and Patterns

The concept of design systems is not new to creative industries, but it has only recently been picked up by the digital side. This article breaks down what a design system is, and can be.

https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/design-system

A bit of everything

You can’t do human-first design without looking after your humans.

Our industry has a poor reputation of burn-out, long hours and stress. How can you keep moral high in the office?

https://perspective.despark.com/you-cant-do-human-first-design-without-looking-after-your-humans-726a0074834f

Creative / Development Inspiration 47

7th October 20187th October 2018 Robert Marshall Leave a comment

12 articles to help inspire you from last week. This website design and development inspiration has some great pieces on UX, a few website examples, and some more code snippets.

Have you ever considered that web performance goes hand in hand with UX, or why you should definitely user test. Well I have some thought piece for you!

Website Inspiration

Torch App

A simple site that works well on desktop and mobile. An interesting product as well. Love a bit of AR.

https://www.torch.app/

Poor Millennials

An article by Huffington post that walks you through the issues millennials have, using modern website techniques. Good work. Interesting read.

https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor-millennials/

Designer Resources, Examples and Inspiration

The product design tool for the day after launch

Site has gone live, but you have seen tweaks are needed. No need to write each one down and send to the developer. With this extension you can make the changes in the console and send with comments. Cannot believe its taken this long!

https://mod-dot.com/teaser/

Microcopy Inspirations

All those pages (like 404) that you don’t know how to style, or what copy to use. Well here you are.

https://www.microcopyinspirations.com/

Icondrop

One place for all your icons – easily used, easily passed on to the next user.

http://icondrop.io/

Understanding Design Systems

While it may seem like a new way of approaching digital workflow, the concept of a design system is not “new” to creative industries. At the core of any design system is a language of design patterns that solve common problems a designer might face.

https://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/design-system

Development Snippets, Samples, and Articles

When to use target_blank

Chris Coyier breaks down when you should, and shouldn’t use target_blank.

https://css-tricks.com/use-target_blank/

Random Colour Harmonies

Last week I showed you how Lyft had created a colour palette generator. Well here is another one!

https://codepen.io/meodai/full/RerqjG/

Google Maps stopped working? This could be why…

Google recently updated their billing model, and changed the way the APIs were set up. Here I outline how to sort that.

http://thoughtsandstuff.com/google-maps-not-working-with-api/

A bit of everything

Breaking the Deadlock Between User Experience and Developer Experience

We cannot talk about user experience, without also including performance. This article opens this issue up. Very interesting read.

https://alistapart.com/article/breaking-the-deadlock-between-user-experience-and-developer-experience

Getting to Yes — Convincing Stakeholders to Invest in User Testing

Those who understand the importance of UX know that design-centric companies have a higher ROI so including user testing in a design project comes as a no-brainer. On the contrary, unfamiliarity with its potential benefits means that many product owners don’t consider testing in the first place.

https://blog.maze.design/stakeholders-user-testing/

No Conversions? Here are 4 Reasons that Might Help

Getting users to convert can be a tricky one. This article highlights for places where your website might be falling down, and how to fix it.

https://www.cortes.design/post/some-traffic-but-no-conversions-here-are-4-reasons-your-page-is-not-converting-any-why