December 31, 2017 — Despite all the New Year’s resolutions you might have made, sometimes it’s the small things that work wonders. A tidy desktop and a new, inspiring wallpaper that caters for a little inspiration shot when you need one. To welcome 2018, artists and designers from across the globe created unique desktop wallpapers for you to indulge in — with and without a calendar for January. Time to give your desktop a makeover and start the new year off freshly inspired. Read more…

December 29, 2017 — Once web apps function like native apps, the design interactions would also change to address the use case — namely, the ubiquity of animations. As web developers, we need a good foundation to create animations that are both performant and maintainable, which is paramount to the native web app landscape. In this article Christopher Ng will show you how to go from After Effects to CSS transitions, animations and keyframes. Read more…

December 28, 2017 — Sometimes it’s good to think outside the box. The Mozilla Developer Roadshow gave Markus Seyfferth the opportunity to get up close with developers in Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong. How do they work? How do they learn? And what are their local communities like? Let’s find out! Read more…

December 28, 2017 — Knowing who your competitors are is pointless unless you do something with that information. Learn how to build your own competitive analysis matrix that organizes your collected information into useful, usable data. In this article, Amanda Short elaborates how you can start improving your mobile app today. Read more…

December 27, 2017 — Productivity tips always make for a popular topic for an article, as everyone is looking for the silver bullet, that one weird trick that turns you into a productivity machine. So, we asked the community on Twitter and Facebook to share their best productivity tips, and in this article Racheal Andrew is going to round these up alongside some things she’s learned that work well for her. Let us know your own advice in the comments, or tell us the popular tip that would never work for you! Read more…

December 22, 2017 — The world is a stressful place. That’s probably why if you search for articles about dealing with stress you’ll find lots of great advice. But the problem is that most of it is pretty generic. Is there anything more specific to the profession of design? In this article Ollie Campbell takes some of the academic research on stress and applies it to the challenges designers face every day. If you’re a designer who feels stressed from time to time, then this article is for you. It takes some of the academic research on stress and applies it to the challenges designers face every day. Read more…

December 20, 2017 — To remove the dust from the term “office” and give the visuals revolving around it a fresh and friendly face, too, the creative minds at Vexels designed a set of 32 office-themed icons. The icons come in AI, EPS, SVG, and TIFF formats and can be downloaded for free. Attribution is required, so if you would like to use the icons, please do remember to credit the designers and to link to this article if you want to spread the word in blog posts or anywhere else. Read more…

December 20, 2017 — A grid is like invisible glue that holds a design together. Even when elements are physically separated from each other, something invisible connects them together. Grids help designers to build better products by tying different design elements together to achieve effective hierarchy, alignment and consistency, with little effort. If executed properly, your designs will appear thoughtful and organized. In this article Nick Babich aims to give you a good understanding of grid systems, what they are, and how they can be applied to your design process. Understanding how to use grids will come from practical experience. Read more…

December 19, 2017 — Making improvements to your mobile app’s design isn’t necessarily the easiest of tasks. In this article, Suzanne Scacca explains the six key ways in which dating app developers successfully use design to create an engaging and addictive experience for their users. Dating apps often get a bad rap for turning the dating scene into something superficial, mechanical and impersonal. Log in through Facebook. Swipe left. Swipe right. While it’s easy to write off these apps as fun little diversions for people trying to find love, they’re actually quite successful. So, what’s their secret? Read more…

December 18, 2017 — Most potential users will want to try out the software or service before committing any time and money. Often this is where the age-old demo account comes into play. However, anyone who has ever implemented a demo account can attest to the problems associated. In this article, James Pierce brings you a solution: SQLite. It’s commonly known that SQLite does not handle multiple threads since the entire database is locked during a write command, which is one of the reasons why you should not use it in a normal production environment. However, in his solution, a separate SQLite file is used for each user demoing the software. Read more…