Joshua Mauldin is a design leader and visual artist who got his start creating websites for bands. Since then, he’s designed 5-star mobile apps and built stellar high-performing design teams. These days he designs, writes, speaks on topics like getting into product design, integrating mindfulness into the creative process, cross-team collaboration, and embracing healthy conflict at work. He is currently writing a book on that last one. When designing digital products, he approaches whatever he’s working on with as much curiosity, humanity, and courage he can muster. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Alison (an incredible partner), his dog Charlie (a very good boy), and his cat Frankie (she kind of tolerates him).
Let’s explore how to give and receive better feedback when working remotely — feedback that is actionable, specific, kind, and that won’t set you on edge. We’ll start by explaining when feedback sessions don’t work and how to prevent it.
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After a few years of designing products for clients, I began to feel fatigued. I wondered why. Turns out, I’d been chasing metric after metric. “Increase those page views!” “Help people spend more time in the app!” And it kept coming. Still, something was missing. I knew that meeting goals was part of what a designer does, but I could see how my work could easily become commoditized and less fulfilling unless something changed.
I thought of how bored I’d be if I kept on that path. I needed to build some guiding principles that would help me find my place in design. These principles would help grow and would shape my career in a way that fits me best.
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After the untimely (and still kind of sad) demise of Fireworks, I found myself looking for other ways to design apps and websites. I also had the desire to produce something more interactive for when I talk about my work with stakeholders. It turned out that Sketch, when paired with some other neat tools, would be a big part of this workflow.
In this article, I’ll talk you through why you should prototype and how you can do it with Sketch and prototyping tools such as Flinto and InVision. You’ll also get a nicely documented freebie Sketch file to help you.
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No one really wants to be interrupted, much less for something silly while they’re in the middle of doing a billion things. So, why do app ratings follow this pattern? And why don’t developers attempt to talk more with their customers?
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I started with style guides like any other obsessive-compulsive designer: with the desire to make it simple to maintain and grow a design. Plus, knowing which component to use in a given situation is nice, too, right? Since making this a regular practice, I’ve found it’s been like having a nice combination of a CSS class and a pattern library all in one.
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With a solid foundation, the house is stable, and building on it is easy. With a solid grid, your design can easily be adapted to accommodate whatever changes come along. Today, we’ll share iOS Grid System, which I’ve been using when designing apps in Adobe Fireworks.
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