UX Design Weekly

Issue 1

Welcome to the very first issue of UX Design Weekly! As a UX Designer, I’m constantly reading UX articles, playing with new tools, watching videos, and looking at amazing portfolios – I wanted an outlet to share other than the typical social networks. I’ve been inspired by other curated daily and weekly emails and wanted to create one dedicated to user experience design. Whether you’re new to UX or a seasoned veteran, I hope to provide you with the very best links week in and week out to help you learn, improve your craft, and be inspired. Enjoy!

Articles

The Making of Tiiny
Tiiny is an app that lets you share little photos and looping videos that disappear after 24 hours. I love this write up because it takes you through the process from creating the idea, sketching, lots and lots of iterating on the design, testing, to finally releasing the app. They also reference all the tools they used along the way. Foursquare also had a similar write up when they went through their rebranding.

How to design for thumbs in the Era of Huge Screens
With the iPhone 6 and 6 plus releasing today, it’s more important than ever to design for thumbs – building interfaces that are the most comfortable to use within our thumb’s natural, sweeping arc. Scott Hurff breaks it all down for you and even includes a handy thumb zone template.

An Ode to the Boring Designers Among Us
Are you a designer that chooses function over flash? Chases the right idea over your idea? Loves consistency and style guides? Then Cap Watkins salutes you and the boring designers among us.

Design Details: Interaction in the new Cooking app from the New York Times
A small design detail has the team at Fast Company Design smitten – whenever you tap on a recipe tile, it zooms in seamlessly, as if the recipe were always waiting there on your screen.

How Top Startups Pay Designers
Daniel Burka, designer partner at Google Ventures, investigated what designers are getting paid at top startups in San Francisco and surprisingly, design salaries at big well-known companies in SF are similar to those offered at startups.

Tools & Resources

Free eBook – Mobile & Multi-Device Design: Lessons Learned
Luke Wroblewski, founder and co-CEO of Polar (which just sold to Google), compiles articles written the past two years about the many design decisions and big-picture thinking in creating Polar on many different devices. It’s a must read and it’s free! Available for iBook, PDF, and on his site.

Design Patterns on CodePen
Need some ideas for your next project? Get sample code to common design patterns.

Pixate: The next generation of mobile interaction design
Sometimes, it’s difficult to design an experience through static wireframes. Motion design is now almost required for creating great software. Pixate empowers you to create sophisticated animations and interactions through native iOS and Android prototypes—from design to prototype, without the code.

Videos

From Storytelling to Storylistening: John Maeda
As a UX designer, you have to be able to communicate your ideas through storytelling. Esteemed designer John Maeda discusses how successful leaders apply design thinking and start with storylistening before they get to storytelling.

Intro to the Design of Everyday Things
For anyone curious about basic design principles, this course provides a summary of key concepts from the first two chapters of The Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman. It’s not free but the course takes approximately 2 weeks and you can get a free 2 week trial.

Portfolios

Simon Pan
Simon Pan is a User Experience Designer from Sydney. His portfolio shows his best work and he goes into detail about each project – including the context, his approach, challenges, his process, and the design.

The Works of Justin Edmund
Justin Edmund is product designer at Pinterest. His portfolio does a good job walking you through his process from inception to the final output on various projects.

Jobs

UX Designer at Booking.com (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
Work in Amsterdam for planet Earth’s #1 accommodation website with benefits like a global relocation package and 26 days paid vacations in a year. Did I mention you get to work in Amsterdam?

Senior Director, User Research at Walmart ECommerce (San Bruno, CA)
Design the global shopping experience of the future and change the way 245 million customers shop for home, electronics, groceries and more!

Product Designer at Flickr (NY & SF)
Be a part of re-imagining the Flickr product from the ground up!

Blast from the Past

So you wanna be a user experience designer: Resources
This is one of the first links I send to aspiring UX designers who are interested in getting into the field. While it’s almost 5 years old, the majority of the links are still valid today.

Last But Not Least

“Pay attention to what users do, not what they say.”
— Jakob Nielsen


Have an interesting link to share? A suggestion on how to make the next issue better? Let me know on Twitter or subscribe to the weekly newsletter and email me.

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