In addition to the best UX links of the week, I’ll invite experts in their field to curate a list of must read links on a specific topic from time to time. This week, Scott Hurff curated a list of must read articles on prototyping and is offering UX Design Weekly subscribers an awesome discount on his Xcode for Designers course that just launched.
— Kenny
Articles
The End of Design As We Know It
You can future-proof yourself by ensuring that the kind of work you do cannot be easily replicated. Dan Saffer writes about how design skills like insights-gathering, problem framing, and crafting unconventional solutions will be more important as you build your career.
How to Interview a Designer with the Perfect Design Exercise
Looking to add a designer to your team? Ask for the impossible.
Making Products as Simple as Possible: The Paper Towel
The beauty of the paper towel is it’s simplicity. Craig Mod writes about how you can make your products better by focusing on it’s core, single purpose.
Image-Focused Design: Is Bigger Better?
Large visual appealing imagery is a trend seen on many sites these days, but they can harm the overall user experience if they aren’t appropriately prioritized.
Tools & Resources
Xcode for Designers
Catered towards designers, learn everything you need to know to build interactive prototypes with Xcode with over 20 videos. You can get the first lesson free.
Card Sorting Design Exercise Primer
Get your information architecture of your product right with card sorting.
Prott App
Prott released a free rapid prototyping tool for designing and developing mobile apps on iOS this week. Some apps with similar functionality include Marvel and Pop. Check out a curated list of popular prototyping tools.
Affinity Designer
A potential Adobe Illustrator competitor, Affinity is a professional graphic design software for Mac created and inspired by designers. They are running a launch offer this week for $10 off.
Prototyping Links Everybody Should Read by Scott Hurff
Why has prototyping, of late, become an essential ingredient for creating the next generation of mobile apps? What’s the best way to integrate it into your design process? I included a number of articles that explore prototyping and its benefits in the real world.
Prototyping a Godzilla
Pasquale D’Silva, a UI designer and animator at Elepath (creators of Keezy, Exposure, Thinglist, and more), talks about his prototyping methods and how sometimes “quick and dirty” is the best way to get things done.
The importance of Sketching in Product Design
Joshua Porter, creator of the What to Wear daily report, discusses the true value of getting people on the same page through sketching. “Product people should sketch together.”
Prototyping For Better Products, Stronger Teams And Happier Clients
I interviewed two product designers about their prototyping processes and they show how it’s benefited both their team and their design prowess.
Prototyping: Fake It Till You Make It
A fantastic look into Apple’s own internal prototyping methods, employing the use of mocks, Keynote and Xcode prototypes to get their points across. Note: An Apple Developer account is needed to view the video.
Scott Hurff has been building web and mobile products for over 15 years. Currently Head of Product at a Kleiner Perkins-backed Tappy, he teaches design prototyping in both Quartz Composer and Xcode, and is writing “How Product Designers Work“.
Videos
UX Week 2014
Videos from UX Week 2014 by Adaptive Path (who just announced they have been acquired by Captial One) last month are out now with a variety of design professionals speaking about various topics.
Portfolios
If you’re looking to create or update your portfolio, check out this excellent article of tips for building a world class portfolio from Bridge by DesignerFund. Here are two portfolios from their class:
Ed Lea
A product designer at Inkling, Ed goes in depth on his work as well as interactions on his site.
Kevin Shay
A product designer at Brigade, Kevin showcases his entire design process on his site from research to final design and interaction.
Jobs
Interaction Designer – IDEO (Chicago, IL)
Collaborate across disciplines to create integrated design solutions for a diversity of industries, scale and mediums.
Senior User Experience Designer – Blizzard (Irvine, CA)
Love Warcraft or Hearthstone? Help improve the Battle.net experience. They also have some junior positions available as well as UX jobs in Austin, TX and San Francisco, CA.
Last But Not Least
The Bézier Game
Hate the Pen tool? Here’s a game to help you master it.
“Simple is hard. Easy is harder. Invisible is hardest.”
— Jean-Louis Gassée
As always, if you have an interesting link to share, interested in curating a list on a specific topic, or a suggestion on how to make the next issue better, let me know on Twitter or subscribe to the list and email me.