Prototyping is the panacea

This document provides tips for building an effective portfolio to help win a job. It emphasizes demonstrating thinking, skills and quality of work through the portfolio. The key tips discussed are to consider the audience, order work samples to engage and impress the reviewer, frame problems to showcase analytical skills, show the design process and value of artifacts, provide behind-the-scenes context, specify your role and contributions, focus on high quality over quantity, demonstrate design systems, and use a polished walkthrough to showcase skills through storytelling. The overall message is that the portfolio should tell the story of who you are as a professional and convince the reviewer of your fit and qualifications for the role.

This is an overview of the tools used by User Experience Designers. Software is important, but in UX you need to master a wide variety of techniques. This presentation covers an overview of the UX workflow, Discovery, Synthesis, Interaction, and Refinement, and outlines the tools that are critical to each step. In the end, the emphasis is not on mastering all the tools, but understanding their strengths and weaknesses, so the right tool can be chosen based on the situation.

This document discusses various user interface design patterns seen on popular websites. It begins by defining UI design patterns and how they should be used to solve common user problems rather than just copied. It then covers patterns related to responsive design for multiple devices, touch screen interactions, and various ways to get user input through forms, tagging, flagging content, and conversational interfaces.

A lot of people are curious about transitioning into the field of User Experience Design (UX). In this talk, I talk about a few different ways that you can transition into a UX career, be it grad school, night classes, or the ol' school of hard knocks, backed up by case studies. This talk was given at NoVA UX Meetup in the offices of AddThis, hosted by organizer Jim Lane.

This document provides an overview of UI patterns for user input, controls, and navigation. It discusses common UI patterns like forms, menus, searches and discusses best practices for using patterns. It emphasizes the importance of consistency both within a design system and with external expectations. It also discusses testing new patterns with users to innovate while still meeting expectations. The document provides many examples of patterns and guidance on selecting, applying and improving patterns for user experience.

UX INTERVIEWS is a series of short interview sessions – with senior UX practitioners and Service Design Thinkers. Please let me know if you are free to provide your input, too. I will send you a quick survey with new questions.

"If you want to learn the difference between UI and UX design, this article might have the answers you’re looking for."

User experience (UX) is the basis for all Web activity, and thus underpins everything we do in Web design and development. Successful projects bake UX in from the ground up, from discovery through planning, iteration, testing and deployment. No matter how beautiful our code may be, of what use is it if it’s irrelevant to our users?

User experience (UX) design involves creating a system, product, or service that provides a quality experience for users. UX designers conduct research to understand user needs and then create wireframes, prototypes, and visual designs to meet those needs. The goal is to make products intuitive and easy to use. UX design is informed by fields like psychology, graphic design, and user research. Designers use tools like Axure to create wireframes and site maps to plan interfaces before development. Usability testing involves user research methods like surveys and field studies to evaluate designs and identify areas for improvement.

Mary Wharmby provides tips for creating an effective UX portfolio. She recommends treating the portfolio like a UX design project and following the UX design process of discovery, strategy, design, testing and iteration. This includes discovering the audience and competitors, developing an identity and strategy, demonstrating problem-solving and thinking skills through case studies or process descriptions, testing designs with others, and continually updating the portfolio. The portfolio should tell a story, show evidence of work, and highlight the designer's skills, experiences and personality.

Originally presented at the Future of Web Design in San Francisco, Patrick Neeman talks about the different stages of the User Experience career path and where the opportunities lie for designers to grow and succeed.

The document discusses key considerations for creating an effective portfolio, including focusing on your identity, skills, and story rather than just your work. It recommends tailoring the portfolio to your audience and choosing an appropriate platform that fits your needs and deadline. Finally, it emphasizes showcasing a diversity of work and using your portfolio to get a job or meet with people.

This document discusses roles in user experience including job titles like UI/UX designer and UX researcher. It lists skills related to user experience work such as conducting interviews, prototyping, and usability testing. Activities in the UX design process are outlined including research, ideation, design, and measurement. A variety of roles that contribute to user experience are also listed.

Tom Brinck discusses evolving UX processes to be more adaptive, streamlined, optimized, innovative, collaborative, and concrete. He advocates experimenting with process changes and adopting those that work while abandoning those that don't. Brinck also presents a UX capabilities model that outlines increasing levels of capability from reactive to transformative.

Flat design is evolving while still maintaining its core principles of simplicity and minimalism. The new flat design incorporates some subtle textures and shadows while retaining clean, bold visuals. Trends in the evolving flat design include more detailed icons, dramatic typography, accented colors used sparingly, consistency of one font across the design, and continued emphasis on minimalism. While flat design grew out of reacting against skeuomorphism, elements from other styles like material design and skeuomorphism may be incorporated if done to maintain the flat aesthetic. Flat principles of usability and readability will likely influence other design philosophies as well.