Recently, I’ve been fortunate to speak with a variety of people on the value of feedback in the workplace and in the design process. The conversations I had allowed me to deeply reflect on the importance of feedback and why we should value it. Previously, I wasn’t aware of just how important feedback can be. I’ve experienced design critiques before and I’ve had 1:1’s with managers, but never really questioned how (and what) I could be doing better in these situations.

I got the idea to write this article after being asked these questions in recent interviews:

• What’s a time…

Staying current with new tools and techniques is one of my favorite topics to talk about. As a designer, I love to use industry-standard tools and also keep an eye on new ones coming out. I use different avenues to do this so I thought I’d share them in this article.

Go-to Methods

Twitter

Twitter is a great place to be as a designer. Personally, I have found it to be very useful in terms of:

1. Connecting with others
2. Engaging in conversations
3. Noticing trends
4. Gathering inspiration
5. Viewing great work from other designers

It can be a bit overwhelming at times, but you don’t…

One of my favorite parts about design is seeing the slow, but steady progress — when you take a step back to look at the bigger picture, rather than the small details, and find yourself amazed at all that you’ve accomplished with your team.

Back in December, I decided to participate in a hackathon with a few people. It was over the course of one day — very little time to create a functional prototype from start to finish. …

The first time you conduct a testing session can be overwhelming. You may be nervous and probably haven’t figured out an effective way to approach it yet. That’s completely okay. User testing, much like other parts of the design process, takes time to understand. It’s about practice and figuring out what works and what doesn’t work. In this article, I’d like to discuss some ideas you can implement and different approaches you can take to get the most out of testing.

Test Plan Introduction

A good first step before you begin user interviews is to make a comprehensive plan. It’s up to you…

As an emerging/early-career designer, it can be difficult to determine the “right” way to do things. A topic that is flooded with differing opinions is writing case studies for portfolio projects. This is the main reason why I struggled when putting together case studies for my portfolio. It wasn’t until I explored several portfolios, read countless articles, and talked to many designers that I settled on a framework. This framework really takes into account all of these efforts and combines them.

I’m not saying my way is the right way to do things. Rather, my hope is that sharing my…

The more design projects I work on, the better I get at identifying a set of constants, or practices I rely on. One of those practices is having a go-to library of fonts and a set of resources I can turn to when I want to confine my explorations. What do I mean by confining my explorations? Well, typography is one of those things I can spend hours, days, and weeks on. I could go soul-searching for the perfect font because the possibilities are endless. However, as a designer, an important skill I need to possess is knowing when to…

A few years ago, I tried to code my website from scratch. I took on the challenge because I knew enough HTML, CSS, and JavaScript to get started. I was so excited and had a lot of ideas that came from just browsing other portfolios I saw. The portfolios that got my attention were, of course, the fancy ones. You probably know what I’m talking about, the ones with the slick animations and transitions. Eventually, my dreams were crushed when I determined that coding an amazing website from scratch was not going to happen. It takes a lot of work…

Designers attend various meetings throughout the day — some that are necessary and others that aren’t. Two that come to mind are daily stand-ups and design critiques. I recently finished up a UX certification program, where we started each day with a stand-up meeting. In these meetings, each student answered the following questions:

1. What did you accomplish yesterday?
2. What are you working on today?
3. What roadblocks are you currently facing?

A different student facilitated our stand-up meetings each day. This gave everyone a chance to practice hosting a meeting. For some, it was uncomfortable, including me, but the more I…