How I’m learning to be more intentional about giving and receiving feedback — 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 to stay current with new tools and techniques — 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. …

Continuing work on a project post-hackathon — 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…

A beginner’s guide to getting the most out of testing — 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…

A versatile and user-centered approach to consider — 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…

Finding high-quality, reliable fonts — 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…

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…

How to ease the nerves and host a successful meeting — 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…

Solving key problems to enhance clarity and readability — Iteration is an integral part of the design process. It’s how designers work toward building a solution that meets customer needs and business objectives. Recently, I received feedback on one of the projects in my portfolio. The feedback was in regards to a specific design component in one of my…