Design Articles

This comprehensive UX audit guide will help ensure you're providing users with the most optimal & frictionless user experience. Click to read now.

In part 2 of our XD Team Roundtable, we discuss our thoughts and advice on making successful creative projects happen.

We picked the brains of our Experience Design team and heard some thoughts and advice on what makes them tick, and how their creative designs happen.

User Personas are a key exercise to improving your website’s user experience (UX). Learn how to create and use them effectively today!

Feel like your brand’s color palette is missing something? Here are some easy steps to start expanding it to improve your website design.

88% of online shoppers won’t return to a website after having a bad user experience. Retain and increase customers with these 6 highly impactful UX design tips.

Throughout my 14 years in the design industry, I’ve used countless tools to work on my design projects. One of the first tools I used was the venerable design workhorse Adobe Photoshop, and it became my favorite tool for web and print design back in 2004. In the early days of my career, I considered Photoshop to be the most complete tool in terms of web design and mobile application design. Challenging Adobe’s dominance, Sketch arrived in 2010 and in my opinion revolutionized the UI/UX design process for Mac users. I loved Sketch and used it whenever I could for my web projects, but its lack of compatibility with PCs proved to be an inconvenient limitation in mixed-platform environments.

When I tell people that I’m a user experience (UX) designer, most people nod politely as their eyes glaze over for a second, and they try to move the conversation along. Early in my career I thought they were completely uninterested, but over time, I came to realize that many people simply don’t know what UX is and might feel awkward about asking. On behalf of misunderstood UX designers everywhere, please allow me to introduce you to the wonders of quality UX and why you should care about it.

What is a visual brand identity, you ask? It’s only one of the most important things about your business. Branding is far more in depth than aesthetics. It delves into the core of why you exist as a business. It requires hours of research and analysis to ultimately cultivate something visually appealing that communicates your message: your visual identity. A visual identity is comprised of a system of external expressions such as a logo, color palette and texture, typography, iconography, illustration, photography, motion principles, and composition.

I went fishing the other day and all I caught was a good UX lesson for you. Here’s the deal: my daughter entered the neighborhood annual fishing derby. For a decent UX guy, I’m a terrible fisherman. But I do know how to bait a squirming worm and unhook the slimiest of fish.

I think about navigation all the time—it's my job—but here's a surprise for you: you do too. You just don' t realize it.

Animated video can be your most powerful engagement tool for gaining customers ­– if done correctly.

Call me old-school, but I’m historically a fan of designing with straight-up HTML and CSS with as few frameworks and frills as possible. And, while that’s still typically the way I work, I’ve introduced a small number of resources to my toolbox so I can iterate faster and design better responsive websites and user interfaces.

Designing paragraphs for the web might feel a little overwhelming if you want to give your visitors a good reading experience. Thankfully, there are a few simple rules of thumb to keep your type on track.

Our processes and methodologies for building client websites evolve all the time. We’re always looking for a better way to work—whether that means finding ways to increase our efficiency, improve our communication, or reduce friction points for end users—we never stop looking for ways to keep doing good.

Every once in a while, I’ll share a peek into my ever-changing web design toolbox.  My favorite new addition in the past year has been Tachyons (pronounced "TACKY-ons"), a lightweight, responsive CSS toolkit that accurately bills itself as “functional CSS for humans.”

Every person who can’t use your website is another lead you’ve lost. 

Second to content, the source of every bad, ineffective website design in history has resulted from trying to squish words and pictures into the wrong type of container. 

There’s a better way to design, and it involves nuggets.

The state within an application or website that doesn’t contain any data is called an empty state, and it’s something that’s easy to overlook.

One of the side effects of responsive design is that a lot of sites look similar, but responsive design isn’t solely to blame. The rise of WordPress sites and the booming theme market have also had a hand in it. The perception of websites having a similar look to every other site out there these days isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s partially a result of the new ways in which we consume the web, and it has resulted in a lot of common UI design patterns.

cha·ris·ma : a special charm or appeal that causes people to feel attracted and excited by someone (such as a politician).

We recently launched a complete redesign of the Liquid Interactive website, and doing so helped us reinforce important lessons about usability, design, and content.

I’m always fascinated by good thinkers, good ideas and the exciting ‘A-ha!’ Moments that keep us inspired.  To me, that creative impulse is what I love about my job. Jonah Lehrer, author of Imagine: How Creativity Works, said, “The skills, perspectives and networks that promote innovation and creativity also create strong thinking individuals with resources that extend beyond any single measure of worth or productivity.”