“You’re folding it wrong…”

My wife spoke to me from the other side of the bed where we were folding the laundry. Looking down at my handiwork, the shirt seemed to be pretty close to a square and would fit into the drawer nicely, so I (foolishly) asked how it was wrong? She proceeded to pick up the shirt and show me the “right” way to fold it, step by step. I looked down at her “right” way, slightly confused that ultimately it was the same square but figuring it was smarter to go along with it.

(Quote: A married man can be right….or he can be happy.) (more…)

As anyone who has come to know me has realized, I love coffee. I don’t write that lightly, I mean I REALLY love coffee. There is not a drink I prefer and cherish more, and few things make me happier than fresh beans roasted just so, applied to water at the right temperature and timing to produce that perfect cup. I’ve tried $15 cups of coffee, cups from the heralded Clover Coffee machine (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntbVGGMu_Ac), and had the joy of picking coffee beans myself while travelling through Colombia.

Despite this, and much to the surprise of the aforementioned people who get to know me, one of my favorite cups of coffee comes from simple, no frills Tim Horton’s.

(Don’t worry, this comes back around to UI and UX, I promise…) (more…)

One of the most practical and applicable (i.e. able to teach yourself and begin finding paid work) design fields you’ll be able to get into is Web Design, and I would suggest this for a number of reasons: (more…)

What's the best workflow or process to manage your mobile app assets?

Most of the workflow helps I've discovered have come in my UI design tool of choice, Adobe Illustrator
 
Placed AI Files for Backgrounds:
For the background and elements that are re-used within every screen, I'll design it out in a different Illustrator file, then place that file and copy it for as many different screens as I need. Then, if there's a change to the background color or tools on the top bar etc., you only need to edit one file and have all screens your designing update (huge time saver)
 
Artboards:
For sending out multiple concepts or multiple screens, defining many artboards and exporting them to PNG or one PDF file has been a very fast way to send files for review
 
Layers:
Obvious, but I was not using the layers as effectively as I should have been. Being able to control the locking or visibility for multiple layers, especially useful for pop-ups and other overlaying elements, has been a great help.
 
Creative Cloud Sharing
I have just started to use this in my design flow, but there is a lot of potential though. With Adobe's latest version, you're able to share artboards online and invite people to leave comments on particular pages. These are not only stored online, but also show up in the application which is useful and cool.
 
 
Otherwise I'd agree with many of the other answers on here, some great workflow suggestions.

What is the most useful design / workflow / tool tip that you learned recently?

Human Factors International offers a great series of videos on YouTube around User Centered Design and Usability. You can find their videos here:

http://www.youtube.com/user/HFIv…

The HFI Animate series they do is especially engaging to watch. One of the better examples can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3…

(more…)

How can I differentiate Online products vs “Offline” products on a website?

Question on Quora:

I’m helping re-design a website which has some products that can be purchased online and some which can only be purchased offline in physical stores.

Both the products you can buy and can’t buy need to be shown on the site, but how can I present both in a way that’s not confusing?
The ’offline’ products are informational only, and we’ll list the stockists or have a nearest store finder, but we cannot guarantee that store will have the item in stock (problem number 2)

We could have a tab with ‘Products’ and one with ‘Online shop’ but I’m not sure this is very clear. Alternatively we could put the products within the shop and just note that these cannot be brought online but this can cause frustration and is pretty misleading.

My Answer on Quora:

There would be a number of options you could consider, and I think the best answer will depend on the flow of your site.

Option 1, your idea for having two tabs is not a bad one. Calling one ‘In Store’ and the other ‘Buy Online’ (or whatever combination of words work for you) will clearly indicate to the user the buying experience. With this option, I’d make sure to add some clear text at the top of each page to further clarify how purchasing is to be done.

Option 2, if you really wanted them all to be in the same location, you could add some visual elements to clearly show which are available online or not. I did up a quick example here:  (more…)