Join other builders — Get tips from a YC startup founder & ex-Googler. Subscribe to 💌 Tiny Improvements

#design: 43 posts tagged

First principles for UX design

Using first principles in UX will make your product more intuitive and more enjoyable for your customers, while making your job easier.

Don't just listen. Interpret feedback wisely.

User feedback is your product's compass. Listen intently, act wisely, and stay true to your vision to navigate towards success.

Nobody Wants a Big Reveal: Why Keeping Secrets Hurts Your Work

Avoid the temptation of the dramatic reveal. Here's why openness and transparency are your real competitive advantages in product development.

How Contrast Elevates Perception

Why a seamless experience can make your work feel superior — even if it's not.

Inter and the Power of Fonts: Why Typefaces Matter More Than You Think

Open up the potential of your designs with a deeper understanding of what variable fonts like Inter can do.

How you do one thing is how you do everything

How you do one thing is how you do everything. This is a phrase that has been around for a long time, but what does it really mean? In this article, we will explore the meaning of this phrase and how it can be applied to your life.

Open Sourcing my Design System

I'm open sourcing the Figma file I use to design and create images for my personal site.

Statistically, nobody has used your app

People spend most of their time on sites and apps other than yours. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.

The Aesthetic-Usability Effect

When building something new, what's more important: that it works, or that it looks good? The Aesthetic-Usability Effect says that users perceive more aesthetically pleasing designs as easier to use than less aesthetically pleasing designs.

The Endowment Effect: why useful trials make for sticky products

The endowment effect is a psychological phenomenon where people value things more highly simply because they own them. How can you use this to make your product stickier?

Beyond the walled garden: what Spotify and Substack get wrong

It's natural for big companies to make mistakes - but when they do, it's a great opportunity for smaller companies to build something better.

Designing for hospitality

"Unreasonable Hospitality" by Will Guidara outlines how to making customers feel exceptionally special. Let's bring these hospitality principles to tech, by creating memorable experiences, and using hospitality to elevate customer satisfaction in product design, engaging with the people using our products.

I hate Tailwind CSS. Here's why I use it.

Tailwind CSS is a utility-first CSS framework that I've come to love. Here's why I use it and why I think you should too.

Gestalt: Design principles every developer should know

Ever felt that you've seen a design that just makes sense to you, but you couldn't quite put your finger on why? There's rules for that. Let's talk about Gestalt

The product design spectrum: crowdsourcing, user research, and the myopic approach

In product design, there's a critical difference between crowdsourcing ideas and feedback, and user research.

Chase your interests to build something useful

Explore the power of hyperfixation on the internet, from tech enthusiasts diving deep into topics to engineers creating innovative solutions. Discover how curiosity can lead to expertise and groundbreaking tools.

Continuous self improvement and the morning ritual

Reflecting on my morning ritual, journaling for clarity, and podcasts for your morning walk

Two truths and a lie: what Meta got right with the Threads launch

Meta's new app, Threads, is a Twitter clone that launched last week. It's not perfect, but it's a great example of a product launch that went extremely well.

Maximize user retention: the cognitive science approach...

Understand how multitasking affects your customers' memory, and improve your product design and engagement with cognitive psychology and the Zeigarnik effect.

Intellectual humility: how to be wrong productively

How to use being wrong to improve UX and product design. Learn how to embrace mistakes and create better products for your users.

Your portfolio is a timeline of your growth

At some point in your life, you will look back on the work you did when you were just getting started with a new skill, and see everything you did wrong. Let's talk about how to channel that feeling for good

Why Liquid Death's branding is murderously effective

Discover the science behind naming and branding, and how the Bouba/Kiki effect can help you create a brand identity that resonates with your audience.

The math behind why cafes should have round tables

Though we don't often think of it this way, the objects and buildings around us are the result of a series of design decisions.

The finicky nature of color in product design

Choosing colors for your product can be a difficult task. There are cultural, historical, contextual, and even physiological factors that can influence how we perceive color.

Perception and unexpected tricks of the mind

Explore the fascinating world of perception and cognition in the Tiny Improvements newsletter. Uncover the unexpected tricks of our minds and learn how to make tiny improvements in our cognitive abilities.

These are the books that shaped my career

A sampling of books that have had a fundamental impact on my career as a designer, developer and startup founder.

5 Design rules everyone should know

For most of my life, I would not have described myself as a creative person. As it works out, nobody is inherently creative. It's all about following rules.

The way we talk about our things

This we we talk about intentional use of language and how it can affect subconscious behavior.

Has it been four years already?

MLK, presidential inauguration, time illusions, new features in Gatsby, and designing for musicians.

On seasonal change, open source, and carbon offsets

Cognitive science and the framing effect, Open Source software and Working in Public, language learning, creating online courses, and reforestation.

Matter - a whole thing about design

#ux
#design
Cover slide: MATTER - a whole thing about design

From a talk I gave at my then-home-base Hygge Coworking at a community event. The thesis: we're all designers, and you should give a damn about the things you put into the world.

Slides are available on slideshare.

Design Matters, Hygge Zero day

#design
#ux
title slide: Design Matters, Hygge Zero day

These are slides from an empassioned talk I gave about design during a community event called Zero Day at Hygge Coworking in Charlotte, NC, USA.

The thesis: good design is important, and you should be paying attention to good-and-bad design in the world around you. Contributing to making the world better for everyone is everyone's job.

Slides are available on SlideShare

Your App is Ugly

#design
#ux
Title slide from the presentation which accompanied this talk

A rehash of a talk on the basics of design and aesthetics, covering color theory, swiss design, and some of the historical roots of modern design.

Authored with Andrew Miller, Jeremy Osborn, and Leah Cunningham

Slides are available on SlideShare

Designing Windows 8.1 apps, from the ground up

#ux
#design
#windows

This is a talk I gave at Blend Conf in Charlotte, NC USA in 2013, when I was working for Microsoft as a UX Designer. If you're interested in learning how to design apps for a version of Windows that came out in 2012, this is your day!

Slides are available on Slideshare