I recently got turned down for a Product Designer position in Europe. Yes, this has happened many times over the past couple of years. Though the reason I’d been given this time during my feedback call was something that bothered me and grew upon me.

While applying, I thought it was a perfect match since I’ve spent the past 2 years working with a similar product company in the Middle East. The job description perfectly aligned with my past experiences. And yes, they were also helping their hires with the relocation.

During the feedback call with the hiring manager, I…

Why give back to the community? Answering this question in a paragraph or two is going to be really difficult for me, I’ll try it anyway.

We live in a shared world where everything (literally everything) is available at our fingertips. Whether one wants to learn to code or do magic tricks, it’s all available on the world wide web for anyone and everyone to learn.

This is because some nicer people decided to give with an open heart. In the process, they also encouraged others to do the same. …

I’m an internet-made designer and I say this because I taught myself to design with the help of the internet.

There are loads of inspiring and kind folks out there who willingly share their experience through a blog, newsletter, videos, podcasts and more…You just have to be looking and you’ll find enough content to teach yourself to do anything, quite literally.

When I started out in design, I used to read at least 6–7 blogs to dive deeper in design and keep myself updated with the latest happenings in the tech industry. …

Motivation is a tricky beast. I call it a beast because it’s hard to summon it but once you have it, you can slay ‘em all.

I’m no legend, like others I too find it difficult to stay motivated at times and create new designs or write new stories. Having said that, over the last few years, I’ve discovered some ways to stay motivated and keep the creative juices flowing.

First things first, I consider myself very fortunate to have realized that consistency outplays talent very early on in my life. I’ve strictly stuck to the idea that in order…

Fortunately, we’ve seen some great improvements and focus on accessibility in recent times. It’s far from ideal but it’s getting better every day and that’s something we can push for.

What is an accessible design?

Accessible design is something that can be used by a diverse set of users. These users could have various types of disabilities, such as vision, hearing, mobility, cognitive, etc.

To elaborate further on this, your design could be inaccessible to a lot of people with disabilities if

• you only use colors as a visual cue
• you use tiny font sizes
• you place a light grey text on a lighter background…

I’ve always been a believer in transparency and openness. Which is why hopping on the Open Startup bandwagon seemed like a no-brainer to me. I have and will continue to build Product Disrupt on these very principles of transparency and openness.

You may ask, what is the Open Startup Movement anyway?

The Open Startup trend is a transparency and openness movement seemingly initiated by Buffer, quickly adopted by Ghost, capitalised by Baremetrics, and recently popularised in the Indie Maker community by Pieter Levels.
– Danielle Johnson

To put it simply, any startup is an open startup that shares its statistics…

It’s that time of the year when we make resolutions but don’t quite stick to them, we make predictions but often end up being proven wrong. But we like to do it anyway, it’s a fun activity to kickstart our new year.

So, I reached out to a couple of friends to find out what their predictions are for the trends in design for 2019. Let’s hear it from them.

Let’s talk about hiring — your first point of contact with the company where you would be spending most of your time in a given day.

I’m going to be brutally honest with you here, I feel that the hiring process in design is broken. Read along to see where I’m coming from.

Unfortunately, we live in an age where confrontation is avoided at all costs, where it’s okay to not care for others, where it’s okay to not practice empathy, where it’s okay to not hold yourself responsible. …