Explaining design work is tough. Not everyone has a design background and understands how to evaluate it. Tying your design choices to your audiences’ goals makes it more understandable, and helps you avoid the dreaded real estate tour. Here are some ways you can explain your design work to different…

A simple tool for sharing your work Have you ever been to an art exhibit and left feeling like you understand an art period so much better? That’s the feeling you’re aiming for in a design exhibit. You want people to walk away understanding why design choices were made and…

A template for when someone asks why you don’t just copy a competitor. Hi [Their name], I really appreciate you taking the time to think about our design process and offer a suggestion. We all want to ship the best product as quickly as possible! These suggestions generally come from…

We all want our new hires to feel welcome, comfortable and able to contribute as quickly as possible. A good onboarding program can help get your new hire gets to that state. Onboarding usually includes tasks they need to complete and knowledge they need to learn. …

Note: I wrote this before I left AppNexus to go to Spotify, but forgot to publish it 😬. Posting it now for posterity The AppNexus design team believes that consistency can help make the user’s life easier. Primarily, we’e been focused on consistency at the micro interaction level, but it’s…

Our first design sprint was fairly successful. We made a few mistakes which had cascading problems, but overall we learned a lot and built some great team spirit. What’s a Sprint? A sprint is a participatory design process created by Google Ventures to quickly solve design problems. It takes five days, with each…

Sketch sessions are an easy collaborative process for generating diverse design ideas. My friend AJ introduced me to them and they’ve been a big hit at AppNexus. It’s basically getting a lot of people (Designers, developers, product managers, sales, support, etc) into a room, and working alone, together. …

As a young gay boy I always interpreted “I didn’t realise you were gay” as a compliment. As I grew up, becoming more proud of myself, I realised that it wasn’t a complement at all, but a celebration of normalcy. There are a few reasons that I paint my nails…

Along with most of the design community I made the switch to Sketch. last year. The transition was great. It’s so fast! So fast that I started using it to replace sketching. This turned out to be a mistake. An important part of the design process is being aware what…