This is a simple and paperless solution to contracts for small side projects

I work full time in Seattle, Washington as a UX/UI designer. The company I work for, Palador, builds enterprise apps and websites for local and international companies. Sometimes we build internal facing applications, sometimes it’s a public facing website. We do great work!

I work around 40 hours a week at Palador, and in my free time, I work for myself. I am a freelance designer at heart. I like making my own hours, though they currently revolve around my full time day job, and choosing the projects I work on. Recently I decided I wanted to offer a more simple way to make agreements on smaller projects. Something that would offer my clients a pleasant surprise when starting to work with me. …

How often do you brush your teeth? Once, twice, three or more times a day? How often do you shower? Once, twice, 7 times a week? What if you combined the two activities at least once a day? I promise it will make your life easier. Here are three reasons brushing your teeth in the shower is awesome and better for everyone.

Kill two birds with one stone

Instead of waking up, standing in front of the mirror and brushing your teeth, then getting into the shower. Take the toothbrush with you. This will save you 12.16 hours per year. …

Unless you’re black in America, you don’t know what it’s like to be black in America.

I feel like I live a pretty normal, white person life and many of you will be like me. When I see violence in the media, just like everyone else, I make quick assumptions on who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong. But that’s as far as my actions go. Maybe I hit the like button.

Living and working in Seattle (a seemingly peaceful, forward thinking, accepting kind of city), my daily interactions with black people consist of them sitting on the sidewalk asking me for money, or harassing me at the bus stop night. When you see and hear this every day it effects those quick assumptions you make in those non personal online experiences. And now I’m afraid that the next time a black person approaches me, their motives will already be made by my assumptions before they can reach out and ask for directions or walk right by me. …

Facebook is discovering how to most effectively permeate with our social lives. And it’s quickly becoming the most efficient tool for physical interaction we've ever had.

I was scrolling through my Facebook feed last night and I saw an official Facebook ad. It was a video showing friends and family, setting up events through Facebook, going to the events, sharing moments from the events and chatting about the events on Facebook afterwards.

It dawned on me that Facebook doesn't necessarily want everyone to hang out on their keyboards all day and night like we think. …

What does it take for a video to go viral today? It takes social media, plain and simple. Every week as we scroll through Facebook and Twitter, there’s a new often touching video that explains the big picture of society and the effect the internet has on us. This week was no different and that’s the point of this article.

The short video “Look Up” covered my Facebook feed today. A video on how far into the rabbit whole we’ve all ran, and followed one another into. …

While both UI and the content are equally important in an app, bad content will always poison the screen, even if the UI is fantastic. Lets look at two examples that have really nice UI and yet still rely on great content to look good.

Take Medium for example. Clean white space with the focus on writing and everything that comes with it. Large hi resolution images, usually organic that just look right juxtaposed on the screen. The gestalt principles in the layout give the user the opportunity to add anything they like and it will still look good. Right?

Strip away the beautiful images and the sense of place disappears as well. …

Good design and art are basically as opposite as it can be. Good design, unlike art, is non objective. There is no adding or subtracting from, and still maintaining a good design. Good design conveys it’s function through it’s form, truth. Art is completely ornamental, an expression of the artist, not its function. There is no grey area here, it’s either art or design.

Recommend this post below and pass the discussion on to the next designer or artist. Read more design theory on my blog and follow me on Twitter.

I recently had a self reflective moment where I said, “I want to go about UX design a little differently next year” and this is why. I was creating a false sense of meaning behind individual experiences.

I was obsessed with learning about experience design, any experience that was possible to make. I didn’t even care why it was happening to the person. Sometimes, there didn’t even have to be an event. I could just back chain the making, design, or action of an object, and in my mind, it would be the most significant important experience ever right then and there. …