A case study of how UX can save you time and money — It must have been a regular Tuesday afternoon when my manager told me that I was to begin working on this new project with a new team. Essentially, we wanted to build a messaging tool within our existing product platform. Now, I work in a company that makes tax products…

Reflections on creating art daily — What is the 100 day project? “The 100 Day Project is a free art project that takes place online. Every spring, thousands of people all around the world commit to 100 days of exploring their creativity.” This project took off on social media when Elle Luna and her friends started posting about their respective projects on…

“At the core, I think it’s just about problem-solving.” — I have been working as a UX Designer at Thomson Reuters, for the past 7 months. My manager, Phil Tularak, graciously agreed to sit down and talk with me about his UX journey, thoughts on leadership, design practices and how to approach a project. I hope this interview provides you…

Quotes from the book to help you thrive on your creative journey — Last week, I finished reading this strangely remarkable book called ‘Steal Like An Artist’ written by, or perhaps I should say, illustrated by Austin Kleon. I don’t remember how I came across this author or even the book, but I’m so glad I finally got around to reading it. This…

Reflections of an artist-coder on completing my first 30-day creative coding challenge — A couple of months back I participated in a 30-day coding challenge - #Codevember, you know, coding throughout the month of November! “Codevember is a challenge for developers to sharpen their creativity and improve their skills. The goal is to build a creative piece of code every day of November.” …

Create a data-driven visualization with Python and R — In this article, I explore one way of visualizing a text dataset using Python and R code. As a user experience and information designer, I wanted to build on my technical skills. I achieved this by combining my “interests” and picking an unusual yet interesting dataset. After a lot of…

A data-visual investigation into the health and nutrition of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals — How healthy are breakfast cereals? They’re not. Some interesting facts about cereals: Breakfast cereals were invented in the 19th century as an answer to very unhealthy eating habits of the people of that time — and as bland food that will calm the passions, according to the Seventh-day Adventists who invented it.

How I designed “butterfly” data badges for Data Visualization Society members — I am Ruta Gokhale, a designer, dataviz enthusiast, artist, chocolate chip cookie monster, and also a member of the Data Visualization Society (DVS). I was invited to design data portraits (or data badges) for the members of this community. It has been one of the most fun projects I have…

3 practical ways to engage the team in productive conversations. — “Oh common, not another article on why we must create User Personas! We’ve had enough of that already.” And you’re right. I don’t want to repeat the stuff that has already been explained so well. …