I love Etsy, and with the holidays coming up, Etsy is probably the reason for my 40% increase in screen time. In this article, I will be looking at design patterns that I’ve observed throughout the Etsy website, as well as providing my own user flow for when I am navigating and purchasing items from the site.

Design Patterns

Modularity

Etsy uses modular rectangular boxes to showcase different products for sale. The usage of modularity is clear in the image above, giving the user a consistent and structured shopping experience.

Color-Coded On Sale Items

Another design pattern that is utilized is the…

Usability

As part of my assignment for DesignLab for UX Academy for Week 2, we were asked to reflect on good versus great products. We spent the first week getting familiar with what makes successful products. For the beginning of the second week, we are exploring the product development process. In this article, I will reflect on my own product usage experiences, as well as discuss the products that I use every single day and what makes them so addictive.

In The Principles of Product Design by Aaron Walter, he states that “the difference between a good and great product is…

I’ve decided to take the big leap of faith forward to transition careers from teaching to UX Design. Throughout this article, I’ll be talking about the process of how I decided on the transition, which industry I chose to transition into, and what path I chose to take to get there. I am by no means giving advice, or advising against the teaching career. Some of the teachers I work with are the best and happiest people I know and I genuinely appreciate and admire anyone who enters the world of education.

Deciding to transition from teaching

For some background, this is my 3rd year…

Background: What, why, how?

• As a third year classroom teacher who recently had to transition to distance-teaching because of the pandemic, I realized the importance of offering teachers viable options to distance-teach.
• Google Classroom is a website, with a mobile app, that is used by both teachers and students. Teachers can post assignments, grade assignments and provide feedback directly on Google Classroom. I want to focus on teachers’ experiences of using Google Classroom, features they liked that could be improved, and also suggest new features to improve the efficiency of using Google Classroom as a teacher.
• I sent out a survey to a group…

I am onto my second chapter of Don Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things”, in which he talks about the 7 Fundamental Design Principles: Discoverability, feedback, conceptual model, affordances, signifiers, mapping, and constraints. In learning about these 7 fundamentals, I started thinking back to everyday products that I use, and tried to practice identifying these 7 fundamentals and where it existed (or did not exist) in the products. One came to mind very vividly — my work desk. …

I’m a 3rd year high school math teacher working with 14–16 year old kiddos in San Francisco. (Are 14 year olds even kiddos anymore?) I’ve decided to spend my summer learning about design, something I’ve always had a yearning to learn but never had the time to. Now that time has presented itself, I have no more excuses!

After reading the first twenty pages or so of Don Norman’s “Design of Everyday Things”, I realized that a lot of core concepts mentioned so far in the book can be applied to teaching, and that learning design can actually make me…

Dan: Look I’m standing!

Kelly: Oh gosh Kyle is about to fall on me

Kyle: I’m so happy I can fly

Daniela: Trying to balance and smile at the same time is hard

Vidhi: Is the picture taken yet?!

Alie: I’m so glad I wore mittens today

Brittany: You put your right foot in, you put your right foot out…

Morrissa: Guys, when are we getting boba?

Kam: Hair looks good, scarf game on point. Okay ready for the picture!