A weekly roundup of UX nuggets to stay up to date in the design industry. Want updates? Sign up for the UX newsletter here.
From tasks to tricks: the UX of Among Us
[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
Red is sus.
If you haven’t seen the Among Us memes or the Twitch livestream of U.S. Congress members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar playing this 2018 InnerSloth Games creation… You’re missing out on opportunities to travel through space with up to 9 other crew members and completing tasks that will guarantee to raise your adrenaline levels.
This game mobile and desktop game has risen to its popularity due to the simplicity, interactivity, and fast-paced player connections. The tasks assigned are simple (kind of) and there are plenty of buttons to click on. Although if we talk about a con, 9 out of 10 times, players are forming groups on another service such as Discord for better communication (the chatbox feature is hard to have a heated debate on).
Top UX design learning platforms
[UX Course Reviews]
In this new guide, we review these top 5 streaming platforms (not UX bootcamps):
Interaction Design Foundation, Udemy, Skillshare, LinkedIn Learning, and Team Treehouse.
Find a quick, at-a-glance comparison of program costs, pros & cons of each platform, and learning experience.
Tl;dr? We recommend Interaction Design Foundation for serious UX students (and these specific courses), and Udemy for quality a-la-carte classes.
UX Design Quick Start Guide
[INSTAGRAM POST]
Want to do some usability testing but don’t know where to begin? Check out our latest Instagram post to get started with 5 easy steps!
Adobe MAX 2020 Highlights | Adobe Creative Cloud
[EVENT RECAP]
Adobe MAX 2020 is Adobe’s annual creative conference that provides a 3-day digital experience and for the first time ever, it was completely free for everyone to attend this year. Most sessions are available on demand with a creative cloud account. Here are some things that we learned from conference this year:
- Neural filters in Photoshop can adjust age, expression, makeup and even hair thickness on an image
- Adobe Illustrator (for iPad) provides a pencil tool, access to layers, grid repeat/radial repeat, and a color theme picker
- Fresco, forget messy paint brushes and buy canvases this is an app for iPhone to create digital drawing and painting
- Adobe Sensei allows for you to convert speech to text in Premiere Pro to bring to life accessibility features
Justinmind
[DESIGN TOOL]
Justinmind is an all-in-one prototyping tool for web and mobile apps. This tool also offers free UI kits to use when making wireframes to highly interactive prototypes.
UI Breakfast Podcast. Episode 193: Designing for Tablets with Mark McGranaghan
[DESIGN PODCAST]
Jane Portman is the host of UI Breakfast Podcast, a collection of conversations with guests about UI/UX design, products marketing, and more. In this episode, she has Mark McGranaghan, founding partner at Muse Software, and chats about research found on creatives using tablet and mobile devices during workflow. He explains that mobile devices are great for quick searching, tablets are used for ideating, and desktops are important to finalize the process so a great product would have to sync your work between all device platforms.
Are you mentorable?
[ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS]
“The key to mentorability is an open and reciprocal partnership between mentor and mentee.” A predominant tip in the UX community is to find a mentor — find someone you look up to, find someone you want to learn from. But in finding that person, it takes a bit of self-reflection — what is it you’re looking for and how will you use the experience to make the time worthwhile for both you and your mentor? Here are 5 characteristic of mentorability:
- You understand the value of their time.
- You’re clear about what you’re looking for from a mentor.
- You can accept input, advice, and — sometimes-criticism.
- For the lifespan of your relationship, you keep asking, “Am I a good mentee?”
- You’re open to whatever you can learn from your mentor.
“The pandemic has shown us that there is more to documentation than just ‘docs.’ Documentation is what enables us to get what we need.”
- Rebecca Abara, Senior Manager, Engineering Strategy and Operations at Etsy
[UX QUOTE]
Recap of Distributed 2020: The virtual event to help teams adapt, evolve, and thrive
[WATCH THIS]
On October 13–15, Miro hosted their second annual virtual conference. It was free and brought together industry leaders to share how they’ve adapted to working remotely. With 24 information-packed presentations, interactive workshops, and panel discussions, there was a little bit for everyone. If you missed the conference, no worries! They’ve posted everything up from their recordings, visual notes to Miro boards and other resources. My personal favorite presentation — Building trust in a remote team: Post-COVID trends and methodologies.
The Best Interface Is No Interface: The Simple Path to Brilliant Technology
[BOOK RECO]
This book is about ways to make technology more seamlessly integrated into daily and social life. It makes you reflect how you interact with technology — for many of us, our phones are an extension of our hangs and we are constantly behind computers during work-from-home. But now, imagine the reduction of UI and breaking out of this app-obsession… How would technology progress?
UX Rescue
[DESIGN TOOL]
UX Rescue is an opportunity for you to do volunteer work from organizations around the world. They connect you to people who need help and in some projects, they offer mentorship.
💼 REMOTE UX JOBS 💻
Junior Product Designer
DockYard is a digital product development firm offering strategy, design, and full stack engineering using Ember.js and Elixir, trusted by Nasdaq, Apple, Netflix, and Harvard.
Requirements: 3+ years of experience designing at a consultancy, agency, studio, or digital product company (experience designing for mobile is a plus); a perceptive designer who think about product design in terms of experiences, systems and flows before designing wireframes, screens and components
#flexible #startup #smallteam
Visual Designer
Neoscape is a creative studio crafting branding experiences.
Requirements: 4+ years experience as a digital designer in a fast-paced agency setting; has some experience with HTML, CSS, video and animation; champion of Adove Creative Suite, XD, Sketch, InVision, Studio or comparable UI/UX software
#friendlycoworkers #smallteam
Product Designer
Shogun supports various e-commerce brands.
Requirements: portfolio to showcase product design work in a similar industry; comfortable exploring data and interpreting results’ experience designing on a remote team
#startup #flexible #unicornpotential
Product Designer
Truepic is a photo and video verification platform.
Requirements: 3+ years of hands-on experience in product design and/or UX/UI design using Figma and/orSketch’ experience working with multidisciplinary teams; attention to detail with engineering implementation, and the ability to integrate into engineering and QA processes to ensure high-quality execution
#startup #highpaying #smallteam
Junior Product Designer
Contra is a community that connects freelancers to independent work.
Requirements: keen interest in product (UX/UI) but also enjoy marking and brand design; experience working in a remote-first environment; excellent communication skills
#flexible #startup
🎓 Remote Senior UX Positions
Senior UX/UI Designer
Salesmsg is a two-way SMS and MMS business texting software that makes it easy to have real-time text message conversations at scale.
Requirements: mentor UX designers on the team as part of a leadership and coaching role; design and conduct A/B and multivariate tests and optimize the overall web experience to maximize CTR and conversion rates
#startup #smallteam #leadershipopportunity
Senior Visual Designer
Bitovi simplifies JavaScript development and UX design.
Requirements: 5+ years of professional experience implementing and designing user interfaces for web applications; expertise in standard design tools like SKetch or other wireframing tools’ comfortable participating in sales and marketing initiatives to showcase aesthetic capabilities
#smallteam #greatperks
Senior Web Designer, eCommerce
Toast, Inc. is a cloud-based restaurant software company.
Requirements: proficiency with Sketch, Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud, and InVision; advanced experience in digital design, with examples of eCommerce design; ability to turn wireframes into a functional design, working knowledge of HTML and CSS
#greatperks #friendlycoworkers #bigcompany
