Articles on Design
Experiment-Driven Design Process
So you want to grow your product? That’s super awesome. Growth is often a goal that startups rush towards. “We need 100,000 monthly active users yesterday.” – random startup person Growth can mean a lot of things. Maybe you’re trying to grow the number of users, or increase time spent using your product. Whatever it …
SFDW Recap: Universal Inclusive and Accessible Product Design
The primary function of design is to make something useful. Unfortunately, many digital products out on the market have been developed without universal accessibility in mind. As designers, we have the unique opportunity — and responsibility — to help shape the next generation of inclusive and accessible technology.
Approaching Gender in Software Products
It is a delight to use software that seems to really ‘get’ you as a person! To achieve this, it requires that the software has been built by people who sought out to understand their users. When software isn’t built with its users in mind, it has the potential to leave its users feeling alienated. …
NYC Design Mentor Night Recap
On Wednesday night, designers and design lovers from all over NYC gathered at Carbon Five SoHo to receive career guidance, feedback, and insights from five senior designers. The evening kicked off with a Q&A with our panelists: Lo Wheelwright, Senior Product Designer, Carbon Five Erin Murphy, User Experience Designer II, HBO Nina Mehta, Design Manager, …
Building Design Systems for Scaling Companies – SF Talk Night Recap
How can scaling companies maintain design consistency and quality as internal and engineering teams exponentially grow? Last week, Carbon Five San Francisco hosted Talk Night to answer this question and to discuss the secret benefits of building design systems for growing companies. Our guest speakers included: Sean Durham, Software Development Manager, Autodesk | @seandurham Erin …
We Belong Together
Five Ways Junior and Senior Designers Can Work Together Effectively Disclaimer – I am a designer so this is written for /designer pairs but it’s also relevant for any other Junior/Senior duos. Hello, wonderful Junior/Senior design duos! Odds are you are fairly new to working together. Perhaps the junior designer is fresh out of school …
Sketched, not Stirred: Attempts to Host a Drink + Draw
This is the journal of two LA designers attempting to host a drink and draw series. But to start – why a drink and draw? As designers in an office of 20-ish developers, we felt lonely (or insane) cooing over our own grid paper. Some days felt like far too much screen time and an …
How to Present a Design Review
Arguably the most difficult skill you’ll learn in your design career is how to communicate that you did what you set out to do in a way that gets people to support and continue the work you did. Presenting design successfully is about knowing what you want out of the meeting and structuring it to …
Designing for Engagement
One of the most interesting distinctions we make in design is between service design and engagement design. Service design is oriented around helping someone achieve a task. The interface that asks for information and prints your boarding pass is service design – it’s successful if you get through it without mistakes as quickly as possible. …
Dyslexia vs Typography
Design has made leaps and bounds to accommodate for all types of visual, auditory, and physical limitations. However, there are some boundaries to what it can accomplish. One example of this boundary where design has not been able to bridge the gap is Dyslexia. I was diagnosed with Dyslexia and Dysgraphia at the age of …