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It’s been years of blood, sweat and tears in trying to finish your degree. Towards the end, you may have had a quarter mid-life crisis along with a few mental breakdowns since you never really had a passion for that degree. Having heard about UX design, it may seem like a pretty good career to pursue. However several questions inevitably crop up.
What would be the best degree to pursue if you want to do UX design? Do you really have to go back to school to start a whole new degree? Was your degree a waste of time?
Obviously, this can be seriously stressful if you do not have the time nor the money to go back to school.
In this post we will focus on UX-related Bachelor degrees that you might already have and how useful they could be in a UX role.
One of the best ways of figuring out what kind of education and training to pursue when going for a UX career, is looking at the UX professionals already in the industry.
The industry recognized Nielsen Norman Group surveyed a group of 963 UX professionals already working in the industry to find out the degrees that they studied at university.
Some background
The years of experience that participants held in the industry.
A large portion of the participants held a degree but some were already working in the industry despite not having a degree and being self taught.
What degrees do UX professionals have
The Bachelor degrees that the UX professionals held, broke down in the following way.
The chart above shows how diverse education is at the undergraduate level for UX pros. Several things are particularly interesting about the top bachelor’s degrees:
Design topics represent only 11% of the total degrees. Psychology, Communication, and English commanded only 9% each. The specialty degrees for Interaction Design and HCI barely made it onto the list (most likely because they are relatively recent programs available at only a few universities so far).
The Masters degrees that the UX professionals held, broke down in the following way.
We see more specialization at the master’s level, as expected; but half of the master’s degrees were apparently unrelated to HCI and UX directly. Even so, most represent very marketable skills aimed at communications, design, technology, business, and understanding people and information.
How useful were these subjects
More importantly how useful were these degrees in day to day work?
Top takeaways
It’s important to realize that UX professionals come from so many varied educational backgrounds and not strictly traditional UX streams.
You almost certainly need at least one university degree, but it doesn’t have to be in HCI if you have some coursework or training in HCI topics too
Respondents recommended that students going into UX take a wide variety of classes. It’s difficult to know in advance which knowledge may turn out to be useful in your work, because the world of UX work is so broad.
It takes a combination of formal and informal education as well as on-the-job experience in order for most people in UX to become well-rounded professionals.
Some quotes
How to sell your ideas to executives to make them understand why they are important for the business. “Become a strong writer and everything else will fall into place.”
“Take something that can prepare you to work with engineers and developers.”
“Sciences are very useful in that they carry an innate sense of organization—alot of usability has to do with making order out of chaos, just as a lot of sciences seek to achieve the same thing.” Learn about data analysis.
How to become a designer and get hired. Issue 1: Interview with Fantasy Interactive CEO David Martin
I sat down with David Martin, the CEO and Founder of Fantasy Interactive, an independently owned human-centered design agency with a mission to impact the user experience in every-day products through bold design. They have an impressive client roster including Facebook, Spotify, HP, USAToday.com, Wacom and Google to mention a few. With over 200+ industry awards, David has managed to build a globally recognized brand. So when I thought of creating a design series that would help designers improve their craft and get hired, there was no better place to start than Fantasy Interactive.
What you will learn
How David started and got into design
Influences and inspiration
Advice for those with no design experience
How to craft your portfolio
Standing out and getting hired
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Youtube full interview.
Thank you so much David for joining us. David if you could take us back to when you were still a student and tell us a little bit about where you grew up. What did you study?
I started a long way from here. I started in Dublin, Ireland. When I went to school I could say I was not a good student. I communicated very visually and I was not so good at the academic side of things. I did not believe in certain subjects like history and even math which I knew I would not use so I kinda tuned out and daydreamed which ultimately put me in a position where I could not get into universities that I wanted to. I had to repeat exams and eventually ended up getting into college. I ended up getting into a communications course in Germany. I went to Sweden to look for jobs. Any type of jobs, on cruise ships, cleaning toilets, whatever it would take to get over to the States.
While this was going on I started exploring the Internet and found it very unattractive, very ones and zeros and as I was doing that I just found a passion for organizing it by redesigning it. My expectation of the Internet was that of the movie ‘Minority Report’ but then it wasn’t, so I started designing in my free time and that’s how I started.
What tools were you using?
I started off using something like a Squarespace, a website builder. Because I’d never designed in my life I picked it up listening to music and I found that I had a talent for designing things with the computer like reorganizing things on a page even though I cannot draw to save my life. But using a computer I can somehow design little details of effort into anything. No matter what profession you are in this does pay dividends down the road.
Were there any influences or inspirations along the way like friends or mentors?
No, nothing like that but inspiration came from living in Ireland and growing up on Knight Rider. I love things that are well organized, things that were well taken care of. I just had an affection for it. I was always blown away by game UI, playing games like Nintendo but I always felt they could have been more finessed, refined and that I could bring a little bit of color into things.
How then did you enter the industry?
So basically, I started designing in Flash 3, the very early days and I started to see that this platform had motion capabilities and I wanted to bring UI to life. That was a huge driver for me to combine those things. So I started making Flash sites and they started getting noticed because no one was really working with Flash except maybe banners. So I started building websites and brought some user interaction to them. It was just mind blowing. Very similar to how on Dribbble, people use the GIF to take designs to the next level. It’s always looking at how you can take something to the next level. The first job that we got was around US$20k with a game studio and from there we started hiring people.
We basically sacrificed everything to create a portfolio because I knew the portfolio would create credibility and start attracting clients. In our second year, there was a phone call from Time Warner and they came in to hire us to redo their portal.
For me, you have to be able to take those opportunities and make the most of them. Time Warner came in, then Xbox came in a week after so it was all happening at the same time.There was never any room for snowflake mentality in our business. We are not going to push people too hard or bend over backwards for our clients because our business is built on people. When there are lows, our team comes together and figures out how to make it work. It’s knowing your principles, your DNA and when it’s time, to drive hard. When you surround yourself with good people is easier to deal with those situations.
How did you grow the business – through marketing or referral?
Fantasy has never had a sales team since day one so all our work is a hundred percent referral. From 2001/2002 it has not changed. It’s basically making work that is respected by other designers and those designers will spread the word. The key is to constantly push. A lot of people over the years will do something good and then two years will go by and their work is still at the same level as a few years ago and the key for any designer is to constantly push the bar. Your attitude should always be about pushing yourself to the next level every 6 months to a year.
Even today, when you compare your work with the top 20 Dribbble shots over the past month and put your work beside them, honestly ask yourself “Does your work fit in there?”. If it doesn’t, look at the details of the other 20 shots and figure out what about those details makes them better. Start implementing that same finesse in your work and put more time into it.
As a designer, you have to find the time, the ethic, the consistency, the love, the passion to focus on the details because details are something that this world lacks immensely and we are crying out for it.
What advice would you have for someone with no experience?
Do what I did. Cheat. Copy. No one ever taught me how to design. I just liked it and I just started designing. Even though my first pieces were absolute crap and terrible, when I looked at Awwwards I just wanted to copy the work. So what I did was I took their work and I put it in Photoshop and I tried to copy pixel for pixel the work that I saw and when I was able to do that, it made me feel like I was able to reproduce the amazing work that I saw. As I was doing that I would try to make it even better by a bit. Test yourself then stand back to see how you learnt to be as good as that person.
So if you are starting off today as a designer, go to Dribbble look at the Top 100 shots, try to replicate your favourite ones and if you can replicate them you are in business. As you improve the work, try to do just a little bit better. Do something slightly different, change the color or change the font.
See if you can make it better than the original and that will sharpen your skills in a way no university can teach you.
How about soft skills and technical skills?
As far as skills go, you can go on YouTube and watch videos all day long. That’s what you have to do by yourself at home. Use the Internet. If you happen to work at an agency, there is opportunity to better yourself by working with other designers and you learn pretty quickly that way. In general, I am the least technical person especially when it comes to design. I have an eye for detail. I think the soft skills are more important. How you are able to critique yourself. How you are able to take criticism from others and not flake out about it. It’s how you position and brand yourself.
If you have 3 good projects in your portfolio and the rest are crap, leave out the rest. If you include everything, we look at that designer and we say they made a poor decision in representing themselves.
I don’t care about your last 10 projects I care about your best project. If you can do a project to that level then I know you can do everything else with us. But don’t turn me off by showing me the other stuff that you probably didn’t have enough time to do or enough inspiration to do. Quality over quantity.
Does your portfolio have to line up with what you want to eventually do in a job?
No, not at all. As long as I can see that you can compose with the right colors, fonts and the design is nice and tight. I advise people to take sites like Google or Apple iOS and say here is what there is currently and here is the improved version that I made. That is the stuff that is gonna get you jobs. The best work that you can do is work that you make without a client telling you to do it. That is what we do. We have this case study called ‘what if’. What if “Tinder and travel”, “What if airline”. We put that out because we had a week to spare and put something together that is without limits. So I would say to you designers, if you want to go out there and redesign CNN, make a better version of that without it being fluffy; use big imagery, visual aesthetics but think of the User Experience. Your design cannot just be beautiful, it has to be smart.
Smart Design is beautiful design combined with design that a user can actually use. Also focus on the mobile space, operating systems, Artificial Intelligence and try to come up with a cool shot to put up on your Dribbble or Behance.
And don’t spend all day on your portfolio. Nobody cares at the end of the day. When people review your portfolio, the last thing that people want to do is to figure out how to use your site.
They want to use Dribbble or Behance which they already know how to use quickly. All they’re looking for is one or two shots of gorgeous work. That’s all that we’re looking for. When I look at a portfolio I have about 15 seconds and sometimes 5 seconds to quickly scan, close the tab or keep it open. We just don’t have the time to go through something intricately put together.
Where do you see most portfolios hosted?
Behance and Dribbble have one consistent template for presenting your work. That’s all we need to see. Behance and Dribbble give you the opportunity to tell your story through screenshots and more of a flow of how you came up with something. Absolutely go and do that if you can. We just really want to see your work.
Any stories of great portfolios or instant hires?
There are three levels to getting hired. Level one is clearly a person that is not at the level that we need so we skip. Level 2 is someone who has some good work with great typography which is always a good sign. Level 3 is that person who is very, very rare. They have 20 – 30 shots but they are all immaculately done. The details are just there and they’ve added some UI motion.
I do not need you to be at level 3. We can get you to 3. We need you to be a 2. We look for the that level of finesse. If your Dribbble shots look like they could be on our Dribbble page, then you are hired.
People who succeed in a UX design role have two things in common.
Firstly, they enjoy what they do.
Secondly, their personality fits the work they do daily.
Too many articles on how to get started in UX design, dive straight into the courses that must be taken and the skills that must be acquired. This is without exploring if UX design is even a right fit personality wise. Its a great place to start before investing too much time in pursuing a whole career in UX.
You are probably wondering:
“What personality traits DO I need to do well at UX design?”.
Glad you asked.
In the first of a three part series, we look at personality as a gauge for pursuing a UX Design career. The second part will look at soft skills and the third part looks at the daily activities.
I will break down 8 of the most common personality traits that you must have to naturally do well in a UX design role whether you are looking to get into UX, are still a student or already hold a UX position.
These are taken from a study of over 1000 UX professionals conducted by the Nielsen Norman group. I have also shared expert advice from top designers from LinkedIn, ebay, HUGE, Adobe and more around each trait for how they help in the real world.
Let’s get straight in.
1. UX designers are problem solvers
UX designers, by their very nature solve problems and seek solutions that creatively align user needs and business goals. A sound solution to a design problem identifies the nature and context of use, whilst taking into account the limitations and constraints in which the resulting product/application will be used. Fortunately everyone is a problem solver whether they know it or not. We solve big and small problems everyday as we go about our lives. The goal for a UX designer is to turn problem solving into a habit so that they feel more prepared and assured when they encounter similar design problems in the future.
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Chad Thornton, an Interaction Designer at Airbnb in San Francisco.
“There’s a moment at which you just need to start designing as a way of informing how you think about the problem. Sketching out early possible ideas. There’s a tight feedback loop between what we think the problem is and what that might mean for some possible solutions, and then going back and thinking about how these possible solutions inform how we think about the problem.
People’s understanding of the problem often changes, and I don’t think it’s a bad thing if it evolves over time. In fact, if your approach to a problem never changes, you become too beholden to what you think is right.”
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“All of the designers sit together—there aren’t many engineers sitting with us even though we’re all on the same floor. I think it’s important to collaborate with engineers because they might look at a problem in a different way—and offer great solutions we might not have thought of.
One of the ways we collaborate is by going to the engineering stand-ups. You get an opportunity to ask questions and get different perspectives from people you don’t see every day.”
Andy Law, Manager of Nextflix Mobile Product Design
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How to develop a problem solving personality:
Use of frameworks, patterns and best practices for design projects.
Simplifying big problems to smaller problems.
Rephrasing or reframing the problem.
Brainstorming ideas, concepts and identifying ways of measuring progress and success.
Working in a team of people who think differently from you.
Playing brain games like puzzles and strategy games.
2. UX Designers have an aptitude for learning
This aptitude speaks to the natural desire for learning and need for proficiency in the design discipline. In a field as broad and cross-disciplinary as User Experience, continual learning and upskilling is very necessary. UX designers wear a lot of hats in the workplace and have to master a range of skills. The aptitude for learning is probably the most important over the course of a UX career than any specific skill set or technical tool.
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Akshay is an Innovator at eBay
When I was doing stuff on my own, I didn’t have anyone to show my designs to. I experienced a learning curve when I first came to eBay because I was put in a position where I had to collaborate and couldn’t do it in a silo anymore. I had to start showing people my designs, and over time I started seeing the value in getting feedback from other people.
You learn who the true collaborators are because they get your design, and without discounting it, can give opinions that will actually improve your design and UX thinking. One head cannot think of all things.
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Researching and seeing what others are doing is important. I try not to do that too much though because I think there’s a subconscious tendency to copy as soon as you start looking at everyone else’s stuff. My advice is that if you are going to look at others’ work, look at a ton of them so that there’s enough influences and you can’t distinguish between them. Constantly looking at other people’s work has a huge impact on who you are as a designer. Always make sure you’re looking at good stuff, because if you are looking at crap work, it’s going to influence you and you are going to start doing crap work. We are all products of our environments, so surround yourself with great things.
Joshua Taylor Evernote
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Allison Chefec, web designer at BuzzFeed
Design school helps you talk about your work, helps you learn how to give & receive feedback. You learn not to take things personally. As a young designer, you may think that a criticism of your work is a criticism of you. It’s not. Your work may have come from you, and it’s inherently connected to you, but it’s not you. No one’s saying, “Hey, you suck!” They’re saying, “Hey, maybe this could be a little better.” If you keep an open mind, you might find that others have valuable points to make.
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How to keep learning:
Take training course at least once every year
Attend conferences and seminars
Regular reading time
Spend time around other learners
3. UX designers are good communicators
Being a good communicator is absolutely critical to success in a UX design role. In user testing, one needs to able to make participants feel comfortable so they are more willing to share their feedback. In a team, one needs the ability to work with people, convince them and deal with internal politics. With client, one needs to be able to communicate a coherent argument and rationale for the design approach or strategy to several different stakeholders.
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Ryan Cobourn, Experience Design Manager at Adobe, in Salt Lake City, Utah
“Collaboration is everything that we do here. Everything we do is complex enough and it touches so many different people that without talking to others, you can go down a path that might never arrive at the best solution. So we always communicate amongst departments. We work closely with the guys who work on products like Creative Cloud, as well as working with people who are working in a more consulting role. These designers work on one-off solutions for customers as well and they often have a really, really good idea of what the customer is trying to do. Getting those people’s opinions is extremely valuable for us.”
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What makes a designer great is the ability to communicate effectively. As designers, our superpowers enable us to turn abstract ideas into tangible bits that help move the conversation or product forward. You have to be a good storyteller in order to get someone to believe in your vision. Moses Ting, UX Design Lead at LinkedIn
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How to develop your communication skills
Find common ground and develop a connection.
Actively listen.
Follow up on deadlines and work allocation.
Assign responsibility and accountability.
Ask more questions.
Be genuine.
Become a better storyteller.
4. UX designers are great listeners
This skill is not only important for advancing your career but building meaningful relationships. Good listening means being able to read and be aware of both the verbal and no-verbal messages. A UX role demands sound understanding of the problem being solved and effective communication between the team and with key stakeholders. Good listening means less mistakes and better projects results. It is not surprising therefore that it is one of the most important communication skills to master.
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Don’t be afraid to put your work in front of people and get honest feedback—even if it’s painful. It can sting at first, but ultimately it’s humbling and enlightening, and it’ll transform your work from decorative to purposeful. Michael McWatters, UX Architect at TED
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The most powerful part of our process is that we get to become our own users, so we understand pain points. We deal with the same things our users deal with, and then we get to help solve those problems. We get company-wide input as well. Hilary Nemer UX designer at GoPro
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How to develop good listening
Respect the other person.
Remove distractions.
Don’t interrupt the person speaking.
Ask for clarification and elaboration, practice mirroring the person you are speaking to, maintain good eye contact and communicating with the best intentions.
5. UX designers are analytical
A UX designer who is naturally analytically inclined will be able to justify every design decision based on best practices and data. This not only means an affinity for data driven design and metrics but the ability to also draw conclusions and themes from qualitative user feedback. Quantitative and qualitative data is increasingly becoming a key ingredient in usability and user-experience work. Anyone who has the ability to reflect and draw useful insights from information will do well in a UX role.
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Ryan Cobourn, Experience Design Manager at Adobe, in Salt Lake City, Utah
Usually, if I’m working by myself I crank up the tunes. I start by restating the problem. Keeping that in mind, I then identify the user and then I restate their goals. Once I have that in mind, I start sketching out ideas and erasing them and start sketching out new ones and then erasing those and then keep repeating that cycle until I have something that I like.
When I’ m working with the team we start the exact same way but we’re usually working together in the workspace with some additional tools, drawing out our ideas or using a game to come up with something.
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We get a lot of feedback from forums, the app stores, Twitter, employees, in-person interviews, and even our families. So we take all of that and then try to synthesize it into what we’d say is the actual problem. Then we’d go back and reiterate it back to some of those people and say, “Is this the right problem?” We do that in lots of ways. Sometimes we just ship them the product and see how they respond. People are very vocal about our product which is a lot of fun.
We definitely get both positive and negative feedback and address things accordingly. But I don’t know that you can always rely on what other people say…sometimes it just takes intuition. But remember to always keep asking “Why?”
Joshua Taylor Evernote
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How to develop an analytical mind
Set aside time to think through how data affects design.
Practice providing design rationale.
Use patterns and user data to design products.
6. UX designers pay close attention to detail
They say design is in the details but detailed work is not easy. It takes reverts, reviews and concentration. Detail-oriented strengths give you the ability to work better, to be more effective and to minimize the risk of making major mistakes. Employers tend to look for this from their employees because this will give accurate and good results for the tasks given to them. Some people natural have a higher attention to detail but through practice one can also develop a very good eye for good design.
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There’s a difference between creating a good simple design and a well-crafted visual experience. The challenge of a well-crafted visual experience is in the detail, not just aesthetic detail but also functional detail. This means considering the end user, as their needs influence the design. Through my experience, I realised that the end user is actually a person – not a faceless “idea” of a person – and that person has various needs. That is where web accessibility came to light for me.
Web accessibility, I feel, has partly influenced the reason why I use flat design. And the reason flat design works is because, if done correctly, it follows foundational design principles, derived from traditional Swiss design, such as using grid systems, high contrast colors, clean typography, space, and hierarchy. Ultimately, great design is about being aware of the audience you’re designing for. The user always comes first.
Dan Leon Krause, Art Director at Razorfish.
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Our design solutions should solve real user needs. It’s great to understand what users suggest and what features they’d like, but we make sure we understand the root problem users are experiencing. Nikki Will, Head of Design at Pocket
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How to develop attention to detail
Using checklists often.
Iterating ideas, reviewing work with the rest of the team more than once.
Practice breaking tasks into smaller ones.
Get into the habit of shutting off distractions.
7. UX designers have empathy for users
This is the experience of understanding another person’s condition from their perspective. A UX designer must be able to place themselves in the users’ shoes and feel what they are feeling when using a product or service. This is important for the project as the UX designer will act as an advocate for the user’s needs when they are overlooked by the rest of the team.
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Akshay is an Innovator at eBay
I go straight to the end user; not his manager. There is often a stark difference between the problem statement and what the end user is feeling, so I go in there without a lot of bias so they can be open and honest talking to me. I try to make them feel very comfortable and write down all their pain points in a really informal way. I ask them to show me the application, how they use it, what is causing them pain, what they don’t like about it, and so on. In corporate settings, people hesitate to speak because they’re worried about what someone else in the room is going to think or say. One-on-one meetings allow me to really hear what they think and allow them to talk their heart out.
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Whether it’s a small project that will take a couple of weeks or a large-scale one that will go on for months, our process always starts with user research, which unveils the real problem that we need to solve. We aim to get a sense of users’ needs and wants very early on in order to build the best possible experience. Analytics can tell you what the user is doing, but you need user research to tell you why. Karelia Jo Moore, Experience Lead at Huge
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Our audiences and users are at the heart of everything we do here. We’re always aiming to improve the quality and the general presentation of our content and the overall experience. Ed Fairman, Interaction Designer at BBC.com
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How to develop empathy
Practice listening more.
Be more vulnerable allowing your conversations to be as deep and revealing as possible.
Empathize with people whose beliefs you don’t share.
Validate their viewpoint/perspective.
8. UX Designers have big picture thinking
A core trait that every UX designer should have is big picture thinking. One needs to be able to holistically understand strategy, business requirements, users needs and manage their impact on project delivery. Most big picture thinkers will not get bogged down in the details of executing the plans but still pay attention to the detail. A UX designer hence usually works with different team members during the course a project timeline and does not work solely within one departmental silo.
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“Our job as UX experts is a balancing act. We’re always trying to figure out the right combination for all our ingredients: UI, UX, graphics, marketing and other business goals. I sometimes get frustrated when, in order to achieve optimal UX results on complex products, I need to sacrifice some of the cooler design elements.” Nir Yuz, UX Studio Manager at Wix, in Tel Aviv, Israel
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Dan Leon Krause, Art Director at Razorfish
Great design comes from balance. There are a lot of things to keep in mind: different audiences, different devices, different abilities. You have to make sure there’s a balance between all of those. You also have to keep design principles in mind: space, colour, typography, hierarchy, the grid, etc. The fundamentals of design were around long before we were born and will stay around long after.
If you can understand the basics – make them a part of you and be holistic with your approach – you will be a great designer
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How to develop big picture thinking
Allocate more time to thinking when the mind is most clear.
Find lessons in every experience.
Gain insight from different people.
Open up to new experiences.
Learn something new.
What to do now
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The first part of this tutorial explained how to create an animated UI design for a mobile app using Invision and record the animation using ScreenFlow.
The second part of this tutorial covers how to put the finishing touches on your presentation and the settings for exporting to a GIF using Photoshop. What we shall be producing at the end of this tutorial.
In the tutorial series “How to create animated GIFs for UI design presentations” we looked at how firstly to create and export the animations from After Effects and save as GIF in Photoshop. This process is very time consuming but the results are really impressive. After Effects allows for unique, quality animations and greater creative control. In this tutorial we will look at a simpler and faster technique for creating animated design GIFs for mobile app presentations using Invision, Camtasia, ScreenFlow and Photoshop.
What truly sets animated GIFs apart is the smooth transitions and animations between states, one can showcase. This enhances the digital experience for a user. A use case can be scripted or merely a simple mobile app turning on. The only drawback is the quality, length of animation and the size of file. In this third part of our tutorial, I will shared what effects I used to get my animated GIF of a mobile weather app. The first tutorial was on the full overall process and the second tutorial is on exporting into optimized GIFs.
This is the second part in the series of creating those awesome cool, animated GIFs of UI designs. In the first part we had used Adobe After Effects to create two compositions. One for transitions and animations of a weather app. The other one for how we want to present it on a mobile phone background. In this second part, we save our composition properly in preparation for optimizing it into a GIF.
You may have seen really cool animated GIFs that design professionals are using to present UI design on Behance, Dribble and other design communities platforms and wondered how did they created them. What is fast becoming one of the best ways of illustrating gestures and animations in mobile apps, animated GIFs offer a little more over traditional storyboards and static screenshots. In Part 1 of the series, I show how to create the animated GIF above. The second part will explain how to export your files properly and optimize into a GIF. Download of project file is also available. The third and final tutorial breaks down the transitions and animations more fully. Continue reading “How to create animated GIFs for UI design presentations: Part 1” »
Axure is used for designing interactive prototypes for websites and mobile applications. Similarly Balsamiq is a rapid wireframing tool for designing web and app mockups. I use both and wanted to share in this brief article a comparison between the two applications using examples from a case study.
