Visualising data on the web is an elaborate task in an age where devices are multifarious, inclusive design is the responsible thing to do, and the multitude of tools and resources can become perplexing. This post describes the challenges that our team faced when working on a data visualisation project that needed to meet criteria […]
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Designing design systems
“A design system can create value on at least two levels. At the team level, it can create a more streamlined, predictable process that reduces design and engineering time. At the UX level it helps deliver consistency and predictability in the interface, and to raise the quality of the experience overall when designers and engineers […]
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Becoming a sticky note master
Sticky notes are an essential piece of kit for any UX practitioner, but sometimes we can miss the simple things that are right in front of us. At a customer experience mapping workshop last year Stavros Garzonis blew my mind, showing us how we’d been peeling off sticky notes the wrong way (keep reading to […]
Adding subtitles or captions can make your online videos far more accessible and understandable – and it’s much easier and quicker to do this than you may think. Comprehension, concentration and clarity An Ofcom study found that of 7.5m people who regularly use subtitles in the UK, only 1.5m of these are deaf or hard […]
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Access all areas
When I first transitioned into a web team almost seven years ago, I started hearing terms that I knew were important to designers and developers, but didn’t necessarily associate with my content-based role. One of those terms was accessibility. Making the connection Before joining the wonderful world of web, I helped organise university events, such […]
As a small, agile, multi skilled and geographically dispersed team that works on multiple products, building a shared understanding of needs and priorities for our work is key. Furthermore building empathy with our users empowers us to be better designers. “In the end, design is all about empathy. This is what leads to creativity, inspiration […]
“Day by day, the number of devices, platforms, and browsers that need to work with your site grows. Responsive web design represents a fundamental shift in how we’ll build websites for the decade to come.”- Jeffrey Veen What is responsive web design? RWD is a web design technique aimed at creating sites that provide a […]
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Designing mobile first
Ever heard comments that have gone something like… “The sort of tasks that users are performing are too complicated for mobile” “Analytics show our primary audience is desktop” “Users only want a desktop site” When desktop use vastly outweighs mobile it seems obvious to prioritise that as the primary medium. And following a strategy that […]
Following on from my previous post on taking a framework agnostic approach to documenting UI patterns I wanted to talk about creating a pattern index as a counterpart to a pattern library, or as a useful tool for anyone designing within a large web estate. The spark As with many things, an innocuous looking question […]
From the very beginning of the Jisc user experience and design project we knew that we didn’t want our pattern library to be just another framework. Bootstrap is widely used across our business and it’s fantastic for rapid development, but by its very nature it’s completely open to individuals interpretation of how to apply it. […]