CategoryTeams

September 6, 2010 — In-house teams face challenges that can be overcome by handling internal stakeholders and the department’s image. Find here techniques to help you lessen the load and enjoy managing your website again Read more…

September 1, 2010 — The following is an investigation into the difficulties of extending the open-source collaboration model from coding to its next logical step: interface design. While we’ll dive deep into the practical difference between these two professional fields, the article might also serve as a note of caution to think before rushing to declare the rise of “open-source architecture,” “open-source university,” “open-source democracy” and so on. Read more…

July 28, 2010 — For too many projects, there comes a time when every action taken, every decision and sacrifice made, is spurred on by pressure to finish. Tempers seem to shrink along with the available days, talk about “high standards” gives way to “good enough,” and people realize that _dead_lines are aptly named. During the last-minute crunch, someone may well wonder, how did it come to this? Could it have been prevented? Read more…

June 23, 2010 — When was the last time you made a decision? A big one. What was the outcome? Was it good, and how did you get to that outcome? Every day we all make plenty of decisions without a thought to how we structure them or the basis on which we make them. We simply make them. We’re lucky that we work in an industry in which erroneous decisions may have serious financial consequences but rarely, if ever, costs lives. Read more…

April 8, 2010 — Professional networking is a critical component to a successful career as a designer. Whether it be for finding new clients or identifying opportunities for growth and improvement, a strong network of contacts is extremely valuable. In this article, we’ll take a detailed look at the subject of networking, the benefits it presents and tips that can be used in your own networking efforts. Read more…

March 2, 2010 — I had the opportunity to work with some very talented and highly experienced designers who all had made the jump from other design fields to the Web. It was there, as part of that training, that I learned about critiquing, both giving and receiving, through regular design reviews. Read more…

October 1, 2009 — Winston Churchill once said: “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” Regardless of where you work or who you work for, being able to take criticism is part of the job description. Read more…

August 14, 2009 — If you have ever worked with a developer or a development team, this article will probably strike close to home. As designers, we work with dozens of developers across the globe each year. Some of us are fortunate enough to find a gem; a developer that just gets it. A developer that you feel is on your same wavelength in terms of what needs to be accomplished with the user interface, and what it needs to happen. Most often, however, we find developers that we generally don’t see eye to eye with. Read more…