When you’re bored, you find things to do to sharpen up your skills. I like to randomly Photoshop photos. Inspired by the WWII era Star Wars composite photos, I decided to do some Vietname War era ones:

“Today Apple is going to re-invent the phone” said the late CEO Steve Jobs in 2007.

Wow, was he right. I must admit, I was skeptical at the time. When it came out, I wondered to myself, “why would I give up my perfectly good Motorola RAZR and iPod (now classic) for one device?” Then, I didn’t see the potential. I don’t know if many of us did. That’s what made Steve great. He knew what we wanted before we even knew we wanted it. A few reasons I’m thankful for the iPhone:

Most of our work at Xhatch is designing and developing iOS applications. I never thought I would be doing this now, but I am…forever thankful.
The revolution of mobile browsing. Design has shifted for mobile first, usually starting with the iPhone.
Applications to be constantly connected to friends, family, work and … Read More »

Originally posted on Awesome Giant

I’ve been on the Path app since the startup launched the iPhone app about 10 months ago. All of the sudden, I received email notifications from my people requesting to be my friend. I was curious what happened.

The mobile app released a new update with a competely redesigned User Interface. Could this be the reason Path was able to cultivate thousands of new users? The conensus seems to be “yes” that it did play a factor. Here is what Matt, an avid social networker and iPhone owner said about it.

“I initially signed up last year when they initially released the app. It was a poor user experience and had no incentive to use it on a regular basis, so I forgot about it quickly. After the update was released, I downloaded it and remembered … Read More »

Good design is innovative.
Good design makes a product useful.
Good design is aesthetic.
Good design makes a product understandable.
Good design is unobtrusive.
Good design is honest.
Good design is long-lasting.
Good design is thorough down to the last detail.
Good design is environmentally friendly.
Good design is as little design as possible.

I was sitting at the coffee shop with one of my friends co-working the other day. She wanted to see my mockups I do for iPhone apps. It surprised her that I pulled out a pad and sketchbook. Even with all the technology and tools we have, I always like to start with pencil and paper.

During the wireframing process there should be multiple iterations. Drawings are something that everyone can understand. I start with the basics with a client versus wasting time on refining. I learned in art school to start with a rough sketch and then refine, refine, refine.

Give it a try next time. Pencils before pixels.

Several years ago I was chatting with my friend Adam McDonald (now my co-founder at Xhatch) on chat. We were still undergraduates in college. He was pursuing CS and I was pursuing fine arts. He kept telling me “you need to learn to write code.” I resisted then and said “I just want to design.” McDonald is one of my best friends, so I decided to give it a try.

It is one (of not THE) of the smartest decisions I’ve ever made to become an effective designer.

You might ask yourself, “why does a designer need to know how to code?” Some things to think about. Would you want to hire an architect who is familiar with the building process and know the amount of effort and costs it will take? A clothing designer who understands the impact of the materials … Read More »

Dear Steve:

I never got the honor or pleasure of meeting you in person, but I feel compelled to write this to share with you and others in the community about how much you meant (and continue to mean) to me.

Hearing the News

I was at Uptown Espresso near downtown Seattle, where I was working on some User Interface designs on my 15″ MacBook Pro. It was a normal day of sitting with my computer, thinking, creating and designing. My friend Melissa IMs me and asks if I was okay. I said “Yeah, why?”

I had no idea what she was talking about.

Mel asked me if I heard about you, and I said no. She told me that King 5 News and Komo were reporting that you died. I responded to her “Steve Jobs has died about five times on Twitter.” I didn’t … Read More »

Besides being sympathetic for Ken Watanabe getting his house blown up in every Christopher Nolan movie, the film Inception inspired me to think about the mind, as it relates to design for the web. I’ve always used the Internet as an analogy of this alternate reality or world where possibilities or limitless. This idea really resonated during the scene where Ariadne (Ellen Page) is solutioning the dream. I immediately thought about UI Design—what it took to architect something that would work for Internet users and the strategy of bringing that to them.

Planting the Idea

The initial concept, of course, is planting the idea in the mind. I don’t think it as much as “mind control” but more as “mind inspiration/influence” or user cultivation. I used to think that good UI design was dependent on what … Read More »

Before you use some CMS for your landing pages or squeeze pages, consider writing it up in HTML/CSS on your own. Landing pages are intended to be quick sites that are quickly deployed for a specific purpose. For my friend Albert, we just needed a quick landing page to throw on there before we built the website. Try to simplify.