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Four tools for prototyping: Sketch, Figma, Principle, and FramerX

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Well, five. Because Sketch is not a prototyping tool. Prototyping solution will be Sketch + InVision. On the other hand InVision without Sketch doesn't hold much value, yet. It may be changed with the latest addition - InVision Studio . But let's stick for now with four tools: Sketch, Figma, Principle, and FramerX. The goal of this research is to identify strengths and weaknesses of the tools, and their suitability for the UX team. The main use is to create wireframes and later convert them into interactive prototype. I have chosen these tools because I used them before. The exception is FramerX, which is simply a brand new tool which I wanted to give a chance. No discrimination - there are bunch of other great tools on the market, they are just out of scope of this article. Criteria: Simple click through prototype.  Compatibility with Sketch.  Micro-interactions and animations.  Ease of use.  Collaboration – ability to share, to annotate on UI elements, and to

Using Trello and Confluence to manage UX design project. Part 2

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This is part Two. Part One can be found here . Term definitions. Brainstorming board. Activity board. Let me give you an overview of the items we refer to, deal with, and vetting all days long. Below are my simple definitions. UX Brief – a living document, a single and comprehensive point of reference of the design project. User Story – a short requirement or request from the end user. Later will be converted into task flow performed by this user to reach the goal. Acceptance Criteria – a set of conditions/statements, or a checklist, which defines the user story’s Pass/Fail . Feature – a functional part of the application, which combines several user stories. User stories are written to provide a complete support to this feature in terms of tasks performed by the user, while keeping in mind the user’s goal. Epic – a large logical group of multiple features in complex application. Brainstorm – a collaborative session involving product owners (PMs) and UX designers

Using Trello and Confluence to manage UX design project. Part 1

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This is part One. Part Two is here . Introduction. “ Describe your design process ”. It’s a typical interview question for UX designer position. User-centered design process indeed has defined set of steps. In theory. On the practice though, the adherence to these steps depends on many factors, such as communication and execution skills, practical experience, ability to influence people, being leader and influencer, and at what level your organization is a design driven org. So many businesses are not ready to adopt the design practice, and to place the design before the development. Or simply there is not time or budget to go through all steps. Here in Herbalife the UX Design team accepted Norman Nielsen group philosophy:   Empathize – Define –Ideate – Prototype – Test – Implement .  However the   interpretation of the practical tasks can differ dramatically in different organizations. Here what we currently do: Design Thinking and Agile Any project, which goes t

Data visualization for Roadmap Microsite (Angular and D3.js)

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While working for Calypso Technology I was given a task to build a Product Roadmap and Inventory Microsite. This would be a web application which visualize the all Calypso' current products as well as a future roadmap. Since Calypso was using AngularJS , I employed the the same technology to build a front-end. As a designer I focused on UI and how exactly I would visualize the complex structure of the product line catalog. I created a prototype, which was ready to be picked up by engineering team and to adopt for production. For data visualization I used open-source Sankey diagram library based on D3.js . I couldn't find the the library with exact features I needed. So, I forked an existing github project, to create my own library tailored to the needs of this project. I called it  styled_sankey . Below are some examples I created to demonstrate the visual abilities of my new library (from simple to more complex): http://kardash.net/styled_sankey/examples/simple_test.htm