Design is in the air...

For the love of design!!!

[shwetashidhore]

This is a screen from Twitter mobile app. I was sharing some article from another app to Twitter. What I like about this screen is since Twitter has 140 character limit, it clearly shows extra characters on bottom left. The color (red) and small type size works well with hierarchy. Also word 'Post' is disabled - inactive state (greyed out) to show the user that it cannot be posted. Its a great mental note for the users to know that they have to perform another action before posting. At the same time, Cancel is in active state for users to know that they still have an exit to go back.

[shwetashidhore]

I love coming up with creative ways to gift friends and family. My friends recently bought a lovely condo and had housewarming party at their new home. They both love 'Settlers of Catan' board game. Collaborating with my friend, I painted a Settlers of Chicago concept on a canvas :)

[shwetashidhore]

'Lean Out' by Irene Au was a great inspirational talk arranged by XX+UX Women in UX. She  is well renowned UX professional having worked with Yahoo, Google and now working with Khosla Ventures. Most important takeaway for me was: Don't sell yourself short and decide on your top priorities in life. Curiosity and passion to learn more always keep me pushing and her talk reaffirmed my belief. The right inspirational talk to end my SF design week trip!

[shwetashidhore]

Studio tour - day 2: visited Nurun and fuseproject

[shwetashidhore]

As a part of SF design week, many studios opened their doors to showcase their great work, learn about design process and meet the team. I visited Cooper design - got to meet Alan Cooper too! My next stop was at Twitter HQ. It was great to hear about Twitter’s design principles from Mike Davidson, see the process behind some of their key features and meet their awesome team!

[shwetashidhore]

LinkedIn is one of my fav apps and when they hosted an event at their Sunnyvale campus, I was naturally very excited about it. I had a great time chatting and learning about LinkedIn from their design team. The panel shared tips on improving profile, getting noticed. An added advantage: I also got some head shots at their photo booth and enjoyed cute little cupcakes! :)

[shwetashidhore]

Getting lost through a maze is always frustrating. One day, you will get there!

[shwetashidhore]

I love exploring different apps. Applauze app helps users discover different events in the city. Even though its not the best app to do so, I found some of its features, interactions interesting. Sharing my thoughts.

[shwetashidhore]

Being curious about wearables and especially Google Glass, I attended this Chicago Web Professionals meetup in Evanston. Justin Munger explained the Google Glass concepts in a very simple effective way - with lots of diagrams. We also got to play with Google Glass after the talk.

[shwetashidhore]

I attended a talk by Ashley Wrobel hosted by Manifest Digital & chiDUXX. Ashley spoke about how we, UXers can get more involved on the business side, become leaders on smaller as well as bigger level. My takeaway: Don't just be a part but become leader inside your project team.

[shwetashidhore]

Cascade SF hosted their first Bay area UX Night at Intuit's campus in Mountain View. A few days back, I was attending IIT - Statcon in Chicago and was fortunate to hear Intuit's founder Scott Cook along with VP of Design Innovation Kaaren Hanson talk about their design process. I was fascinated to know more about their projects & how they practice empathy in design process. At UX Night, I got a chance to meet their designers, hear about empathy toolkit, get some feedback on my projects. My takeaway from UXPin's Marcin Treder's talk: To become successful designer, more than just craft, practice empathy.

[shwetashidhore]

SheSays Chicago arranged Wireframing Basics workshop at Mightybytes by Amber Vasquez. I liked the idea of wireframes being the blueprints for the house, when house is the actual end product (website). Here are the slides from the presentation. After the presentation, we worked first individually then in groups of 4 on wireframes for a website for Narwhal adoption.

[shwetashidhore]

Tumblr app has some great transitions and interactions. Apart from their Like interaction, I like sign in pages.

[shwetashidhore]

I attended IxDA's 2014 Big Apple Redux conference at spacious Bloomberg office in NYC. I enjoyed all the talks especially Scott McCloud's 'Comics: A Medium in Transition' - how we can learn from comics in designing user experiences. During lunch, it was interesting to hear Etsy's Sr. Product Manager Cap Watkins talk about their product design process and the levels of iteration that take place. The event ended with a studio tour of Bloomberg and the product designers talked about their user testing labs.

[shwetashidhore]

I really like this micro transition LinkedIn iPhone app has. I decided to take screenshots and here's my review of it.

[shwetashidhore]

[shwetashidhore]

Had a great first day at IIT - Strategy Design conference. Great minds discussing big data, privacy, design thinking. I even got Don Norman's 'The Design of Everyday Things' signed by him :)