Lessons Learn how to grow as a designer, curated by industry professionals. All 3D Career Emergent Graphic Mobile Product Prototyping Research Strategy Systems UI UX Creating a Unique Personal Design Style Meg Lewis — We’re all scrambling to be different and own our own slice of the design scene. Because of trends and the type of design that we’re exposed to, we all end up consuming the same ... Career Career Start Learning 3D Devon Ko — Hey, this is Devon! I’m the creator of 3D for Designers. Last week, we talked about designing for the exciting world of augmented reality (AR). AR enriches your physical environ... 3D 3D Designing for Augmented Reality Bushra Mahmood — The definition of augment is to “make (something) greater by adding to it.” Augmented Reality (AR) is technology that sets out to do just that by adding a layer of data over the... Emergent Emergent Design System Fundamentals Diana Mounter — Design systems create a bridge between designers and developers. They describe the rules, constraints, and principles of your company’s design language. Design systems aren’t ex... Systems Systems Getting started with design research Joel Califa — Design research is the systemic investigation of users and their needs. It employs various methodologies that will help you make more informed decisions when building your produ... Research Research User On-boarding and the New User Experience Matt Brown — The moment from sign-up (or download) to actual use is the most important ‘moment’ in any product’s design. Everything you do (or don’t do) matters — especially in a product tha... UX UX User Research with Jobs To Be Done Interviews Alex Baldwin — Doing a bit of research before starting a project can save you from years of building the wrong product. In product design, typical research efforts center around understanding ... Research Research Designs that convert Daniel Zarick — Great designers don’t solely focus on making things pretty. They often also focus on the business goals, like getting more customers and increasing sales, which help you justify... Research Research Designing Data James De Angelis — Making sense of an infinitely complex world through pictures is not new — Da Vinci’s Vitruvian man allowed a viewer to intimately understand the proportion of the human body wit... Graphic Graphic How to Prove Your Design’s Value Nick Disabato — One of the larger open questions in our industry is how to prove the value of our work – especially when others might think it’s hard to measure. Why do we keep hearing about wa... Strategy Strategy Closing the creative gap Kathleen Warner — If you find yourself looking at products and thinking “how the hell do I design something as good as that”, then this is for you. You can take comfort in knowing that the design... Career Career Run your first Design Sprint Xander Pollock — What if you knew exactly what product to make for your users? Design sprints are the fastest way to learn what your users want without having to *actually* build and launch. The... Strategy Strategy Finale: A field guide to being better at design by being self aware Tuhin Kumar — Being great at design is as much about knowing the theory as it is about knowing your own areas of growth as a designer. As the Hack Design course comes to a close with this las... Career Career Vim as a Design Tool Adam Morse — For many designers, editing and writing text comprises a large chunk of our work. Whether it’s writing down ideas, editing code, or comprising an email, text-editing makes up a ... Career Career Why Design? Alex Baldwin — “Questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask t... Strategy Strategy How To Get Your First Design Job With No Experience Devon Ko — Last week, we examined a few different paths designers can take in their careers. Developing your soft skills—and gaining confidence in them—is essential in transitioning to the... Career Career Kickstarting Your Design Career Janna Hagan — Formal design education is lacking in many areas, which means being proactive about your education in the beginning stages of your career will greatly benefit you when you step ... Career Career Design Your Mobile App For Multiple Platforms Nikki Will — These days it has become commonplace – if not necessary – for mobile apps to be designed across multiple platforms. Whether you’re starting from scratch or adapting an existing ... Mobile Mobile Win The Internet With A/B Testing Manik Rathee — Designing websites and building products for people is an exciting job. You get to use creativity and problem solving skills to create, in some cases, world-changing solutions. ... Research Research Designing With Your Ears Arthur Bodolec — Design starts before you even draw your first sketch. As a designer, your goal is to impact people’s life in a positive and meaningful way. But how to make sure your product wil... UX UX The All Encompassing User Experience Cat Noone — One thing product designers and companies must try their best to excel in, is the art of creating a product that is built with empathy. In doing so, you have the ability to crea... UX UX Prototyping Advanced Mobile Interactions with Framer Cemre Güngör — As motion and animations become more and more important in UI design, designers have started searching for the best tools to help them add a layer of interactivity to their work... Prototyping Prototyping Essentials to tame a wild beast - Pushing prototypes with Quartz Composer Dave O Brien — Recent shifts in mobile design means we must also shift our thinking. The use of motion and animation plays an essential part in conveying the personality of your work. Think of... UI UI The Human Element Scott Hurff — User interfaces consist of so much more than a series of mockups, typography choices or error states. The interactions that happen beyond the static are those that introduce lif... UI UI Animation, Direct Manipulation & Feedback Ben Taylor — When we talk about Animation and Direct Manipulation in interfaces they can often seem like completely disconnected concepts. You might explain direct manipulation as a user sli... UI UI A Holistic Guide to Product Design Joseph Huang — Product Design is the process of identifying a market opportunity, clearly defining the problem and then developing a robust solution to take to market. An effective Product Des... Product Product Designing Habit-Forming Products Nir Eyal — How do companies design experiences to repeatedly engage users? Designing for habits builds upon the principles of consumer psychology to create new routines. I’ve spent the pa... Product Product The Little Things Matter Kyle Bragger — As the bar for great design keeps getting higher and higher, having a keen attention to detail will help your products stand apart from the crowd. Your app should delight its us... Product Product Designing Quality Products Nathan Manousos — It’s time to stop churning out software and start creating quality products. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Design and Development tools are advanced. Let’s focus on what really matt... Product Product Summer Vacation! Wells Riley — We hope you’ve been enjoying Hack Design so far! As we prepare to finish up the second half of the year, take this week to go back and complete any lessons you haven’t finished ... Career Career Designing with Grids Reda Lemeden — The human brain has a penchant for identifying patterns, decoding them, then recoding them for later reuse. Not only does this cycle make it easier for us to understand the worl... Graphic Graphic It's All Just Systems Design Ian Storm Taylor — As someone who designs and codes, I find new similarities between visual design and programming every day. At Segment.io I work on all of our visual design, but also on our Java... Systems Systems Designing with Code Chris Lee — Some designers are terrified of touching code and others simply prefer other tools. Many of those who try it out, though, discover that web technologies are not only for impleme... Product Product Cultivating Compassion Whitney Hess — Being a great designer isn’t just about devising the best possible solution; it’s about making sure we’re solving the right problem. To do so, we need to hone our listening skil... Career Career Effective Behavior Design Alex Baldwin — Part of designing a user experience is convincing the user to behave a certain way in order to reach a specific outcome. For example, right now I’m asking you to read articles, ... UX UX Creative problem solving and everyday design Andy Hagerman — Design is about an open and inspired way of working. It’s about solving problems, and that’s applicable to anyone, whether you’re a CEO, graphic designer, middle school teacher,... UX UX Content Strategy for Interfaces Amy Thibodeau — The design of your idea – its simplicity, usability and ability to hook and delight people – is the reason your product could succeed when others fail. But design isn’t just abo... UX UX Power to the People – Mastering Human-Centered Design Chad Mazzola — The importance of user-centered design is well-established. This blunt statement from Dieter Rams says it all: “In my eyes, indifference towards people and the lives they lead i... UX UX An Introduction to User Experience Design Dan Zambonini — It took our industry a number of years to fully understand how important user experience (UX) is to everything that we build. Now that we can measure and confirm the relationshi... UX UX Typography in Practice, and Where to Go from Here Moiz Syed — The goal of this last lesson in typography is to provide a wide-angle view of this fascinating field, and highlight resources from some of its best practitioners to direct you a... Graphic Graphic Responsive Typography In Action Jem Gold — Typography has always been at the foundation of design & communication. We’re at an interesting point in time where we’re being given previously unknown amounts of control o... Graphic Graphic Exploring the World of Typefaces Sacha Greif — When we look back at black and white movies, we marvel at the results they could achieve without color. Despite this, we can agree color film was a good invention: you can still... Graphic Graphic Using Icons in Interfaces Brent Jackson — With the proliferation of mobile devices, icons play an increasingly important role in interface design. Icons can help aid in scannability, save space at smaller screen sizes, ... Mobile Mobile Mobile App Analytics Is Not That Special Kyle Wild — There are a handful of special concepts that are important in mobile analytics, but most of the concepts people use in building out custom web analytics are very transferable to... Mobile Mobile Designing for Mobile Web Julie Ann Horvath — If we’ve entered any particular age or genre in web development, it’s most likely that of accessibility. We can now view web pages on almost any device and, WiFi permitting, fro... Mobile Mobile Designing your first iPhone App Brian Benitez — It’s undeniable that mobile devices have become a huge part of modern society. Similar to what the web did, iOS has revolutionized what digital products can be by giving them a ... Mobile Mobile Deciding What's Good: Design Principles Kate Rutter — Design is (by nature) a subjective thing. It’s also a team sport. When making design decisions about look or feel or content, disagreement is common and tensions can emerge. So ... UX UX Achieving Visual Hierarchy Lise Statelman — One of the key principles of design is visual hierarchy, which encompasses almost everything you’ve learned on Hack Design so far. Whether you’re dealing with screen or print me... Graphic Graphic White Space: Designing the Invisible David Kadavy — No matter what visual style is hot, no matter what great product you’re using, every piece of good design uses “white space” well. I’m using this as a blanket term, not only to ... Graphic Graphic Building Color Confidence Joanne Chang — Color is a powerful form of communication. We are so attracted to color and so repelled by it that even if the coolest design were presented to us, if we didn’t like the color, ... Graphic Graphic UI Design with Purpose Travis Silverman — The purpose of UI design, above all else, is to deliver content and make visual sense of well planned out UX. The often debated battle between flat versus skeuomorphic design po... UI UI Making the content flow: introducing responsive web design Karolina Szczur — Almost three years ago now, Ethan Marcotte introduced responsive web design. So far there were as many lovers as haters and many argued about the difference between responsivene... UI UI The Medium and Mechanics of Iconography P.J. Onori — Iconography is arguably the Esperanto of the digital world. Icons cannot replace the written word, yet they serve as cognitive waypoints for areas of interest and/or interaction... UI UI Vector Interface Design Jeff Broderick — User Interface design plays a very important role as the translator in the communication between the user and the application’s back-end or core functionality. It’s purpose is t... UI UI Understanding the User in User Experience Grace Ng — Effective user experience starts with a good understanding of your users. Not only do you want to know who they are, but you want to dive deeper into understanding their motivat... UX UX Defining & Expanding User Experience Patrick Algrim — Newton’s 3rd Law says, “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction”. In my opinion this is the best way to describe an experience. Experiences ultimately define o... UX UX Rapid Prototyping Tools & Best Practices Joe Robinson — Rapid prototyping can mean the difference between quickly finding your path to a successful product and toiling away at a pipe-dream for months. Putting together a prototype wil... Prototyping Prototyping Dive Into Typography Kerem Suer — In this lesson, we’ll dive right in and learn a few quick – but really important – rules about typography. Before we start the course, let’s define typography quickly. Typograph... Graphic Graphic Typography in Product Design Jared Erondu — A few weeks ago we were introduced to the art of type, and gained a basic understanding of the rules surrounding it. But where does it all fit in? Of what value is typography to... Graphic Graphic Know Your Tools Marc Edwards — The phrase “a poor workman always blames his tools” has always bugged me — poor tools hinder the quality of your work. Great workers blame their tools too! If they’re not perfor... Career Career The Amazing New Mobile Web Luke Beard — It’s no surprise that the amount of people browsing the web on a mobile device is speeding past desktop usage with no sign of slowing down. More and more people are getting thei... Mobile Mobile What is design? Why is it important? Wells Riley — Why design? What purpose does it serve? It’s not purely aesthetic, nor wholly analytical and functional. When considering the design of your projects, you must think about how e... Career Career Hello World Wells Riley — Welcome to HackDesign! Lesson 0 will prepare you for the lessons you’ll start to receive every week, which will guide you towards design literacy and proficiency. Excited? This... Career Career
