Category: big thoughts

Agile Design for 18F Development Challenge

      

18F is an government contracting agency that acts more like a tech start-up than a traditional government agency.  They introduced a short timeline, design & development challenge around the OpenFDA API to vet future development partners. We used the challenge to demonstrate our ability to design and develop a viable software product with a small, experienced team in an extremely short timeframe. My role as design lead was to assess the OpenFDA and design the most impactful product we could create with a small, agile team in a short timeframe. Quick decisions When the development challenge was released, 18F gave no specification of “what” type of product they’d like […]

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Agile Design: Crafting a User Experience Collaboratively

       

The collaboration between a front-end developer and talented designer is how amazing user experiences get built and refined. Our team does periodic design reviews here at SPARC to review design quality and discuss the design process – what’s working well and what can be changed. Lisa and Harrison are both extremely talented team members on different ends of the design spectrum. Lisa’s crafts beautiful UI & can take a client’s brand and make it sing. While Harrison is a front end guru who helps translate Lisa’s ideas into a User Experience. They’ve worked several commercial projects together and have arrived […]

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User Experience: the barrier-to-entry for better healthcare software

        

As a design team, we have unknowingly become an expert in designing the user experience for healthcare software. Intended or not, many of our  projects focus on some aspect of the healthcare space. Checklist apps for service providers. Back-office software to eliminate wait times and help veterans. Commercial software for a major healthcare providers patient records and business. Myself and many of our development team came from a company that creates healthcare enrollment software. We understand 835 forms and ICD-10 codes. We understand how to move a user through a 14 page form and make them not hate it… too much. Over the dozen related projects, we’ve accumulated domain knowledge in a […]

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Always be creating value – Or my evolving role as design director in a start-up.

        

I have the best, and scariest, job in the world. When I’m doing my job right, everyone else is busy and I have nothing to do. And this isn’t to say there’s nothing to be done, I just haven’t discovered the next design project yet. My job is to insure everyone else is productive & happy, before I worry about myself. My job is to put my self out of a job. And then repeat that process over and over again. As we approach the holiday season, there’s a lot of change in our office. Like physically: we’re moving furniture to accommodate another 60 friends. And […]

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Nothing good gets designed in a day

     

Working quickly is a part of life. Juggling multiple projects & requests from within our company, we often have to respond quickly. And there are times speed is necessary over quality. As a designer you accept this, get your co-worker the graphic or presentation they needed, and move on thinking next time it’ll be “better”. It’s not a deep thought, but… Nothing good ever gets designed in just one day. That’s not to say some of my best work hasn’t been quickly. But for a designer, I think there is a point of digestion that needs to happen before you […]

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Re-thinking app design

     

Our design team was recently called to re-think the design of our mobile Stre.am app. It’s grown quickly – so before committing more code, it’s a great time step back and approach the design a little more critically . The app’s primary function is to capture and stream live video to an audience that can watch it on a desktop. It’s gaining rapid adoption in live sporting events & similar venues. We created two mobile app to serve  Apple IOS and Android, and here lies the problem. One universal App? Or two distinct platform designs? So here is our conundrum: Do we continue designing once, and […]

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Successful software starts with a Design Assessment

       

Lack of a cohesive product design is the quickest killer of a software project. If you have an idea, you need a design assessment before you ever write your first line of code. And here’s why. 0) What is a design assessment? A design assessment is a 3-4 week pre-development process that gives perspective to an entrepreneur’s idea prior to building software. This process focuses on understanding the goal/vision and working towards being able to show it through a prototype. Often an entire project is too detailed for this short of a timeframe, so we focus on key user-flows. Identify several key features users […]

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Insourcing & leading a creative team

    

We’ve had a brief pause lately to focus back on our team & what our strategy for growth is. The “design team” at SPARC has been in existence over 3 years now, with me learning to lead while building the team from the ground up. It’s been the most rewarding experience of my professional career to be able to foster such a unique group of creatives and facilitate achieving results. As we’ve grown, there has always been a question of scale – how big do we let the team get? We’ve gone from three to as many as 14. During this process of growth we’ve […]

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Understanding the Financial Return of Design

   

I believe one of the hardest issues as a “designer” is proving that what you do has tangible value to a business. That the time and extra expense of designing a product or user-experience returns financially. Smart companies & consumers recognize this. Simple quality over cost result: as a business you want long-term results, as a consumer you want an experience or product that works beautifully. However in a cost-conscious, business driven mindset, it’s difficult to ascertain the short-term goals of design sometimes.  Especially in the era of software start-ups & tight timelines. This recent article in HBR has got me thinking […]

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What an Agile Design Process looks like

       

This isn’t the first time I’ve thought a lot about what an Agile Design process looks like. We practice it every day at SPARC without any formal definition. As our design team has grown in the past 3 years, we’ve let go of some traditional design practices in favor of ones that more closely match the work we’re doing. Our projects range from UX for software to marketing websites. Each project is slightly different, based on the team and the overall goal. When we call it a process, we’re really just looking at the common practices that make any type of project successful […]

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