Charleston – Brad Kaloupek

Design process at inKind

April 8, 2016April 21, 2016

Refining the design process at inKind. Or: Why did you choose the path of a designer if you’re not enjoying what you do. As I took the leap from full-time to “consulting”, there were a lot of aspirations I had for what Kaloupek Design could become. One of them was to work with good people on impactful projects with a great team. By design or accident, I’ve found that with our team at inKind. Amongst many values I scribbled down last year was a reminder to myself: Enjoy the process of Design (again). Often work is rushed, and you’re looking for a […]

Agile Design: Crafting a User Experience Collaboratively

May 27, 2015June 28, 2015

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 […]

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

March 6, 2015March 21, 2016

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 […]

Successful software starts with a Design Assessment

September 10, 2014June 29, 2015

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 […]

What an Agile Design Process looks like

June 2, 2014March 21, 2016

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 […]

Hound/Lab beer labels

June 10, 2011

Started brewing my own craft beer the past year – excellent wintertime habit. Some of it’s even pretty palatable. My favorite part of the process is creating the labels. First batch I ever did, my dog Tobey got ahold of & started chewing on the yeast packet… the last step in the brew day. Hence the beer was named Tobey Drool. I miss that part of my former life that allowed for creative freedom, so I’ve been entertaining myself with the labels and fictitious brand: Hound/Lab beer.