Thoughts

Bad idea list (2021 edition)

I have a lot of bad ideas. Ask the people who know me. These are some better-ish of them. Maybe someone out there has the free time to go do them… IOP Wooden beach shovel company Honestly, I see a ton of plastic crap left at our beach from people visiting. In specific, the number of kids toys abandon in the surf. I’m sure it’s only 1% of the plastic waste neglected at the beach, but I think it would be pretty clever to make biodegradable beach toys. Leave a wooden shovel at the beach, it rots in and disappears […]

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When did I stop writing?

Or did I? As I consider the new year, I’ve been tearing down old content from 2015 when I was actively consulting. Looking back, the idea of a personal brand was very relevant for the business I was building. When I shifted back into a software company, that content moved from being open (and largely unread) to being internal content (still mostly unread). No, I didn’t stop writing. The need for which I write changed. I spend more time in my day job articulating in sentences than I do design. Explaining research, process, data to support decisions. Very large volumes […]

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Experience design session

Design process at inKind

     

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 […]

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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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Giant Conf Day 1 Take-Aways: Skillsets of a designer and Designing for Experience and Memory

Recapping a couple of things that stuck with me from the 1st day of the Giant UX Conference.  While there’s was a lot of content to cover, it’s always interesting what was sticky and catches my attention the next morning. The presentation by Patrick Neehman on “hunting unicorns: what makes an effective UX professional” got my head spinning a bit. Having had the experience of growing a design team from scratch, a lot of what Patrick resonated. Especially him identifying the lack of definition around our profession. Specialist vs. Generalist I’ve mentioned before that we hire generalists, not specialists. Patrick’s talk confirmed: UX is […]

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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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