Gamification can make a good product better if done right, but it’s not a magic potion.
Gamification is one of those buzzwords that started gaining more and more popularity a few years ago. Lots of companies tried to implement some sort of gamification mechanic in their products, but very few did that right.
Why it’s important for us to understand what gamification is and how it works? Adding gaming elements to an experience can be a very powerful tool because the idea of play is in our DNA. Humans have played games since forever, as all mammals1 (and not just them) do. …
With specific conditions, of course.
This is a very controversial topic in the design community, so I’m a bit scared to even bring it up. I’ve always been conflicted about this topic, but I think this (as most things in the world) is not a black or white kind of issue, but there’s a grey area to look at.
What am I talking about? Design challenges, or design tests, or whatever you want to call them. The assignment you get when interviewing for a designer position.
Why someone might ask you that?
There are tons of jobs where you don’t get asked to do any work at home. You go to…
A belief from a different era that we should stop spreading.
As I celebrate 1 year of working from home 🎂🏠, also known as “one year in sweatpants,” I’d like to share my 2 cents around this topic, since I’ve been recently reading again, multiple times, the old fairy tale that goes “working from home kills innovation”👴🏻.
In the past 14 years, I’ve been working in different kinds of companies: advertising agencies, digital agencies, startups, media companies, a big tech company, a product agency, and in different kinds of settings: semi-cubicles, fully open space, big fun silicon valley style office, shared space.
Not once I witnessed the mystical moment when 2…
Write your book and get it published. Part 3.
In this final part of this series, I want to give some advice on tools that will make your writing easier. When I started my book, I thought Google Docs would have been enough, and well, it could be, but there are tools out there that you might not be aware of that can really boost your productivity and make your life as an author much much easier.
Let’s start with the one I used for 90% of the work:
Scrivener
Scrivener is a Mac, Windows and iOS app specifically made for writers (of any kind). It’s really a great tool…
Write your book and get it published. Part 2.
In the previous part of this article, I talked about the preliminary work of writing a design book. Coming up with right concept, finding the right audience, defining a table of content, looking for publishers, submitting a book proposal, etc. The final step was about research and, even though that will basically keep on going throughout the entire writing process, that’s the last step you can take before actually turning your gaze to the scary white of a blank page.
Let’s take a look at how to tame the fear of starting to finally hit those keys and see words…
Write your book and get it published. Part 1.
Filling hundreds of pages with written words (about 50 to 70 thousand of them, for a non-fiction book) seems like a gigantic task. And it is actually, but with the right approach, it’s definitely doable. I know because I did it.
Writing a book about design (whatever the specific topic is) is a design project itself. …
And it’s not moving back to skeuomorphism either.
I’m not a fan of neumorphism. If you follow me here or on Twitter, you might have noticed I’m usually quite critical or, at least, skeptical about this visual style. There are several reasons, from accessibility issues to, for sure, a simple matter of personal taste.
In the past months, countless articles have been written on the topic. Besides the ones indicating this as a “2020 trend” (yea, like if this year wasn’t bad enough already), just because “it’s all the rage” on Dribbble, some designers rightfully investigated a little more.
We can help make products that assist urgent isolation efforts and will also benefit society when we come out of this crisis.
As I’m writing this, I’m at the end of my first month under full lockdown due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Lombardy, Italy. As of now, we still lead the world in deaths related to the virus and this life — drastically changed and totally weird — seems like the new normal, at least for a while.
While this pandemic is, of course, a disastrous situation for many people, companies and entire industries, it can also be a big opportunity to push toward a more digitalized society, where many processes become easier, faster and safer.
I have been working…
The very near future will be a concert of devices talking to each other, and the job of the UX designer will be writing the symphony.
In the past few years, we’ve been witnessing a rapid acceleration in innovation and new technologies. This process is fed by a virtuous cycle of new solutions and products influencing one another and improving other technologies that we then use to create more and more innovation, and so on. It’s exponential growth, very much like the kind described by Moore’s law. Though Moore’s law explicitly refers to computing power, we can, to a certain extent, apply it to UX as well. New technologies breed new products. New products create new scenarios and use cases, and shape society (think about…
China is dealing with the new coronavirus better than others because of its massive surveillance infrastructure and policies.
Since 9/11, the world population started to give up its privacy more and more, with the promise of being kept safe against terrorism. Today we’re facing a different threat, something maybe, in some ways, more predictable, but faster to spread and affect millions.
I live in Italy, and I live in Lombardy, to be precise, so I’ve been among the first, outside of China, to experience a full lockdown. …
