How we achieve “simple design” for Basecamp and HEY
At a high level it boils down to a handful of foundational principles that affect the decisions we make.
At a high level it boils down to a handful of foundational principles that affect the decisions we make.
Earlier this year I wrote about how we stopped making excuses and started improving Basecamp's accessibility.
Take a look behind the scenes at the illustration process for Jason Fried and DHH’s new book.
If there's one thing you can't avoid on the Internet, it's Likes.
Product designers have HFEL (hard first easy later) or EFHL (easy first hard later).
For many many many people, the term "marketing" is interchangeable with words like "spin," "flim-flam," "malarkey," and of course, "bullshit."
Have you seen the latest Jake Paul Christmas music videos?
Ruminations on the heavy weight of software design in the 21st century.
Our brains are lazy. Well, that’s not exactly fair. Our brains are great at conserving energy.
Have you noticed that Instagram has been looking more and more like Snapchat lately (of course you have)?
Lately, I've been getting asked more frequently: "Claire, do you illustrate your own blog posts?" The answer is, "Yes."
We've been doing a series of Jobs to be Done interviews over here at Highrise . After hearing from customers, my brain immediately went into: "We should add this. Jim would want us to build that. Zoe would love it if we made that even better."
Hey there, tech designer person. Have you noticed the increasing number of vague specializations we've invented for ourselves? Here are a few I grabbed from a job board 10 minutes ago. UX DesignerUX/UI DesignerUI Designer Graphic Designer (UX & UI focus) Visual DesignerDigital DesignerProduct DesignerPresentation DesignerFront End DesignerWeb Designer Bleh.
A proper sharing feature has been part of iOS for years. It has a consistent, system-level UI that's available from most any app with anything worth sharing and yet no one seems to use it. Well, no one but us geeks, right?
Whatever happened to Web 3.0? What was it? Did it ever happen? I've seen multiple attempts at definitions. Things about artificial intelligence. The semantic web. Social networks. One thing I remember about Web 2.0 was that 37signals (the original company behind Basecamp) was labeled as a company who was very "Web 2.0".
Years ago I was driving back to Chicago from Wisconsin. On the Illinois side there are a couple of rest stops over the tollway. It's a great place to get some gas, grab some caffeine, and stretch your legs a little before the final 50 miles home.
A few years ago, a CEO told me how she was struggling to get honest feedback from her board. No one seemed willing to be critical or give her pointers on things she could improve. After every board meeting, she would turn to them and ask directly: "What feedback does anyone have for me?"
When you're building a new product, you're often thinking about all the new things people are going to be able to do with it. Now they can do this, now they can do that. Exciting! But there's a...
"I felt it was getting a little too heavy for the casual nature of the feature." "The screen was feeling confusing so we lightened up the layout a bit." "We really need this flow to be easy and clear." These sentences are BS. We all do it.