October 14, 2020 in Learn
Inclusive Design Series (3 of 4): The Importance of User Research
I’ve spent most of my career working with startups, as the sole designer or alongside a handful of designers. I’ve never worked with a user researcher whose sole focus is on user interviews and usability tests. It can feel intimidating…
October 6, 2020 in Learn
WCAG 1.1: Text Alternatives
The first WCAG Guideline, Text Alternatives, is part of the Perceivable principle. The guideline states Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols,…
September 10, 2020 in Learn
Introducing the WCAG Principles
In my introductory blog post on Accessibility , I mentioned that the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) is broken up into four accessibility principles: Perceivable Operable Understandable Robust These four principles are then divided into thirteen accessibility guidelines. Each WCAG…
September 3, 2020 in Learn
Inclusive Design Series (2 of 4): The Limitations (and Possibilities) of Empathy
Throughout user research and UX design in general, empathy is a guiding force. “Put yourself in the user’s shoes to understand their perspective,” they say. While you can empathize with a user, you have not shared the same lived experiences….
July 30, 2020 in Learn
Web Accessibility: An Introduction
Throughout my career as a web design and development educator, I’ve noticed a consistent lack of attention paid to Accessibility principles in both college and bootcamp curriculum. The results of a 2018 WebAIM global survey of web accessibility practitioners was…
July 27, 2020 in Learn
Inclusive Design Series (1 of 4): When Products Aren’t Inclusive
When you design a product, it’s natural that your own biases will impact it. Biases are a feature of human cognition that we cannot control, but we can control how we act upon them. As a cis-gendered white woman, my…
February 3, 2020 in Learn
Introducing the UX TechDegree v3
My name is Anwar Montasir, and I’m a designer, a developer, and a teacher at Treehouse. I’m excited to announce the launch of the newest version of our UX Techdegree! When I started at Treehouse in October, one of my…
November 14, 2019 in Learn
What is a Prototype?
As any UX designer can tell you, testing web sites as you build them is not easy. But, as they would also tell you, there are so many changes that happen during the design process! Well, thankfully, there’s a simple,…
July 29, 2019 in Learn
7 Reasons to Sketch on Paper First
When someone says “web design,” it often puts an image in my head of a designer at a computer working in Adobe XD or Sketch. Because the final medium of the design is displayed on computer screens, web design is…
April 5, 2016 in Learn
7 Handpicked UX Tools for Designers
A master of UX design needs to master many skillsets: graphic design, prototyping, user research, and design collaboration. Luckily, there’s no shortage of tools to help these individual skills. Here are 7 tools we’ve found useful for mastering UX design….
March 23, 2016 in Learn
9 of The Best Free UX e-Books
Looking for some expert techniques to give you an edge in UX design? We’ve rounded up a selection of our favorite e-books from the Web that you can download right now for free. 1. The Psychology of Web UI Design…
December 30, 2015 in Learn
Soft Skills for UX Designers
Question: What is the most important skill needed for a UX Designer to be effective today? High-fidelity prototyping wizardry Strong visual design chops Knack for removing the inessential Fluency in HTML/CSS/Javascript/React Answer: None of the above. The most important skill,…