An ongoing reading list of essential reading for UX Designers. These books cover the main skills and knowledge you need to survive as a user-centred designer. Design Fundamentals A Book Apart series The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman Don’t Make Me Think, Steve Krug Interaction Design – beyond Human-Computer Interaction, Jenny Preece What Technology […]
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CSS Architecture
The Dublin UX Meetup group is a fantastic resource for anyone working in interaction design. Last week, they played host to Dr. John Craddock – Head of Development at Adaptemy who spoke about CSS Architecture and how to write and manage CSS for your application. Dr. Craddock’s talk highlighted the need to refactor your CSS: cut down on bloated […]
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Evil UX Practices
When you walk into a supermarket you are typically greeted by the smell of fresh baked bread or the sight of row upon row of colourful, fragrant vegetables. Logically, bread and vegetables are not the first thing we want to put into our shopping trolleys – those soft, fluffy breadrolls are not going to hold […]
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Tips for Low Fidelity Wireframing
Fancy prototyping and wireframing software comes and goes but sketching is still the ultimate design communication tool. Some tips for low fidelity wireframing: Start rough and refine. Use a whiteboard, flip charts or big sheets of cheap paper. Get all your ideas out of your brain and onto a medium that allows other people to […]
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Unconscious Bias in Design
Although we all like to consider ourselves completely objective, we each are prey to a whole host of assumptions, thought patterns and preferences that affect our decisions and our judgement, often without us even realising it. This ‘unconscious bias’ refers to the stereotypes and categories we assign to things (often to people), that help us […]
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Newstalk: The Business of Design
This podcast from Ireland’s Newstalk fm discusses the business side of design in Ireland, from high street fashion and design education to manufacturing. “The function of design is to realise an invention to something that’s credible and usable and accessible to a consumer.” Brian Stephens Bobby Kerr is joined by the co-founder of Design […]
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Book Review: Design is a Job
Mike Monteiro’s irreverent “Design is a Job” is the only self-help book any designer will ever need. Full of practical advice such as how to network effectively, what to charge, how to manage feedback and how to pick the right clients, Monteiro imparts wisdom with humour and sincerity. You can tell this is knowledge hard […]
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Creating Screenshots in Firefox
Since Firefox 16, you can easily take full page screenshots of your active web page. This means no more cropping the edges out in Photoshop or using third party apps to quickly capture what’s onscreen. How to get a screenshot of your entire web page in Firefox: On your keyboard, hold down Shift and F2 […]
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Ikea Concept Kitchen 2025
Recently unveiled at the 2015 Milan design fair was Ikea’s Concept Kitchen 2025. This kitchen includes a really interesting piece of design incorporating a kitchen table with an induction element and an interactive interface which is projected onto the table. This projected interface is beautifully intuitive, using a camera to recognise objects placed on it […]
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Simon Sinek: Start With Why
This inspiring TedxPugetSound talk from Simon Sinek implores us to examine not just the things we do but why we do it. Sinek’s hypothesis is that great designers, thinkers and leaders are grounded by a strong belief or a “why” which guides their actions. It is the “why” that customers are responding to when they […]
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