Experience Design (XD)

Arial, Verdana, Georgia, Times New Roman, Courier New, Impact, Trebuchet and <shudder>Comic Sans</shudder>. Those are the basic web-safe fonts we’ve all been using for the majority of our text-based content since the dawn of time. Or at least, since the Web came along. If you wanted something “fancier” for your text, you had to use […]

At the recently concluded, Lean Startup Conference 2012, there was a interesting talk given by Matt Brezina of Sincerely regarding how they approach rapid mobile app development using Lean principles. This talk got me to thinking on how possibly similar principles might apply in an enterprise mobile app development world. Figure out the Minimum Viable […]

I’ve seen a lot of bad CMSs. Systems that take multiple steps and six different screens to publish and categorize a page. In-page editing that looks completely different once it’s published. And my favorite was a previous client (I led a project redesigning the intranet for a state’s judiciary department) who had an employee that […]

Who among us hasn’t at some point in their life thought, “Golly, I wish there were a way I could create triangles with CSS!” Okay, I realize no one has ever actually said that, but while at first glance the topic of creating a triangle using code available to a front-end developer might seem trivial […]

I mainly write this post to the designers of our team here at Perficient, but developers can read it, too.  I stumbled upon a random website by complete happenstance and not because I’ve ever been there before, and I was struck by its responsive layout. CSS Tricks This is the kind of design I feel […]

In continuation of yesterday’s post, here is Part II of “Develop/Design – A Discussion”. Where does the designer’s job end, and where does the developer’s job begin? At many companies, designers are given the responsibilities of handling all HTML & CSS work, then hand the work off to developers to complete the back end. Here […]

Recently, four representatives of the Perficient Digital development and design teams got together to discuss the relationship that exists between the development and designing portions of work that is produced here at Perficient Digital. Participants in the discussion included designers Andrew Hainen and Mike McGowan, as well as developers Mike Behnke and Karen Ford. The discussion […]

It is no secret that the current mobile revolution is primarily consumer driven. iOS and Android devices made inroads in the consumer market first and consequently enterprises felt the push from their employees. However, the enterprise mobile apps present a huge opportunity to learn from the consumer app experience by focusing on making employees more […]

Let’s discuss typefaces.  As the designer, you have the distinct privilege of selecting the fonts that will be used on the website, and barring client restrictions, you have free reign to use whichever fonts you desire.  You should keep in mind when choosing a font, though, that this typeface needs to be present not only […]

Facilitation is a necessary skill for a designer. It is equally as important as being able to sketch, visualize complex concepts, and technical skills like Axure or Photoshop. By having deep facilitation skills, the chances that the design recommendations and solutions are accepted both by your immediate superiors, but also the business stakeholders you are […]

Last Saturday (November 17, 2012) I attended 1DevDay, a developers conference in Detroit, MI. It was a multi-track conference, with up to 9 sessions going on during any given time. With so many sessions, it was hard to select which talks to attend. Only once did I feel like I made an incorrect choice. The […]

Creating a great user experience extends beyond the research, beyond the wireframes, and even beyond the visual design. All that hard work is ultimately for nothing if your website or web application isn’t fast. Why? Because if your site doesn’t load quickly, your users will go elsewhere very quickly indeed!