Made for fast and fluid UX design, Adobe XD gives you everything in one neat bundle: it lets you sketch out ideas, create interactive prototypes, test and share them. To give you a head start when working with XD, Cosima Mielke has compiled 15 pro tips, including features that might not be obvious at first glance but that will make your prototyping workflow a lot smoother. Please note that a Windows version is in the works and due later in 2016, but for now Adobe XD is available for Mac OS X only.
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DAU (noun) Daily active users. Hip-hop (noun) If you got to ask, you ain’t got it. In this article, Benjamin Hersh will talk about the unique challenges of designing a hip-hop app as he led design for one of the few successful apps in that space. Benjamin will share insights from his research and design process, and the lessons he and his team learned about the DAU of hip hop. This is not strictly an article about technical innovations. Benjamin’s focus is how an awareness of complex cultural issues can be critical for good app design.
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Sublime Text is full of such powerful shortcuts and commands. Practice is the key. The number of satisfied users attests to that. If you explore it, you will eventually see how beautifully its powerful features are hidden behind a simple and elegant interface. If you have been using Sublime Text for some time, now is the time to upgrade your arsenal with new ammunition. In this article, Jai Pandya will be taking you through some of his favorite tips and tricks. Knowing them might just unleash your hidden powers as a programmer to the world.
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The worst thing that can happen to your product is that loyal users suddenly aren’t able to use it in the same convenient way. Frustration and anxiety enter social media quickly and suddenly, and the pressure on customer support to respond meaningfully and in time increases with every minute. You can prevent this by being more strategic when rolling out new versions of our products. In this article, Vitaly Friedman will look into a strategy for product designers and front-end engineers to thoroughly test and deploy a feature before releasing it to the entire user base, and how to avoid UX issues from creeping up down the road.
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Benefits such as personal growth, creative exploration and generation of professional opportunities are some of the reasons to engage in personal side projects. In this article, Jon Yablonski will explore these benefits, as well as learn how to decide on a project and how to effectively manage your time. Finally, for inspiration, Jon will look at some great examples of personal projects. We hope you will be inspired to start your own side project!
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Creating a living style guide is a long but worthwhile process. Steven Lambert made a few mistakes along the way that prevented developers and designers from adopting it sooner or using it effectively. However, he pushed through and eventually made it to the end. This is the story of how Steven developed a living style guide, the mistakes made along the way, and why the current landscape of style guide generators did not suit his needs.
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In his article on Selling Design Systems, Dan Mall suggests to illustrate how fractured an organization is by printing out its different presences online and putting them on a large board as an example of all the wasted money and effort that goes into making sites from scratch, one-by-one, needlessly reinventing the wheel every time. What Vitaly Friedman learned from his experience is that trying to focus on the workflow or the process is never as helpful as focusing on tangible benefits that the client will get as a result.
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Internships are an excellent way to get real-world experience in the hands-on field of design. But they can also be a waste of time if you choose the wrong one. In this article, Mason Gentry will share tips that will help you land a great internship as you begin your illustrious career in design, as well as insights from some of the world’s best design firms so you can think about the application process from both sides.
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In this article, Ani Kostova will explore the first browser-based app to be viable in the vector illustration and UI design space: Gravit. Why Gravit? Mainly because Sketch and Affinity Designer are not options for Ani. She decided to give it a try and test it seriously. After a few months of using it, she feels ready to review its features and offer some practical tips and tricks she’s learned along the way.
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You can now have multiple designs right next to each other in Photoshop! In this article, Murdoch Carpenter will design an entire set of assets all at once. He will walk you through the basics of artboards and Generate. Then he’ll look at a real project in which he used these techniques together, making for a major time-saver. First up, artboards. What many Photoshop users have been hoping for — with a push from Sketch, no doubt — finally arrives in the form of artboards.
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