The term detraining (not “leaving the train”) is commonly used in sport to describe a drop in performance after a long break. You will often hear runners use it when complaining they can no longer match their previous achievements, but anyone who faced the challenge of relearning a skill will find this relatable.

I know about the frustration of detraining firsthand! As an amateur runner, I often struggle to maintain my fitness level when an injury (or just life) takes me out of my training routine, but I also had to relearn how to draw, dance, and read Japanese after abandoning these hobbies for several years. …

No matter your stance on the famous debate about whether or not designers should code, there are some fundamental principles of web development every designer should understand.

A career path into digital design is often winding, meaning many practitioners come from adjacent fields as diverse as graphic design, web development, research, or even anthropology. As a result, two people working in a similar role may have a very different professional background, experience, set of skills and approach to solving design problems.

Digital designers who come from broader creative disciplines like graphic design or visual communications might be pumping out stunning user interfaces worthy of millions of Dribbble admirations. …

Leisure has been a status symbol throughout modern history. While the poor worked all hours, the wealthy spent time reading, enjoying art and taking their tortoises for a promenade (fact). Now this paradigm has been reversed, and the time-poor businessmen eagerly turn what little free time they have left into yet more work. But why?

Have you ever worried if you are good enough at something you do for pleasure? Perhaps you were striving to improve your running performance, grow social media following or reach a page number goal in a reading challenge, when, in a moment of self-doubt, you compared your performance to others and considered quitting?

Some may argue that the drive for improvement is an innate human trait essential for the survival of our species. After all, social recognition and the feeling of accomplishment form a part of our basic psychological needs, topped with the desire for self-expression and self-actualisation. …

The number of social media users worldwide has been estimated to reach 2.5 billion by early 2018, meaning 1 in 3 people will be connected via one or more social media networks. Better Social is a personal project re-thinking the ways we socialise online.

User Research: Identifying Key Pain Points

Despite the widespread use of social media platforms, not everyone finds the experience entirely satisfying. The benefits of connectivity often outweigh the inconveniences, but the growing frustration with the online networking platforms goes beyond mere usability issues. Regular users are prone to an increased level of stress and social anxiety, yet they often struggle to control their consumption. Online networking platforms have become a digital equivalent of junk food, so how can users maintain a healthy social media diet?

To identify the key pain points of regular social media users, I conducted a series of interviews, asking participants to describe their social media habits, satisfaction and frustrations. …

This project was created in response to Artiom Dashinsky’s Product Design Weekly Challenge. It was made over a couple of days as a brainstorming exercise and shows my thinking process, not a polished design product. Previously, I designed an app to aid busy teachers in memorising their students’ names and a tool for helping people to relocate to a new country. Today’s challenge is to design a desktop app dashboard for a general practice doctor.

First things first, what is a dashboard and how does one go about designing it? I found this article by Taras Bakusevych packed with useful advice, including a spot-on definition:

A dashboard is an at-a-glance preview of crucial information important for the user at the moment they are looking at it, and an easy way to navigate directly to various areas of the application that require the user’s attention.

A dashboard gives an overview, helps to spot patterns and trends and is an entry point for accessing various areas of the application for more details. …

Bucket lists get a bad name. Outside of a small fan group they are often seen as eccentric whims of spoilt Millenials sipping avocado smoothies on their gap year. Could you be doing your bucket lists wrong and, more importantly, is there a way of doing it right?

I created my first bucket list when I turned 27. Called 30 before 30, it listed all the things I wanted to do, try and achieve before I enter the fourth decade of my life. Over the next three years, I talked to numerous friends (and strangers) about the idea and soon a pattern of responses started to emerge. Here are fours things I was most often asked or criticised for and my thought in response to each:

Why do you need a list?

Like larks and owls, there are people who think lists are a waste of time and there is the rest of us. If to-do lists, shopping lists, watchlists and so on are foreign concepts to you, just move to the next point. However, most people I spoke to didn’t mind organising information in this way per se but had issues with using it for personal challenges, dream or aspirations. …

Wrapping up last year’s annual review, I arrived at two New Year’s resolutions: I wanted to strengthen my relationships with the core circle of friends and carve regular time for creative experiments. This is how the Postcard Project was born.

Over the past twelve months, I sent 20 hand-drawn cards to some very special people living in different corners of the world. Of course, it didn’t go as smoothly as I planned: I created some pretty spectacular artworks in January and made do with quick-n-cute sketches by the end of the year. Nonetheless, it has been the most rewarding personal challenge I ever took on (and the only one that lasted throughout the entire year). So here are three main learnings and why I’m doing it all over again next year:

1. Discipline

Having unmovable (well, not by much anyway) deadlines scattered through the year taught me an important lesson in ‘creativity on demand’. There were times when drawing a card was the last thing on my mind, but it had to be done and so it got done. What’s more, picking up a pencil when you don’t feel inspired resulted in some unexpected creative findings. …

This project was created in response to Artiom Dashinsky’s Product Design Weekly Challenge. It was made over a couple of days as a brainstorming exercise and shows my thinking process, not a polished design product. Last month I designed an app to help busy teachers memorise their students’ names and today I will tackle the challenge of making emigration a bit less stressful.

Brief:

Design a product helping people to relocate to a new country.

Functionality:

Moving to a new country is no small task, so there can hardly be a single tool to assist an immigrant in every step along the way.

From my own experience, a person preparing to start a new life abroad is most in need of reliable information sources and contacts.

Most government websites offer legal information on subjects like visa requirements and work permits, while other topics like education and health are usually covered by the institutions that provide them. However, creating a comprehensive guide that pulls together verified data on a wide range of topics poses significant challenges due to the scope and complexity of information it will need to cover. Some questions may have multiple answers or present a conflict of interests (for example, if you are looking to buy or rent a place, different companies may have different suggestions in response to your question). Moreover, some answers will need to take into account the person’s age, level of income, cultural background and more, as well as being largely unique for each pair of countries that the person is moving to and from (this alone presents nearly 40,000 unique data sets to complete). …