rd

Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved?

By feedproxy.google.com
Published On :: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right?

Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design.

So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.

Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.

There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned.

But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:

The fear of change. 

Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all.

The fear of the unknown. 

Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand.

    The fear of losing control. 

    We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”

    So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas.

    What are low-fidelity prototypes?

    Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes:

    A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation:

    And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop:

    They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on.

    That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.

    It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.

    And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback.

    Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approved

    There are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too!

    They’re quick and easy. 

    We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.

    They’re great to share with developers. 

    Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible.

      Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes!


      Full Article

      • Design & Content
      rd

      "I always hated that word—marketing—and I hate it now. Because for me, and this may sound simplistic,..."

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Sat, 08 Oct 2011 20:20:00 -0700

      ““I always hated that word—marketing—and I hate it now. Because for me, and this may sound simplistic, the key to marketing is to make something people want. When they want it, they buy it. When they buy it, you have sales. So the product has to speak. The product is what markets things.””

      - Interview with Tom Ford.


      Full Article

      rd

      Beards and Face Masks from the CDC

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 03 Mar 2020 16:09:29 +0000

      Back in 2017, the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published this infographic on the Facial Hairstyles and Filtering Facepiece Respirators to help men understand that beards can make facemasks ineffective. With the daily news about the Coronavirus (Covid-19) bordering on panic, this infographic has resurfaced, and is being widely republished.

      NOTE: The CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from COVID-19.

      From the CDC FAQ:

      Does the CDC recommend the use of facemask to prevent COVID-19?

      CDC does not recommend that people who are well wear a facemask to protect themselves from respiratory illnesses, including COVID-19. You should only wear a mask if a healthcare professional recommends it. A facemask should be used by people who have COVID-19 and are showing symptoms. This is to protect others from the risk of getting infected. The use of facemasks also is crucial for health workers and other people who are taking care of someone infected with COVID-19 in close settings (at home or in a health care facility).


      From the original CDC blog post on November 2, 2017:

      The month of November is full of fun, interesting, and thought-provoking observances. November is National Raisin Bread Month, Historic Bridge Awareness Month, and Inspirational Role Models Month among so much more. November is also the host month to campaigns like No-Shave November and Movember. Campaigns such as these are working hard to raise money for important causes such as cancer research, education, and awareness. These increasingly popular campaigns are a great way to demonstrate your support … unless you need to wear a tight-fitting respirator for your job.

      Don’t despair! We will not completely ruin your plans to compete for facial hair bragging rights. But we’re going to have to get creative about it…

      I do love that the CDC is using infographics to spread valuable information in a fun, easy-to-digest way that informs people using visual explanations. They also specifically call out the designer of the beard and moustache vector art they used from ShutterStock, fredrisher


      Full Article

      rd

      Humanity ‘Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff’: 60% of Earth’s Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 20:36:31 +0000

      By Julia Conley Common Dreams “Nature is not a ‘nice to have’—it is our life-support system.” Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which shows that … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      Leonardo DiCaprio Premiers “Before the Flood” Climate Change Documentary

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Thu, 27 Oct 2016 11:22:20 +0000

      Environmental activist and Academy Award®-winning actor Leonardo DiCaprio and Academy Award®-winning filmmaker Fisher Stevens premier their documentary film, Before the Flood, a compelling account of the powerful changes occurring on our planet due to climate change. Before the Flood will … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      Human Activity Increasing Rate of Record-Breaking Hot Years

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 21 Nov 2017 21:18:38 +0000

      American Geophysical Union (AGU) Press Release A new study finds human-caused global warming is significantly increasing the rate at which hot temperature records are being broken around the world. Global annual temperature records show there were 17 record hot years … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      Humanity ‘Sleepwalking Towards the Edge of a Cliff’: 60% of Earth’s Wildlife Wiped Out Since 1970

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 30 Oct 2018 20:36:31 +0000

      By Julia Conley Common Dreams “Nature is not a ‘nice to have’—it is our life-support system.” Scientists from around the world issued a stark warning to humanity Tuesday in a semi-annual report on the Earth’s declining biodiversity, which shows that … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      Why Is Going Green So Hard? Because Our System Isn’t

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Wed, 24 Apr 2019 12:13:01 +0000

      By Jill Richardson Other Words If environmental solutions aren’t systemic, living green will always mean going against the grain — and usually failing. Every year around Earth Day, I’m reminded of papers I graded in an environmental sociology class. The … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      How pottering about in the garden creates a time warp

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 21:09:42 +0000

      By Harriet Gross Courtesy of Aeon What’s not to like about gardening? It’s a great way to get outdoors, away from everyday routines, and to exercise your creativity. It’s good for your health, whatever your age, and gardeners tend to be … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      'And the award goes to...' How to avoid winning a Procrustes Award for bad UX

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Mon, 1 Apr 2019 07:48:51 GMT

      We're familiar with awarding prizes for excellence, from the Oscars to The International Design Awards. But what if we started giving prizes to shame bad examples of design? Enter the Procrustes Awards.


      Full Article

      rd

      5 Critical Lessons Learned Organizing WordCamp Ann Arbor for the Third Time

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 24 Sep 2019 20:20:42 +0000

      In early 2014 I had just gotten married and recently moved into a new home. With two major life events out of the way, I decided I was ready to lead a WordCamp. I originally planned to organize WordCamp Detroit. I was an organizer twice before and the event had missed a year and I […]

      The post 5 Critical Lessons Learned Organizing WordCamp Ann Arbor for the Third Time appeared first on Psychology of Web Design | 3.7 Blog.


      Full Article

      rd

      Abelardo Morell, Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: 2014-10-08T15:40:15+00:00

      Abelardo Morell
      Camera Obscura: Early Morning View of the East Side of Midtown Manhattan, , 2014
      Website - AbelardoMorell.net

      Abelardo Morell was born in Havana, Cuba in 1948. He immigrated to the United States with his parents in 1962. Morell received his undergraduate degree in 1977 from Bowdoin College and an MFA from The Yale University School of Art in 1981. In 1997 he received an honorary degree from Bowdoin College.

      His publications include a photographic illustration of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1998) by Dutton Children’s Books, A Camera in a Room (1995) by Smithsonian Press, A Book of Books (2002) and Camera Obscura (2004) by Bulfinch Press and Abelardo Morell (2005), published by Phaidon Press. Recent publications include a limited edition book by The Museum of Modern Art in New York of his Cliché Verre images with a text by Oliver Sacks.

      His work has been collected and shown in many galleries, institutions and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York, The Chicago Art Institute, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The Houston Museum of Art, The Boston Museum of Fine Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum and over seventy other museums in the United States and abroad. A retrospective of his work organized jointly by the Art Institute of Chicago, The Getty in Los Angeles and The High Museum in Atlanta closed in May 2014 after a year of travel. Abelardo will be having his first show at the Edwynn Houk Gallery in New York opening October 23, 2014 and will run until December 20, 2014 featuring a selection of new pictures.


      Full Article

      rd

      WordPress Card Game

      By jepson.no
      Published On :: Wed, 13 Dec 2017 12:23:02 +0000

      You know you've made it BIGTIME when you're a face card in a WordPress card game! @angrycreative @Kickstarter https://t.co/tFbB4ROhKS #WordPress #WooCommerce pic.twitter.com/WMPf5sffkM — Magnus Jepson (@mjepson) December 13, 2017


      Full Article

      rd

      10 Best Restaurant Menu Plugins for WordPress (Compared)

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Fri, 24 Apr 2020 05:08:24 +0000

      Want to add a food menu to your restaurant website? Publishing your restaurant menu on your website comes in handy especially if you’re providing an online restaurant reservation or online food delivery. That way your users can figure out the available food options without having to walk into your restaurant. In this article, we’ll show […]

      The post 10 Best Restaurant Menu Plugins for WordPress (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      rd

      How to Send SMS Notifications From WordPress (Step by Step)

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Mon, 27 Apr 2020 07:31:40 +0000

      Want to send SMS messages to your WordPress users? With automated SMS notification, you can keep your customers updated by sending order notification, shipment delivery status, cancellation notification, and more. In this article, we’ll show you how to send SMS messages to your WordPress users with ease. Sending Automated SMS Messages From WordPress SMS messages […]

      The post How to Send SMS Notifications From WordPress (Step by Step) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      • WordPress Tutorials
      • send sms messages
      • send sms messages to wordpress users
      • send sms to wordpress users
      • sms messages to wordpress users
      rd

      How to Create a Full-Screen Welcome Mat Optin Form in WordPress

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Tue, 28 Apr 2020 07:27:00 +0000

      Want to create a full-screen optin form in WordPress? Love it or hate it… using a welcome mat is one of the easiest ways to capture your users’ attention. Even big brands like Forbes use a welcome mat to promote their campaigns. In this article, we’ll show you how to properly create a welcome mat […]

      The post How to Create a Full-Screen Welcome Mat Optin Form in WordPress appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      rd

      How to Create a “Google Forms Style” Form in WordPress

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Wed, 29 Apr 2020 10:06:16 +0000

      Want to create “Google Forms style” forms for your WordPress website? A lot of publishers choose Google Forms to create a survey because it provides a distraction-free landing page dedicated to the form. If you want to create a distraction-free landing page specifically for your form, but don’t want to use a third-party app, like […]

      The post How to Create a “Google Forms Style” Form in WordPress appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      • WordPress Tutorials
      • google forms styledform for wp
      • how to create google forms styled form for wordpress
      • using form page addon to create google form styled forms
      • using wpforms to create google form styled forms
      rd

      How to Properly Create a Wholesale Order Form in WordPress

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Thu, 30 Apr 2020 10:01:01 +0000

      Want to create a wholesale order form in WordPress? If you’re a wholesaler looking to get online, but don’t want to manage a full-fledged eCommerce store, then you might want to consider adding a simple wholesale order form to your WordPress site. In this article, we’ll show you how to properly create a simple wholesale […]

      The post How to Properly Create a Wholesale Order Form in WordPress appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      rd

      9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared)

      By www.isitwp.com
      Published On :: Tue, 05 May 2020 07:06:53 +0000

      Are you looking for a good staging plugin to test your experiments before it goes live? A staging site is a replica of your website where you can experiment with new features, plugins, and updates before you push them to your live website. That way you can find and fix bugs without having to worry […]

      The post 9 Best Staging Plugins for Your WordPress Website (Compared) appeared first on IsItWP - Free WordPress Theme Detector.


      Full Article

      rd

      Every Day A Post of WordPress Tips and Tricks until Christmas!

      By wpengineer.com
      Published On :: Thu, 28 Nov 2013 14:51:16 +0000

      The time has come and our loyal reader know already our traditional Advents Calendar. For the people who don’t know, […]


      Full Article

      rd

      New hooks in WordPress 3.8

      By wpengineer.com
      Published On :: Mon, 16 Dec 2013 10:00:53 +0000

      WordPress 3.8 introduced one new action and five new filters: automatic_updates_complete Action triggered after all automatic updates have run. (wp-admin/includes/class-wp-upgrader.php) […]


      Full Article

      rd

      Test or Meet at WordCamp San Francisco and Win a Plugin License!

      By wpengineer.com
      Published On :: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 06:12:30 +0000

      Next week I will be at WordCamp San Francisco and a week later at the WooConf! Maybe one or antoher […]


      Full Article

      rd

      Download older plugin versions from wordpress.org

      By wpengineer.com
      Published On :: Mon, 16 Mar 2015 10:00:05 +0000

      So you’ve updated your plugins… … and your blog doesn’t work anymore … and you have no backup … … […]


      Full Article

      rd

      Download older plugin versions from wordpress.org

      By wpengineer.com
      Published On :: Thu, 14 Sep 2017 11:56:00 +0000

      There’s a simple way to get hold of previous versions of your WordPress plugins, for example if a current version […]


      Full Article

      rd

      How to Help Someone With Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tuesday, April 28, 2020 - 2:29pm

      Listening without judgement is one of the best things you can do for someone with PTSD.


      Full Article

      rd

      How pottering about in the garden creates a time warp

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Fri, 13 Dec 2019 21:09:42 +0000

      By Harriet Gross Courtesy of Aeon What’s not to like about gardening? It’s a great way to get outdoors, away from everyday routines, and to exercise your creativity. It’s good for your health, whatever your age, and gardeners tend to be … Continue reading →


      Full Article

      rd

      Chris Burkard: Say Yes to What You Want

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Wed, 25 Dec 2019 14:29:18 +0000

      Today’s guest is one many of you have been asking for oh-so-long. He’s one of the top travel, outdoor, and landscape photographers in the world, bringing us to some of the most untamed and powerful landscapes in the pursuit of powerful stories, hidden surf, and a good adventure. Of course in this episode we get into his new book, At Glacier’s End, but we also get into some meaty topics such as: the power of exploring personal projects and how it can shape new opportunities the sacrifice that comes as pursing your passions personal growth and how it evolves over time and so much more Enjoy! FOLLOW CHRIS: instagram | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   Watch the Episode  This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

      The post Chris Burkard: Say Yes to What You Want appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.


      Full Article

      rd

      Choose Creativity – A Conversation with Jordon Harbinger

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Wed, 29 Jan 2020 14:14:39 +0000

      Recently sat down with my man Jordan Harbinger on his podcast The Jordan Harbinger Show. As a radio personality and a podcaster long before it was cool, Jordan is no stranger to the mic. It was a fun conversation and I hope you enjoy! A few of my fav topics: I share my framework for learning from the masters by deconstructing what they do and applying it My creative slumps and how I dug out How mindset matters and unwinding our self-limiting beliefs and much more … Big shoutout to Jordan for having me on the show … and if you haven’t already, be sure to check out his podcast The Jordan Harbinger Show anywhere you listen to podcasts. Enjoy! FOLLOW JORDAN: instagram| facebook | twitter | website Listen to the Podcast Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our […]

      The post Choose Creativity – A Conversation with Jordon Harbinger appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.


      Full Article

      rd

      The Code of the Extraordinary Mind with Vishen Lakhiani

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Tue, 07 Apr 2020 13:00:01 +0000

      Join me + bestselling author Vishen Lakhiani LIVE Tuesday April 7 at 6:30pm PST. Vishen Lakhiani is one of today’s most influential minds in the fields of education and human consciousness. He is the founder of Mindvalley University and its 2 million-strong student base and creator of the Quests learning platform: a next-generation method of online learning, which attains an unheard-of 60% completion rate on courses, in an industry where 8% is average. Vishen’s book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, made the New York Times Business Best Sellers List, and hit the coveted #1 spot on Amazon five times in 2017. Enjoy! FOLLOW VISHEN: instagram | facebook | website Listen to the Podcast coming soon … Subscribe   This podcast is brought to you by CreativeLive. CreativeLive is the world’s largest hub for online creative education in photo/video, art/design, music/audio, craft/maker, money/life and the ability to make a living in any of those disciplines. They are high quality, highly curated classes taught by the world’s top experts — Pulitzer, Oscar, Grammy Award winners, New York Times best selling authors and the best entrepreneurs of our times.

      The post The Code of the Extraordinary Mind with Vishen Lakhiani appeared first on Chase Jarvis Photography.


      Full Article

      rd

      Why's it so hard to get the cool stuff approved?

      By feedproxy.google.com
      Published On :: Thu, 27 Feb 2020 00:00:00 -0500

      The classic adage is “good design speaks for itself.” Which would mean that if something’s as good of an idea as you think it is, a client will instantly see that it’s good too, right?

      Here at Viget, we’re always working with new and different clients. Each with their own challenges and sensibilities. But after ten years of client work, I can’t help but notice a pattern emerge when we’re trying to get approval on especially cool, unconventional parts of a design.

      So let’s break down some of those patterns to hopefully better understand why clients hesitate, and what strategies we’ve been using lately to help get the work we’re excited about approved.

      Imagine this: the parallax homepage with elements that move around in surprising ways or a unique navigation menu that conceptually reinforces a site’s message. The way the content cards on a page will, like, be literal cards that will shuffle and move around. Basically, any design that feels like an exciting, novel challenge, will need the client to “get it.” And that often turns out to be the biggest challenge of all.

      There are plenty of practical reasons cool designs get shot down. A client is usually more than one stakeholder, and more than the team of people you’re working with directly. On any project, there’s an amount of telephone you end up playing. Or, there’s always the classic foes: budgets and deadlines. Any idea should fit in those predetermined constraints. But as a project goes along, budgets and deadlines find a way to get tighter than you planned.

      But innovative designs and interactions can seem especially scary for clients to approve. There’s three fears that often pop up on projects:

      The fear of change. 

      Maybe the client expected something simple, a light refresh. Something that doesn’t challenge their design expectations or require more time and effort to understand. And on our side, maybe we didn’t sufficiently ease them into our way of thinking and open them up to why we think something bigger and bolder is the right solution for them. Baby steps, y’all.

      The fear of the unknown. 

      Or, less dramatically, a lack of understanding of the medium. In the past, we have struggled with how to present an interactive, animated design to a client before it’s actually built. Looking at a site that does something conceptually similar as an example can be tough. It’s asking a lot of a client’s imagination to show them a site about boots that has a cool spinning animation and get meaningful feedback about how a spinning animation would work on their site about after-school tutoring. Or maybe we’ve created static designs, then talked around what we envision happening. Again, what seems so clear in our minds as professionals entrenched in this stuff every day can be tough for someone outside the tech world to clearly understand.

        The fear of losing control. 

        We’re all about learning from past mistakes. So lets say, after dealing with that fear of the unknown on a project, next time you go in the opposite direction. You invest time up front creating something polished. Maybe you even get the developer to build a prototype that moves and looks like the real thing. You’ve taken all the vague mystery out of the process, so a client will be thrilled, right? Surprise, probably not! Most clients are working with you because they want to conquer the noble quest that is their redesign together. When we jump straight to showing something that looks polished, even if it’s not really, it can feel like we jumped ahead without keeping them involved. Like we took away their input. They can also feel demotivated to give good, meaningful feedback on a polished prototype because it looks “done.”

        So what to do? Lately we have found low-fidelity prototypes to be a great tool for combating these fears and better communicating our ideas.

        What are low-fidelity prototypes?

        Low fidelity prototypes are a tool that designers can create quickly to illustrate an idea, without sinking time into making it pixel-perfect. Some recent examples of prototypes we've created include a clickable Figma or Invision prototype put together with Whimsical wireframes:

        A rough animation created in Principle illustrating less programatic animation:

        And even creating an animated storyboard in Photoshop:

        They’re rough enough that there’s no way they could be confused for a final product. But customized so that a client can immediately understand what they’re looking at and what they need to respond to. Low-fidelity prototypes hit a sweet spot that addresses those client fears head on.

        That fear of change? A lo-fi prototype starts rough and small, so it can ease a client into a dramatic change without overwhelming them. It’s just a first step. It gives them time to react and warm up to something that’ll ultimately be a big change.

        It also cuts out the fear of the unknown. Seeing something moving around, even if it’s rough, can be so much more clear than talking ourselves in circles about how we think it will move, and hoping the client can imagine it. The feature is no longer an enigma cloaked in mystery and big talk, but something tangible they can point at and ask concrete questions about.

        And finally, a lo-fi prototype doesn’t threaten a client’s sense of control. Low-fidelity means it’s clearly still a work in progress! It’s just an early step in the creative process, and therefore communicates that we’re still in the middle of that process together. There’s still plenty of room for their ideas and feedback.

        Lo-fi prototypes: client-tested, internal team-approved

        There are a lot of reasons to love lo-fi prototypes internally, too!

        They’re quick and easy. 

        We can whip up multiple ideas within a few hours, without sinking the time into getting our hearts set on any one thing. In an agency setting especially, time is limited, so the faster we can get an idea out of our own heads, the better.

        They’re great to share with developers. 

        Ideally, the whole team is working together simultaneously, collaborating every step of the way. Realistically, a developer often doesn’t have time during a project’s early design phase. Lo-fi prototypes are concrete enough that a developer can quickly tell if building an idea will be within scope. It helps us catch impractical ideas early and helps us all collaborate to create something that’s both cool and feasible.

          Stay tuned for posts in the near future diving into some of our favorite processes for creating lo-fi prototypes!


          Full Article

          • Design & Content
          rd

          Star Wars Playing Card Deck

          By feedproxy.google.com
          Published On :: Tue, 02 Jan 2018 19:12:59 +0000

          I am huge fan of the universe of Star Wars, it is amazing how vast and detailed this it can be. I am also a lover of the playing cards designs, you can big array of topics from sexy to nerdy ones. Just like this ones, a complete set of playing cards based on the …

          Star Wars Playing Card Deck Read More »


          Full Article

          rd

          A Complete Guide To Mechanical Keyboards

          By feedproxy.google.com
          Published On :: Wed, 06 May 2020 10:30:00 +0000

          About six years ago, a colleague I’ll call Tom, because that’s his name, forwarded me a link to the ‘WASD CODE’; a keyboard focused on the needs of programmers, designed with the help of Stack Overflow’s Jeff Atwood. I had no idea at the time that there were people actually dedicating themselves to creating keyboards beyond the stock fare shipping with computers. As I read and re-read the blurb, I was smitten.


          Full Article

          rd

          Weird glitch lets you post insanely long photos to Instagram

          By feedproxy.google.com
          Published On :: Fri, 08 May 2020 10:13:45 +0000

          Have you noticed extra-long and weirdly stretched images on your Instagram feed? It looks like some kind of a glitch has appeared, allowing users to post images like this to their followers. Of course, some Instagrammers have made the use of it to draw attention, and if you want to have some fun (or annoy […]

          The post Weird glitch lets you post insanely long photos to Instagram appeared first on DIY Photography.


          Full Article

          rd

          Almost invariant subspaces of the shift operator on vector-valued Hardy spaces. (arXiv:2005.02243v2 [math.FA] UPDATED)

          By arxiv.org
          Published On ::

          In this article, we characterize nearly invariant subspaces of finite defect for the backward shift operator acting on the vector-valued Hardy space which is a vectorial generalization of a result of Chalendar-Gallardo-Partington (C-G-P). Using this characterization of nearly invariant subspace under the backward shift we completely describe the almost invariant subspaces for the shift and its adjoint acting on the vector valued Hardy space.


          Full Article

          rd

          Linear Convergence of First- and Zeroth-Order Primal-Dual Algorithms for Distributed Nonconvex Optimization. (arXiv:1912.12110v2 [math.OC] UPDATED)

          By arxiv.org
          Published On ::

          This paper considers the distributed nonconvex optimization problem of minimizing a global cost function formed by a sum of local cost functions by using local information exchange. We first propose a distributed first-order primal-dual algorithm. We show that it converges sublinearly to the stationary point if each local cost function is smooth and linearly to the global optimum under an additional condition that the global cost function satisfies the Polyak-{L}ojasiewicz condition. This condition is weaker than strong convexity, which is a standard condition for proving the linear convergence of distributed optimization algorithms, and the global minimizer is not necessarily unique or finite. Motivated by the situations where the gradients are unavailable, we then propose a distributed zeroth-order algorithm, derived from the proposed distributed first-order algorithm by using a deterministic gradient estimator, and show that it has the same convergence properties as the proposed first-order algorithm under the same conditions. The theoretical results are illustrated by numerical simulations.


          Full Article

          rd

          Locally equivalent Floer complexes and unoriented link cobordisms. (arXiv:1911.03659v4 [math.GT] UPDATED)

          By arxiv.org
          Published On ::

          We show that the local equivalence class of the collapsed link Floer complex $cCFL^infty(L)$, together with many $Upsilon$-type invariants extracted from this group, is a concordance invariant of links. In particular, we define a version of the invariants $Upsilon_L(t)$ and $ u^+(L)$ when $L$ is a link and we prove that they give a lower bound for the slice genus $g_4(L)$. Furthermore, in the last section of the paper we study the homology group $HFL'(L)$ and its behaviour under unoriented cobordisms. We obtain that a normalized version of the $upsilon$-set, introduced by Ozsv'ath, Stipsicz and Szab'o, produces a lower bound for the 4-dimensional smooth crosscap number $gamma_4(L)$.


          Full Article