What does Good Design mean? Can we all agree on what Good Design is?
What is Good Design? — This question has stuck with me for the last 8 years. This question started to nag me while studying Graphic Design at Central Saint Martin’s University in London. The question came from a mixture of trying to think of topics for my dissertation and something I was trying to understand myself as I was struggling with the marking system that my tutors used to grade our work.
In my first year at university, my grades were pretty low, and I was considering dropping out. However, as I got into the second year, my grades started…
What if all our users fall into these four groups? The 4 Tendencies and how we can use them in user experience design.
As a teenager, I’ve loved taking personality tests to understand myself better and see how accurate the tests were. Since then, my self-discovery interest has continued, and I’m a big fan of reading self-help books and podcasts.
In 2019 I discovered Gretchen Rubin’s podcast Happier, which talks a lot about how people behave and how we can improve ourselves and ultimately be happier than we’ve ever been. During my listening binge on Gretchen’s podcast, I found her book — The Four Tendencies.
This book focuses on our personalities, especially on how we deal with expectations of ourselves and others. …
The Tech Industry loves a good buzzword, so what’s all the hype with gamification, and is it worth it?
game /ɡeɪm/
noun: game
an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.
“the kids were playing a game with their balloons”
Gamification may appear like it works, to begin with, but does it have the sticking power like people suggest it does?
I believe it doesn’t.
My statement may appear harsh but hear me out. There have been many apps I’ve used, and after some time, I stop using them regardless of the number of points or gems I’ve collected. The most recent app I’ve broken up with is Duolingo.
Backfiring of streaks
Duolingo and I fell out one Sunday when…
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
This week has been very up and down and I still have a bit of ‘What’s the point’ hangover from last week. This week I’ve really tried to focus my time and energy on things that just make me feel content. On Sunday I spent a few hours experimenting and ended up creating a visual identity for a fictional studio. Hours passed quickly while I was playing with colours and shapes, with the sole intention to make something that looked cool.
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
I’ve just completed my second week of working from home. I’ve not really struggled with working or making progress on projects, if anything I’ve actually been very productive and a lot are now wrapped up. But I’ve been getting a little bit down when thinking about how things were before we were all forced to pause. Before March I’d spent a lot of time with the Triangirls team getting events organised, we’d just spoke at Design Club and I was due to chair a panel at Intercom. My work was going well, I was going to be running some more…
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
This week has been a strange one as it’s the first time I’ve worked remotely and away from my coworkers for such a long period of time. In the UK we’ve been advised to work from home where possible, as a digital agency it’s been quite a quick transition from office to home. In this post, I’m not going to write about what I’ve learnt this week about remote working as every man and his dog has — though I’m sure I will do that at some point, but this weekend I’ve had a much more important learning curve.
On…
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
This week I’ve been reading the book ‘Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all’ while on my travels to Iceland. The book is by David and Tom Kelley who run the world-famous IDEO agency. I got this book for Christmas as a Secret Santa, it had been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time as I’ve probably said many times before me and the word creativity has a difficult relationship.
I wanted to get this book as I believe that I’m not very creative, which for someone who has always wanted to be a designer and…
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
I’ve had a long break on the writing front but I feel like I’ve now got the mental capacity to take it up again. One way I plan to make it easier to my to write consistently is by focusing on writing notes here and there through the week and stop putting all the focus on a Friday afternoon when realistically I don’t have any time and it can be difficult to get all the words out after a heavy working week.
Anyway, excuses made, this week I’ve done some active learning. I’ve started listening to the audiobook ‘Thanks for…
A weekly reflection of what I have learnt this week within my work as a Digital Product Designer
This week’s reflection feels a bit of a cop-out. I’ve been so busy that the time for reflection just hasn’t been there, therefore I’ve struggled to find something genuinely worthwhile to write about. So due to my lack of time, today’s post will result in quite a short piece of writing. But who’s to say each week I need to write a dissertation of the 7 days prior anyway.
This week was a research-heavy week which I don’t tend to worry about it makes a nice change to spend your time speaking with people rather than staring at a screen…
Wondering why we’re always running? At Inktrap we’ve looked at what this popular term actually means within the industry.
If you’ve spent half an hour on Medium in the Design or Tech section you will without a doubt have read the word Sprint within the first five minutes. This term has been a buzzword for the last few years, and its popularity is set to grow, meaning it is destined to be part of our design language forever. But what does it actually mean?
My first encounter with the term Sprint came when I was about to embark on a project with a big UK bank. The brief for this project was to create a digital service that transformed…
Liz Hamburger
Writing about design and some other bits in between | Digital Product Designer at Inktrap | Event organiser for Triangirls.
