development

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Decide: How will the interface look? (Part 4)

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Decide: How will the interface look? (Part 4)

Practically speaking, how should an interface look? The answer is situational and depends upon your users. After all, when you design for a client, you are looking out for…

Decide: How do you structure content? (Part 3)

Decide: How do you structure content? (Part 3)

No matter what the content of your database is, having an established hierarchy is absolutely vital if you want the end users to successfully use the software—especially if one of your goals is to provide updates that are intuitive and do not require extensive retraining for your user base. The stakeholders must…

Decide: What kind of development work will you do? (Part 2)

Decide: What kind of development work will you do? (Part 2)

Occasionally, it needs to be said that as developers we should strive for dev work that, well, works. A beautifully designed layout may be wonderful at first glance, but it cannot create a positive user experience if it doesn’t have…

Decide: Who are you designing for? (Part 1)

Decide: Who are you designing for? (Part 1)

Who are you designing for? The simple-yet-complex answer is end users. They’re frequently not who’s paying us, but end users are the most important stakeholder for your software design. Throughout the development process, they should also be…

Why low code platforms still need dedicated developers

Why low code platforms still need dedicated developers

Low code software platforms are a popular custom software development option, particularly within smaller organizations. Based on a graphical user interface, they allow users to visually see the software they’re designing…

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Comparative Visual Communication

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Comparative Visual Communication

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Many individuals best process and learn information through visuals, and many concepts are best presented through an image or illustration. However, there is a crucial question to ask…

Affordances and Signifiers

Affordances and Signifiers

At times, user interface design can feel like leading the proverbial horse to water: You can get them there, but that does not mean they are going to drink (or correctly use the software). To be clear: this may be caused by…

Caching a Break

Caching a Break

Caching is a common technique used in software development to temporarily hold data that programs need to access frequently. Typically, this improves the performance of apps since it is faster to read data from the cache than to read from a database or data file. However, having corrupted caches will cause…