April 10, 2014The other night I was on the phone with my grandma. When she was my age, older people had told her to do the things she really wanted to do right then, because else it might not happen anymore. That’s something I’ve also read in several articles: when you’re young you think you have all the time in the world, but as you get older, you realise that time is more limited. There is a saying ‘Live like today is your last day’. I think that’s not very practical, but there is a point in that. You don’t know if... View Article
April 9, 2014The other day I was thinking, since I spend so much time in Starbucks it would be nice to design an app for them. The next step was to consider what part of getting a coffee at Starbucks could be improved. I recalled my own experience and realised that there is a lot of waiting involved before you get your coffee. First you have to wait in line to place your order, then you’re in line for paying and at last you’re in line to wait for your coffee. All together, that can quickly be five minutes of waiting. Five... View Article
April 8, 2014Last week I talked with a friend about my UI Design challenge and he recommended me to focus more on the why. Why do you make certain design choices? Often you do things, simply because that’s how all the others do it. If you can think of a way to do it different and know why it’s better, than you’re extraordinary. Thinking about the why in design reminded me of my years in college where I studied newspaper and magazine design. In those classes the why was just as important as the design itself. You have to know why you... View Article
April 7, 2014After a weekend full of other activities, I continued my UI Design series today with designing the round menu. The first challenge with a round design is that you have to work with angles. After a few failed trials to create the right angle by hand, I just chose to use 45 degrees, which Photoshop can automatically lock into when you hold the shift-key while dragging a line. Using that angle actually worked out nice and divided the menu in eight parts. It’s still a quite simple design, though I like that it’s a really different menu than you often... View Article
April 4, 2014Last week I went paintballing with my colleagues of Media Injection. It was a beautiful day, nice weather and lots of excitement. When I was later looking back at it, I realised there are a couple of lessons I learned from this experience. 1. Keep your head cool As soon as the startsign is given, everything becomes a big chaos. Chaos on the field and in your head. The adrenaline rushes through your body and you have to be continuously alert. At that moment it’s a challenge to keep your head cool. The same thing can happen when you’re in... View Article
April 4, 2014When I was working on the vertical menu yesterday, I turned my Philips light on with the remote control which happens to be round. That got me thinking. We always have our navigation horizontal or vertical, but you almost never see it round. One company that has a non-traditional way of navigation is Vodafone. In their new app you navigate by dragging bubbles to the centre. I had to get used to it the first time, but from then it felt natural and very fast. I really like it when people are thinking out of the box like that and... View Article
April 3, 2014I planned to watch a tutorial on flat design yesterday, but the day was fully planned and by the time I got home at night I was too tired to do anything more. Since today will be busy again and I didn’t want to skip another day, I decided to start the day with some UI design before breakfast. I worked out the sketch of the menu. I’m aware it’s still very basic, but many good things start small. I made a light and a dark version in collapsed and expanded state. The top icon is to collapse and expand... View Article
April 2, 2014Last Tuesday I woke up super happy without a reason. The feeling lasted practically the whole day and when I went to bed at night I was still smiling. The next mornings I woke up just normal again and that made me think. Wouldn’t it be nice to wake up excited every day? Some people might think I’m naturally always happy. I think I’m more positive than most people, but just like everyone it can also a challenge for me to set the right mood for the day. So I did some research and read some interesting articles about how... View Article
April 1, 2014Today I spend time thinking about a vertical menu. I did some research at Dribbble and made two sketches. I think menu’s are a necessity, but shouldn’t take to much space. My plan for today was to design a floating menu that can be dragged around, so users can place is wherever they want. After my first sketch I got the idea to make the menu even smaller by having it collapsed to a single square. When clicked on the square, the menu will expand and show the full size. I plan to work out these sketches in Photoshop later... View Article
March 31, 2014When you got the sketches ready and have spend some time rethinking the design, the work in Photoshop is mainly expressing what you already have in mind. Visualising your thoughts and polishing your sketches. I find this part challenging, since it’s a lot easier to make a rough sketch than to work digitally on the details. Today I worked out the sketches I made yesterday and here is the result. A simple, minimalistic login screen. For this first challenge I purposefully didn’t look at Dribbble for inspiration, since I wanted it to be something coming from my own mind. I... View Article
