April 25, 2014After a long weekend of holiday I decided to continue the One Year of UI Design story today. Some time ago one of my clients told me it would be great to have a nice tool to publish one message to several places at the same time. At Media Injection our system has such a thing, but it’s part of a much bigger system. I thought it would be nice to create a new design for a multi destination composer. I made a sketch this morning and discussed it with a colleague. He liked it, though immediately came with feedback:... View Article
April 14, 2014I think Live Chat is one of the best features a website can have to offer support to their visitors. Happily I see chat boxes appear on more websites these days and I find it very helpful to be able to ask direct questions before I buy a product or sign up for a service. I was thinking how a chatbox like that could be improved and made a quick sketch. Often you see the live chat buttons at the right bottom or vertically at the left side of a website, presented as a tab. To let the chat button... View Article
April 13, 2014Last week I was doing some research for new pens, since I’m sketching more these days. I found this nice list and ordered various different ones so I can compare them. Earlier this week the first package arrived. It was the Pilot G-TEC C4. I grabbed a piece of paper and made a quick sketch. From the first line I felt the difference. This pen is a lot sharper than the one I used so far and enables to work far more detailed. Of course I still have to improve my sketching skills, but having a pen as nice as... 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 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 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 30, 2014There are many things in life I want to learn. I want to keep improving my programming skills and I’d love to learn to play the piano some day. I also want to improve my design skills. For a long time I’ve had a passion for User Interface (UI) Design. I love looking at well designed interfaces and inspiring mock-ups. I’m fascinated by this craft and the importance of details that make all the difference between a good design and a great design. Years back I had never thought I would be capable of crafting such designs myself, it looked... View Article
