We publish articles because we love sharing what we learn and what others learn, too; we love discovering unique points of view and surprising design strategies, as well as just understanding how our colleagues out there solve difficult UX and front-end problems. Every single Smashing article goes through a thorough editorial review, including multiple passes for editing and refinement, before being published. In this series dedicated to our upcoming 10th anniversary we will explain our workflow and introduce the people behind the scenes!
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Validate your fundamental assumptions as early as possible, building a minimum viable product. If the minimum viable product does not work as it should, don’t blame it. Treat the cause, not the symptom. Do customer development before you start. Don’t aim to revolutionize something. Aim to make something better. Don’t start building before you have a clear understanding of your customers. In this article, Yaakov Karda will share a few insights, mistakes and lessons learned, so you know what to watch out for in your projects.
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Jay Kaufmann has written job listings for many organizations over the years and for all manner of user experience roles. When he wrote his first job description, he took other listings from his company as a base, looked around for some examples from other companies and ended up with what he sees in hindsight as being the usual run-of-the-mill hodgepodge of bullet points. Presented with this today, Jay would throw out more than half the content in order to focus on what’s relevant and unique. In this article, he’d like to share some tried and true techniques for advertising your UX opening.
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Jeremy Girard loves being a web designer and he’s incredibly thankful that he decided to join this industry many years ago. Still, there have been a number of times during his career when his passion has waned. This scenario is called burnout. Do you find passion for your work an important part of your career? If so, what have you found to be helpful in keeping that passion for your job intact? In this article, Jeremy shares his moments of burnout in his career and what you can do to avoid them.
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Many of the skills Jeremy Girard honed while playing in a band have contributed to his success as a web designer — as much as, if not more than, his ability to write clean code or design an attractive web page. He learned skills critical to his success, such as the importance of tailoring your set list (or your presentation) to make an early connection with your audience, or the ability to speak clearly and confidently in public. In this article, Jeremy will describe how being in a band taught him to be a better web designer.
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As a designer, you might start looking for a new job when you feel you have hit a wall with your current employer or when greater opportunities are present at other companies. When you’re honest with who you are and what you want in a job, you will be able to determine whether the position meets your criteria. Planning for job requirements, salary and perhaps location before applying is obvious, but many people forget to set criteria for one major thing: corporate culture. Corporate culture shapes every aspect of an organization, from operations and business policies to “extra-curricular” activities and day-to-day staff interactions.
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There will be times when it gets tough. They won’t last forever but they will happen. In this article, Paul Boag asks you to remember one thing when those times come… You are not a machine. You might think this all sounds rather depressing but, you know, it isn’t. It is meant as an encouragement, that if you are struggling you are not alone; that there is not something wrong with you, there is something wrong with the industry. Allow yourself to be human by cutting yourself some slack and getting help. Long hours are not a badge of honor, they are a sign of failure, pure and simple.
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To fully realize that creativity, successful developers need to continually improve their skills. The web industry has grown from this desire to learn. You only need to look at the unwavering demand for conferences, workshops and training days for evidence of this, but the cost of continually sending your team to workshops and training days can quickly become unsustainable. Within your team lies a wealth of skills, knowledge and experience that can be shared and developed further. With a little effort and using resources freely available on the web, you can increase the technical competence of the team organically, with much lighter demands on time and cost.
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“What is the best career advice you’ve ever received?”. Throughout his career, Jeremy Girard has received plenty of advice. But after thinking about that question (from one of his students) for a week or so, Jeremy Girard came up with four pieces of advice that he received early in his career and that were invaluable to him as he was getting started in this industry but that are just as relevant and useful to him today.
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In today’s article, Spyros Zevelakis is interviewing Anthony Burrill, one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary graphic designHe has never worked for another design firm, and his first studio was at home — at his kitchen table. Some of his most famous work is self-published making graphic design, a standalone discipline in itself.
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