A Simple Way To Quickly Animate SVGs with Vivus.js

Creating thoughtful, handcrafted animations is not something we get to do on our projects very often. When faced with tight deadlines and budgets, building out the core feature base has to be our top priority, so there’s not much time to devote to simply delighting users. However, animations add a lot of value. A little […]

Pivotal + Invision – Our Two-Tool Solution for Managing Design & Software Implementation

It’s not often that design is completed before implementation begins. With multiple to-do lists taking place at the same time, finding a way to keep track of everything that needs to be done is crucial to staying on top of a project. There are two great tools to help make this happen—Pivotal Tracker and InVision. […]

Four Hurdles when Prototyping with Material-UI for React

Google created the Material Design design language to be used across devices. If you’re using Material Design with React, I’d recommend Material-UI for React to get the ball rolling. It’s a library of components or pre-styled elements (similar to the Bootstrap framework) that are easy to add to a page, and the components look and […]

Identifying Design & Development Implementation Potholes

The marriage of design and software implementation has been a positive thing for the user. At Atomic, we receive a lot of good feedback about the use of Human Centered Design, but the design process is really just the start. What brings designs to life is the way our poly-skilled teams work hard to avoid […]

When’s the Best Time to User Test? A Case Study

On a recent project, we had enough time to do a small user test, which got me thinking about the optimal time to get feedback. We discussed two options: at the visual design stage with a clickable prototype, or with a rudimentary minimal viable product.

Three Tips for Winning Your Battle with Sketch Symbols

Sketch, a favorite user interface tool, added Symbol support a few years ago. Since then, I and many other designers at Atomic have heavily leveraged Symbols in our work.

Inspecting Safari’s Web Browser on a Mobile Device

Inspecting the browser gives you access to the details of a website or application. Using built-in developer tools and third-party add-ons, we can view the inner workings of an application. For example, you can see the content structure in DOM, view the console for logs or error messages, and review network requests for assets being loaded. […]

Practices for Harnessing SCSS with React

We have been hard at work on a client project using React. We haven’t made our way to implementing CSS Modules yet, but we’ve established a set of rules to help us keep the CSS in order.

Experimenting with MongoDB

For a recent prototype, we wanted to bring in a database instead of relying on something like Google Sheets. I’d heard about MongoDB as part of the MERN (MongoDB, Express, React, and Node.js) or MEAN (MongoDB, Express, AngularJS, and Node.js) stacks and felt it was worth a try. In the end, I was very happy […]

How Being a Consultant Taught me to Appreciate the Value of Time

In a recent job interview with a potential Atom, we were talking about some of the differences between product companies and life at a software consultancy like Atomic. One topic that arose was tracking time, and it occurred to me how much tracking work time at Atomic has changed the way I approach my work […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Bryan Elkus

Author: Bryan Elkus