Kyle Harris on Atomic Spin

Five Tips for a Successful Design Portfolio Review; Are You Ready?

Preparing for a design portfolio review? Focus, reduce, and know what you're looking for. A great review is the first step to getting a great design job.

Planning Your Project

Don’t Pay Consultants to be ‘Yes-People’

A consultant's job is to get your idea to the next level. They can't do that without a little pessimism and a lot of hard questions.

UX/Design Techniques

Using Sketch Symbols to Build a Dynamic Breadcrumb

Using symbols in Sketch helps maintain consistency when building out design components. But how can we ensure that our breadcrumb component is dynamic?

UX/Design Practices

Don’t Forget: Design Is Also Agile

Software design is an agile process. It matures throughout a product lifecycle, and we need to provide time for that.

UX/Design Practices

Users Absorb Rules (Until They Can’t Trust Them)

Users inherently build a set of rules and expectations on how a system works. It is key to maintain consistency to prevent unnecessary "second-guessing".

UX/Design Practices

Stop Saying “User” when There Is No “User”

Sometimes, the audience isn't a "user." Maybe they're not using software—or maybe they're not a person at all. So why do we keep calling them that?

UX/Design Practices

Three Tips for Taking Over Design on an Existing Project

An ideal new "leader" is a welcome source of energy, has interesting new ideas, and opens door for team members to challenge assumptions and have new ideas.

Growing as Makers

Sometimes It’s Okay to Not Share the Marker – Three Times to Take the Lead in a Working Meeting

Sometimes in a working meeting, you have to take control of the marker and not let anyone else touch it. It's a bold move, but it can be necessary.

UX/Design Techniques

Using “Last Thursdays” to Discuss Exceptions with Users

When you teach a user not to think about exceptions as "bad," they're eager to share all the alternative ways that similar tasks need to be performed.

UX/Design Techniques

Writing Context Scenarios? Start at the End

Most context scenarios are hyper-focused on how users interact with the app. Writing them backwards opens you to new possibilities and diverging scenarios.

Planning Your Project

Why Your App/System Rewrite Will Probably Be Bigger Than You Think

Users will lose trust in a rewritten system if they cannot do everything they expected to do. This is especially true for internal systems.

Growing as Makers

How to Present Your Portfolio at a Software Design Job Interview

This is your time to present who you are as a designer and what you do best. Control the room, focus on quality over quantity, and sweat the details.

Kyle Harris

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