Taylor Vanden Hoek on Atomic Spin

Four Sources of Creative Inspiration for a New Design

Here are a few of the activities, questions, and thought experiments I try when I'm starting a new design and looking for creative inspiration.

UX/Design Practices

Informing Design with Context Scenarios

Context scenarios act as a bridge between deliverables in the planning phase and the wireframe or design. Utilizing them can help with team alignment and will further the design pr

UX/Design Techniques

How to Facilitate a Remote Workshop

I recently facilitated a successful remote Design Thinking workshop. Thanks to a lot of preparation and a knowledgeable, engaged team, we had great results.

UX/Design Techniques

Six Principles for Planning and Facilitating a Workshop

With these methods, designers can create engaging workshops that bring people together to solve problems in just a couple of hours or over a few days.

Project & Team Management

4 Simple Questions to Get Your Team Started on the Right Foot

Listening to our team and seeing the project from their perspective is powerful. This activity gives us common language to talk about what's exciting, important, or ambitious about

UX/Design Techniques

Engaging Users in Research without Opening Pandora’s Box

How to facilitate focused user testing or research sessions while avoiding the pandora's box of software product feature requests.

Personal Optimization

Creating a Fast, Easy Daily Log with Bear & aText

Keeping a daily log can be tedious. Here's how I use Bear — plus shortcuts from text expander aText— to easily record everything I do during the day.

Planning Your Project

What Software Design Is & How it Makes Software Much, Much Better

With good software design, applications are built with purpose, backed by buy-in from users, and supported by a plan for continuous improvement.

UX/Design Tools

My Five Favorite Tools for Mobile App Design

It's easy to underestimate size or what feels natural when designing interactions for mobile. These tools help me design something the user will love.

UX/Design Techniques

Hacking a Product Roadmap for Uncertain Circumstances

We needed a framework that had the direction and alignment capabilities of a Product Roadmap but without the specifics of dates, tasks, and people—so that it would be relevant long

UX/Design Techniques

Software Feature Prioritization – Pruning the Product Tree

This activity is a great framework for getting stakeholders involved, talking about priorities, and building understanding of what it takes to design, develop, test, and launch key

UX/Design Practices

Great Tech with Poor UX? That’s Only Sort-of Brilliant

No matter how great the tech, if we forget important details, we undercut the user's experience. We have to do the UX heavy lifting up front.

Taylor Vanden Hoek

Keep up with our latest posts.