nard.design

designops

Installing Storybook for React (Part I: Designer Edition)

Installing Storybook for React (Part I: Designer Edition)

I'm currently exploring options for ways to maintain the Phosphorus design system, which I've been calling 'Mineral'. A team that I worked with a while back were looking at leveraging Storybook at the time but they never fully got around to implementing it. Getting

Project Discovery, Team Alignment, Co-Design & Free Lunch

Project Discovery, Team Alignment, Co-Design & Free Lunch

It goes without saying, proper planning and early team alignment helps to decrease the chances of projects going off the rails. That said, it still amazes me how little time and investment product teams actually put into having proper project kickoffs. By “proper”, I don’t mean a big groupthink

This thing called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

This thing called a Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

I hear it being thrown around quite a lot these days. Do they really mean “V1”? Here are a few things you should know regarding the concept of the“Minimum Viable Product”: The Lean Startup Eric Ries wrote this book called “The Lean Startup”. The term derived from the idea

Design Informs Product Strategy

Design Informs Product Strategy

How design will play an important role in business transformation It’s no surprise, the user experience design profession is quickly evolving, shifting from a deliverables based entity to a business-oriented function that can provide a strategic differentiation for companies. Beyond the visual layer that design is well known for,

Presenting Multiple Design Options to Your Clients. Just. Don’t.

Presenting Multiple Design Options to Your Clients. Just. Don’t.

Exploring iterative design over options Very often, I hear designers talk about providing two or three mockups for a client and then ask them to choose their favorite. I totally get that point of view — by providing three varying concepts during the process, you’re letting the client know that

Designing the Design Process for Collaboration, Testing and Developer Handoff

Designing the Design Process for Collaboration, Testing and Developer Handoff

This is an older post (from 2016). A lot of tools have come out since then, such as Figma, that addresses many of these challenges. I will likely create an updated version of this (Figma version!) in the near future but some of these concepts still apply to some extent.