Product Design & UX Articles

We’re curious people by nature. And we love to teach others what we’ve learned. So explore our blog to gain fresh insights from our expertise in areas ranging from culture to AI.

SEP Wins TechPoint’s 2024 Innovation Service Partner of the Year Mira Award

SEP Recognized as Indiana’s Top Innovation Service Partner, Winning TechPoint’s Prestigious Mira Award Westfield, Indiana - SEP has been named the Innovation Service Partner of the Year by TechPoint at the 25th annual Mira Awards. The Mira Awards, Indiana’s largest…
Read Full Post

Designing a Mascot

Picture it. It’s my first day back at SEP after being away for over 5 years. After a crash course onboarding with IT, the Ops Team asked to see me in the War Room. “We have a secret project for you.” What was the project? The new SEP owl mascot, of course! I was ecstatic […]
Read Full Post
Example Breadboard

Breadboarding: A Simple Way to Prototype

There is an awkwardness defining the solution for a software project. Some projects define the solution by generating a backlog of features to implement. They specify what should be built, but create few insights about the user’s experience. On the other hand, a project could start by emphasizing the visual experience with clickable mockups. While […]
Read Full Post

Tearing Down the Silos: 3 Ways to Foster Better Collaboration

Collaboration between design and development has historically been an uphill battle. It used to be that a designer (or team of designers) designed a software application, and then handed it over the fence to the software engineers and wished them the best of luck. As you can imagine, this silo approach ended in unexpected results […]
Read Full Post

Adding a Design Practice at Lessonly – a Podcast Recap

On this episode of Behind the Product, Jaki Clark and Casey Cumbow join us to share their journey of adding a design practice into Lessonly‘s well-established engineering and product development groups. As design and engineering leaders, Jaki and Casey share the techniques, practices, and systems that have helped Lessonly level up over the past 18 months.
Read Full Post

A Pandemic Isn’t a Reason to Stop Researching (but… It Might Be a Good Reason to Start)

When it comes to doing user research, I’m always going to recommend learning with someone in their own space. Seeing someone use your product in their environment will always add more context to your investigation. Generally, research falls into these categories: exploratory/generative research (looking to understand problems, needs, goals, etc.) evaluative research (benchmarking your understanding, […]
Read Full Post

A Developer in a Designer Hat

I want to share a client project in the form of a journal entry after you have a chance to gloss over the infographic. The focus is on how our team was formed and how we managed roles and responsibility for design in a new way. I had a hard time writing this post at […]
Read Full Post

What is a Design System?

Many of us working in the tech space have undoubtedly encountered challenges communicating with members of our product teams. More specifically, there seems to be a disconnect between designers and developers. However, effective communication within these spaces is crucial to building excellent quality products for clients. A design system can help with this pain and […]
Read Full Post

Email: A Different Kind of User Interface

When I set out to make Apple Health Report, I knew I wanted more than just myself to be able to use it. Aside: The real impetus was a new fitness reimbursement program at SEP that I could get reimbursed for working out without having to go to the gym. I wanted all the reporting/math […]
Read Full Post

Design Studios With A Team

Why Use Design Studios? Design studios by definition vary from place to place and shift when the participant roles and sizes are different. Since design studios are used to culminate to a team-agreed user interface (or close to it) approach for a user story task(s), the scope can be altered, depending on the need. You […]
Read Full Post