Design 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…
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designing a medical app for smart watches

Designing Health, Wellness, and Medical Apps for Smart Watches: 10 Things to Consider

For many of us, smart watches have become everyday health and wellness devices: tracking our steps, monitoring our heart rate, charting our workout intensity. They can alert us when our blood sugar has gone too high or too low. They can even call and communicate with 911 dispatchers if we take a hard fall and […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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.
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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, […]
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WFH: Using Zoom Meetings to Get Things Done

One week into working from home I learned real quick that “what was” couldn’t continue. Suddenly my family became my co-workers. We were thrust into a new life and all we had was old mental models to draw from on how we lived life up until that moment. The life we had built and the […]
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Designer + Developer Collaboration

Context SEP started with developers, grew by hiring more developers, evolved by hiring designers. And since the developers “were here first,” there’s an easy and terrible potential for us to think of “incorporating designers into the development” rather than “incorporating developers into the designing.” My team chose a third way, which you all probably know […]
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Our Rapid Prototyping Engagement

I just finished up a three week long, rapid prototyping project with a development team of four: 2 designers, 2 developers. Since SEP may have more prototyping opportunities, here’s what you can expect from this kind of engagement. First, what is a rapid prototyping project? A short, intensive, and focused effort designed to learn more […]
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Building a Circle of Support: Letting others in, being vulnerable, and gaining self – awareness

Cue the “Meet the Parents” meme… We’ve all seen it, the awkward moment where Ben Stiller and Robert De Niro are in the dressing room and good ol’ future father-in-law is accusing Ben Stiller’s character of nefarious acts: CIRCLE OF TRUST The thing I love about that scene is someone caring about another person enough […]
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