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 Selected as a Nominee for TechPoint’s Innovation Mira Award

TechPoint has announced the nominees for its 25th annual Mira Awards, highlighting the most innovative companies, universities, and organizations in Indiana’s tech sector. The awards celebrate achievements across various categories, including the Innovation Partner of the Year. Nominees in this…
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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: The thing I love about that scene is someone caring about another person enough to call them […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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The Potential Of Role-Inclusive Designers

When we were in elementary school, most of us were disengaged or restless when our teacher switched subjects to one that wasn’t enjoyable nor personally easy to learn. Then, in middle school, some of us really needed to take a long bathroom break during that one class with that one teacher who seemed mad, hard […]
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