Meet the Eyes Behind the Design...

Welcome to an exclusive glimpse into the world of UI/UX design

Here are some valuable perspectives, industry insights, and a glimpse into the minds shaping the future of UI/UX design

Meet The Team

Christopher Wight

Roma Modi

Software Engineer for Google

Freelance UI/UX Designer and Professor

Defined

UI/UX Designer

creates visually appealing and user-friendly digital interfaces by combining aesthetic design (UI) with a focus on optimal user experience (UX). Their role involves understanding user needs, crafting intuitive layouts, and collaborating with cross-functional teams to enhance the overall usability and satisfaction of digital products.

Software Engineer

combines technical expertise with design principles to create seamless and visually engaging user interfaces. Their role involves coding and implementing the frontend elements of software applications while prioritizing a user-centric approach, ensuring a positive and intuitive user experience.

Meet

Christopher Wright

Freelance UI/UX Designer and Professor

What inspired you to pursue UI/UX design?

More job opportunities. A great way to fuse design and technology.

How do you approach the initial stages of a design project to understand user needs?

Ask lots of questions to determine the goal and possible direction. Sketches. Lots of sketches.

How do you strike a balance between creating an aesthetically pleasing design and ensuring usability?

Put usability first. Design around that.

In your opinion, what makes a great user experience, and how do you measure it?

UX should feel seamless and familiar. During usability testing, there should be little to no struggles or pain points.

What advice would you give to someone looking to start a career in UI/UX design?

Do it! Very lucrative. Very creative. Everything with an interface involves UI/UX... tv, appliances, vehicles, restaurant ordering systems, mobile devices, etc. Every industry taps UI/UX in some way.

How do you stay updated on the latest design trends and technologies?

Dribbble. Pintrest. UXPin. WWWAwards. Read books and articles on Medium. Follow top agencies.

What tools and software do you find most valuable in your design work?

Figma for design. Procreate for sketches.

What are some common misconceptions about UI/UX design that you’ve encountered?

UI/UX is more about UX. The user experience must drive the design otherwise the deliverable will be useless. Also, its not about what we like but more about 'does it make sense'.

In your experience, how do you handle conflicting design preferences within a team?

Again... usability first. If that is equal, what design hits the target best.

Portfolio

Check out his work

Meet

Roma Modi

Software Engineer for Google

How do you typically collaborate with UI/UX designers throughout the development process?

As a software engineer, you implement features for a product using feature requirements established by the Product Manager. These feature requirements are backed by UI/UX mocks from Figma for the engineer to implement. During the implementation process, I collaborate closely with UI/UX to understand the user flow in the mocks and make sure the details such as animations and button functionality are well understood. I also identify and communicate parts of the desired design that may be technically infeasible to implement.

What tools or processes do you use to ensure a smooth handoff between design and development phases?

Paying close attention to Figma designs and using data from the “Code” tab ensures the use of high-fidelity resources and the correct layout and resource sizes.

What methods do you use to ensure that the final product aligns with the original design vision?

There are testing tools where you can inspect the layouts that you code and compare sizes, margins, colors, etc with those listed on Figma designs. There are also automated UI screenshot tests that compare running code on a device to the expected design.

How do you navigate challenges or conflicts that may arise between the technical and design aspects of a project?

Often times, a UI design may look amazing but is very hard to implement and requires lots of logic. It is important to communicate the tradeoff between a complex design and engineering effort to the Product Manager and UI/UX designer and align on which to prioritize, especially with tight timelines. It is a good idea to enter this conversation with an adjustment that minimizes the changes to the designer’s proposed design but still accomplishes the desired user journey.

How early in the development process do you prefer to involve UI/UX designers, and why?

I communicate with UI/UX designers before development to ensure I understand the user flows in the mocks. Before writing the technical design, understanding the user interactions is important to ensure the user experience with regard to system performance (such as latency) is prioritized.

How do you approach incorporating UI/UX feedback into your coding process?

It is essential to get UI/UX signoff on customer-facing UI elements and their interaction patterns before shipping the product. Even better is getting UI/UX eyes on each major implemented feature so UI/UX can verify their designs in actual devices and re-think designs if needed.

In what ways do you provide input or feedback to UI/UX designers during the design phase?

During the design phase, having weekly syncs with the UI/UX designers allows you to point out flaws in the design that do not align with what customers expect. For example, if a new design removes a button that we committed to customers would exist and have certain functionality, it is important to communicate that to UI/UX. Additionally, you can point out ways the new design may not match the existing theming in other related features or products. Finally, UI/UX mocks cover the “happy path” of a user journey with a feature, but may miss some edge cases like errors and exceptions and how these should communicated to the user in the design. You want to make sure that UI/UX designers understand what is/is not technically feasible early.