Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium John Freeborn

Or, how the sausage gets made

For over a year I’ve been writing/compiling a weekly design links post. This started via email at my last job. I was managing a team of awesome young designers and I felt that part of my job was to engage them in work, tools and thinking beyond our daily grind. I built a weekly email for the team, sometimes pulling specific links for each team member in relation to their design interests or conversations we had that week. The feedback I got on this email was great–they seemed to really appreciate the effort and what designer doesn’t like to see cool new, pretty things.

After a few months of this, I realized that these link lists might be of interest beyond our little office. There wasn’t anything secret in there, so why not share them with the world. Medium was the obvious platform for this. On October 28th, 2016 the first ‘Weekly Design Links’ post was published. There was one before that in May, but then there was a long pause–so we’ll say October was the beginning.

Recently, a reader asked about the process of creating these and after doing this for over a year, I hadn’t thought about that in much detail in some time. Here’s how this happens.

Where the links come from

For as long as I’ve been reading on the internet I’ve used a variety of tools to help manage the deluge of content. In the early days, I used Del.icio.us and loved it. They changed hands a few times and the product lagged. I moved onto Google Reader which was amazing and I, like many others, wish it was still alive. I’m currently a fairly happy Feedly user. They jumped in when Google Reader died and for the most part it’s a very capable tool. All of these tools did one main job for me–grab the articles from the sites I like. I categorize these into fairly big buckets and I also have a three-tier priority set that buckets my favorite sites. As you can see in the screen grab, HI-Priority is read while MED and LOW have thousands of unread articles.

In addition to the blogs/news, I also digest the streams of links that friends and colleagues share on platforms like Slack. I’m currently in 13 different Slack groups. These range from UX focused, to regional design groups and more. There a so many good Slack groups out there — google it, join the conversation.

The most old-school, is email. I’m on dozens of email lists from agencies, designers, products and more. Many of these share links and usually they are curated and have great content. AIGA, Creative Mornings and InVision all have great emails.

Lastly, and often some of the most interesting is my friends and co-workers. These come via talking (I know, who does that anymore) and social media.

These are most of my sources.

How the lists come together each week

This seems pretty obvious, but I read a lot. I use Feedly, and I start with my HI-Priority folder. Those are my go-to favorites and I usually will go through these daily. If I see something interesting it gets dropped into my maybe browser. Lately, I’ve been using Vivaldi as my links holder. I’m a major tab hoarder and with my work (UX) I will often have 20–50 tabs open at any given moment. So, Vivaldi is my home for all of these interesting, unsorted links. I just copy and paste the URL until I have time to actually digest the article.

Links that come through my other sources get the same treatment. If someone posts something curious, copy & paste into Vivaldi. Sometimes I will read these on the spot, but generally that happens later.

When I have a free 20 minutes or more, I will jump into Vivaldi and start reading. If the article has what it takes then it goes into processing. Before I jump into processing, what does ‘what it takes’ mean? I don’t have a simple answer for that question.

Is it timely? Is it visually impactful or thoughtful? Is there some detail that grabs me? Will this help me (or others) do their work better? Have I seen this before? Is it real vs. a concept (I like real better, but sometimes concepts are too good not to share)?Does it make me smile?

Processing the links

The first step is grabbing the URL, Title and Subtitle. Copy & paste these into a weekly note in Evernote. Each week gets it’s own note and they are simply dropped in the order that I find them.

Not every article has a subtitle and sometimes I have to write these myself. I’m not a writer (but I try) so this slows me down. I also grab the key graphic from each article and I make a square image (no larger than 1200×1200) for my post. This happens in Adobe Photoshop, of course. These images get stored locally until it’s time to actually put the Medium post together.

Publishing time

Late Monday night (I wish I was more ahead of schedule on this, but it happens almost every time) I sit down to put everything together for the Tuesday release.

I usually start chronologically with what I found first (the order they are in Evernote). I roughly categorize the links into obvious subject areas: Web Design, Architecture, Illustration, etc. I work through everything in my Evernote list until it’s clear. As I go, If I find that I have too much in one subject area I will either drop some that aren’t as great or I will most less timely links to the next week. I strive for a diverse creative balance–I don’t want my links posts to be about just one field. If one subject area is light, I will do a quick search in Vivaldi to see if I have any new links that might round out the offering better. If there’s nothing there, I will jump into Feedly and look for a specific subject to find something good to help round out that week’s list.

After the post is built out, I create the top graphic and bottom square graphic in Photoshop. I have templates that I use, so this doesn’t take more than 15 minutes on average.

My goal has always been to create inspiration with these posts. I work as a UX designer by day. But I feel very strongly that only looking at other UX work would make me a very poor UX designer. I like my influences to come far and wide. Sometimes an architectural detail might trigger a new way of looking at a page layout. Maybe seeing a new material could trigger exploration about new visual textures in my work. The germ of an idea can come from anywhere.

Too often in my working life I’ve seen co-workers get so narrowly focused on their industry. I used to work in the bike industry, and many bike websites were simply awful. They were easily 3–5 years behind the curve and customers would tell us that ours was the best. Ours was ‘OK’ but in terms of web standards, accessibility, e-commerce — we were not doing great work. This didn’t just happen in the bike industry. I’ve seen it in finance, pharma, tourism, and even design agencies. I don’t want to just do something better than someone else, especially if that work is subpar. I want to do the highest level creative possible, to create the best experiences for customers.

Hopefully this gives you a glimpse behind the curtain of my process. I will continue to read and share what I find and if you have something amazing, don’t hesitate to share it with me. I love the phase, “How the sausage gets made” so to have that as a subtitle is just gravy.

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

The Making of Weekly Design Links was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The Making of Weekly Design Links

Cool stuff, every week

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