Category: Design
From Guesswork to Structured Context: How Figma MCP Changed My Dev Workflow
Highlight: I used to rely on screenshots of Figma mockups. Now I pull structured layout and style metadata straight from the design files. When our design team shares a new mockup, they send the Figma file and link — no PNGs, no screenshots. But early on, that still meant a lot of guesswork for me….
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My Favorite UX Books + Why (2025 Edition)
Nearly seven years ago, I published a blog post about my favorite user experience (UX) books. I figured it was time to revisit my list and share why these are my current favorites. Living with Complexity – Don Norman (2016), 308 pages Don Norman continues to be a thought provoking and grounding resource for me….
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What I’ve Learned So Far on My AI for UX Journey
Starting a learning journey is an exciting and transformative experience that, for me, was filled with a mix of emotions. The excitement comes from my great sense of curiosity–the thrill of discovering new things and the anticipation that comes with each step of that journey. The anticipation of mastering a new skill, gaining knowledge, and…
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Experience Design: Meeting Stakeholders Where They’re At
Communication is at the heart of designing and building software. When undertaking a software project, it’s often necessary to build a consensus around critical decisions with a group of stakeholders. At Don’t Panic Labs, we use communication and design techniques to co-create a shared understanding between a client’s stakeholders and our development team. It’s a…
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10 Rules for Providing a Good User Experience
I am not a designer, I don’t play one on TV, and I didn’t stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night. But over the years, I have developed some thoughts around UI / UX that have resulted in some basic “rules” to apply when building systems. While this set of rules is far from…
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Product Design Lifecycle, Part 2: Scope + Structure
One of the toughest and most critical steps of the product design lifecycle is the Scope definition stage. It also happens to be where so many people go wrong—roughly 29% of the projects get it right and succeed according to the Standish Group’s Chaos Report. Scoping isn’t something that you can spend a day doing…
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The Product Design Lifecycle, Part 1
Those who attended my Vogon Poetry talk on November 13 will notice that we’ve made a few changes to some of the visualizations that I shared. As with our software development processes, we take an iterative approach to just about everything that we do—reacting to feedback on our presentations being no exception. Overview At Don’t…
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My Favorite UX Books + Why
This is not my first list of user experience (UX) books that should be on your reading list, and to be honest, it won’t be my last. The reason why is simple: we’re always challenging and adjusting how we employ UX to our solutions. There are a lot of great books on UX out there….
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Choosing a UI Design Tool: Adobe XD
Ever since leaving my Mac (and my love affair with Sketch) and switching to a Surface Book 2, Adobe XD has been my go-to tool for wireframing and interactive prototyping. XD is currently Adobe’s only user experience design software. It supports light vector design, wireframing, and creating interactive click-through prototypes. I adopted Adobe XD during…
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Generating Print Graphics on the Web Using SVG
While redesigning our tradeshow booth, I needed an image of outer space. Google image search to the rescue, at least for a placeholder. After a few rounds of revisions, the design was nearly complete. But I was still using the placeholder star field. I could have bought a stock image, found a free one to…
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