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Verbal+Visual at Shillington New York

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Last month our Shillington New  York students were lucky to learn the ins and outs of UX/UI design from Thomas Quigley of Verbal+Visual. And as a lucky bonus, Quigley was joined by Aenea Liang, who graduated from #shillony last year and now works at Verbal+Visual as a Visual Designer.

Quigley approaches all new projects with an artistic eye and a practical solution, which are important fundamentals for successful UX design.

“UX has helped me to reshape how much a project can accomplish when taken from the point of ideation, to research, to design and finally to validation.”

His lecture walked us through the basics of interface design and the most important considerations.

Our students especially loved how Quigley walked us through his philosophy of Interface Design by analyzing a remote control. We were tasked to redesign the humble remote control using three key principles: simplify, organise and hide. In only 15 minutes!

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The exercise taught us that good design should be easy to digest—the user shouldn’t have to figure out what they’re looking at. We’re aiming to create a UX experience that people will just “get” without needing a lot of explanation. The exercise also reminded us that the design principles used in UX design translate to many design projects regardless of medium. We need to keep the demographic—whether we call them user or reader—in mind at all times.

“As designers we make a lot of assumptions,” said Quigley. “Digital design allows us to validate those assumptions.”

If you’re a budding or established UX/UI designer, you’d probably like to know Quigley’s favourite tools. Here are his top four:

  1. UserTesting. Easy to get on-demand feedback from your target market—wherever they are—so you can protect your brand, boost conversions and provide amazing experiences.
  2. Invision. The world’s leading prototyping, collaboration and workflow platform.
  3. Sketch. Gives you the power, flexibility and speed you always wanted in a lightweight and easy-to-use package.
  4. Pixate. Change the way you design with the most powerful prototyping platform on the planet.

Eager for more? Follow Quigley on Twitter and check out his full portfolio. And be sure to check out Verbal+Visual’s blog, especially Aenea’s The Principles of Design!

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