I recently launched a conversation on Think Company’s Slack asking my designer teammates how they think through accessibility in their work. Web accessibility is a topic I’m passionate about—especially when considered as part of the web design process from start to finish (rather than as a consideration later on). I wanted to know more about the designer’s perspective on how and when accessibility becomes top-of-mind during the design process. Read on for some thoughts and resources from my fellow Thinkers.   Luke Pettway Hello, designers! 👋🏼 I was just curious: what materials do you use when you are designing things … Read more of the post Slack Chat: How Do Designers Think Through Accessibility?

We take adding new Thinkers to heart. Think Company has one of the highest retention rates in our industry because of the care we put into showing everyone who works here how much we appreciate them.   Think Company is successful because we provide a supportive, caring, and fair environment that is rich with culture, challenge, and learning so we can attract, develop and retain a uniquely skilled, capable, and committed team that always operates in alignment with our core values.   – Taken from a slide created at an internal meeting in 2018, when we revisited our goals and … Read more of the post Our Application Process

In the physical world, like in a drugstore or a supermarket, I have been trained to expect certain wayfinding points. Look up for aisle signs—they serve as broad menu items, mimicking that of a universal navigation within an interface. There are lane numbers with broad categorizations. But, I am also trained to find objects by looking for other, related objects. The vitamins are near the pharmacy because both are loosely “health related.” The diapers, family planning merchandise, and feminine hygiene products are proximal. The milk is near the cheese, almost always in the back of a store. The fresh produce … Read more of the post Object-Oriented UX, Part 1

In part four, we looked at the difference between hierarchical and collaborative conversations. Now we bring it all together and ask, “What can we do?” The answer is, a lot. There are, as it turns out, many solutions to how we can do a better job of talking to each other, and any one of these are approaches you can try in your own lives or organizations. Call out good behavior When’s the last time you saw a great comment in a comments section? Did you call it out? Tweet about it? Where is the “top ten comments of the … Read more of the post The Content Strategy of Civil Discourse, Part 5

Pattern libraries are a valuable tool for organizations large and small. In this article, we’ll explain how we’re making pattern libraries even easier to use and maintain. At Think Company, we know that pattern libraries (also referred to as component libraries, UI libraries, or code kits) are excellent tools for enforcing consistency across an organization’s products. They’re a central source of truth for design and code, and they reduce repeated work. If you’ve read Greg’s post on the benefits of using pattern libraries, then you know a pattern library benefits many different folks in an organization. One of those is of … Read more of the post Make It Easy for Your Developers to Use Your Pattern Library