About Rob
Rob Adams makes products people love. He is currently employed as a design researcher by Adobe Systems, Inc.
Category Archives: interaction design
The Context Scenario – Bridging Research and Design
Smart teams begin new design projects by getting to know their customers through design research. The best ones build models of those customers, their goals, their behaviors, and/or their environments. Models like personas do an awesome job of describing what … Continue reading
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The Three Parts of a Successful Product Vision
During my time as a UX professional, I’ve worked on a number of new products. All of these products began with an idea, and when we were smart, we spent some time defining and refining that idea to build clarity … Continue reading
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Achieving Fit and Finish with Punch Lists
Hey designers. How often have you designed this… …and had it show up in the product looking like this? More often than you’d like, I’ll bet. It’s very frustrating, especially when you’ve spent days getting your comps pixel-perfect. What can … Continue reading
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Meaningful Transitions – A Motion Pattern Library
I came across this library of motion design patterns recently via my buddy Dan Saffer. I love the stylized vignettes paired with real-world examples. It reminds me of some of the work we did on the Flex Interface Guide, which … Continue reading
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Seven Questions to Ask Before You Design
All design projects start with an idea. Sometimes it’s a big idea – a new product, service, or business. Sometimes it’s a small idea – a minor tweak to something that already exists. But big or small, the quality and … Continue reading
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Nest and Human Attention
Some of you have probably seen Nest, the learning thermostat. For those who haven’t, I’d strongly recommend taking a look and watching their (short) intro video. I’m impressed by Nest, and not just by their elegant design and eco-friendly overtones. … Continue reading
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Minimum Viable Product? Try Simplest Possible Product
Business folks like to talk about the “Minimum Viable Product“, generally defined as the smallest product (in terms of functionality) that will still be accepted by the market. It’s an important concept – possibly the most important concept in new … Continue reading
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Firefox 3 Makes the Web Safer
I recently accessed my Paypal account to fork over some money to a friend for buying me a few bottles of wine. I had also recently upgraded to Firefox 3, without spending any significant amount of time looking over the … Continue reading
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A Pattern Library for Information Design
I’m not usually one to recycle links, but this pattern library for information design was too good to pass up. Christian Behrens catalogs around 55 different ways to display information that helps application designers and others go beyond blasé bar … Continue reading
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Excellent Example of Eliminating Work
Yesterday’s xkcd demonstrates a FIG best practice in action: Although one might quibble with it’s means, the Wifi autoconfig program depicted here does an excellent job of following the FIG best practice “Use the impeccable memory and powerful processing abilities … Continue reading
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