Working in tech and design requires constantly keeping up with the latest techniques, tools, technologies, and industry news. Here are a few of the things our team found useful over the last week.

Design

7 principles of icon design

uxdesign.cc
Designing great icons is no easy task. Here is a list of principles to follow.
Anne

Biggest wins and fails in 25 years of UX columns

nngroup.com
Even the best don’t get everything right!
Mark

Cancel vs close: design to distinguish the difference

nngroup.com
This looks like a small detail problem, but losing data unintentionally is a very frustrating thing for users and we risk losing their trust. They might use a competitor’s website instead and it’s imaginable that this would impact sales.
Junta

Responsive web design turns ten

ethanmarcotte.com
Wow, I can’t believe it’s been ten years since the term “responsive” became a common part of the web design lexicon. If you’re new to the game and haven’t read the original article, I highly recommend it as a piece of important history.
Mark

The worst logos ever, redesigned

behance.net
This is both a rather hilarious look at some unfortunate logo designs, and a great example of how they can be improved massively with a little care and attention.
Mark

Tech

How do I prevent Scrum from turning great developers into average developers?

softwareengineering.stackexchange.com
Scrum, and in particular if you’re “doing Scrum right”, is the cause of much passionate discourse in the engineering community. I found this to be a very interesting read on the topic.
Mark

Rails Bytes

railsbytes.com
Starting a new Rails project often involves setting up the same old gems which can often take 2 or 3 hours to get everything right. Rails Bytes aims to reduce the repetition by providing a number of executable recipes which will do all the hard work for you.
Adam A

railsnew.io

railsnew.io
A web app that lets you pick and choose which of the various options to include when generating a new Rails app. When you’re done making your selections, you’re left with a command you can copy and paste into your command line. While this is still a work in progress, it answers one of the biggest recently discussed pain points when using Rails.
Ian