12 May 2017

Prototyping Instagram's Filter UX

To those who claim you can’t prototype mobile user interfaces with the tools of the web, I raise you the following tutorial. In this play, we’ll use Vue JS to re-create a workflow from Instagram’s mobile app: uploading a photo and applying a filter.

  • Vue
  • Long Form

12 May 2017

Animate with Swagger (and Stagger)

Animations make the web a far more interesting place. In this post, we’ll learn how to roll our own staggered list animation with Vanilla JS and CSS. No frameworks or plugins. 60 frames-per-second or bust!

  • Vanilla JS

5 May 2017

Fake it 'til you Make it

This is not an essay on the merit (or lack thereof) of using fake data in your prototype. Instead, this play gives you the tools you need to elevate your game from Lorem Ipsum to data that at least resembles what will eventually go in the interface you’re building

  • Vanilla JS
  • Vue
  • React

4 May 2017

Working with Tabular Data

Designing tables in Sketch can be downright frustrating. And despite the myriad plugins that advertise “[an] easy way to populate your design with meaningful data,” I’m convinced that code is often a better tool for the job. This play will get you up and iterating over data sets with Javascript, like a pro, in ~5 minutes.

  • Vanilla JS
  • Vue
  • React

4 May 2017

Componentization

In programs like Sketch, we keep things DRY (“don’t repeat yourself”) by turning our design decisions into “symbols.” It’s no different in front-end land, so this play will introduce you to a few different ways of encapsulating your designs as “components.”

  • Vanilla JS
  • Vue
  • React

4 May 2017

Simulating Asynchronous Events

Page refreshes are so 2005. Single page applications (SPA) are the new hotness, and offer a variety of design challenges. One such challenge is letting users know what’s happening while a request (e.g., a form submission) does it thing. This play will give you the fundamentals needed to prototype such situations.

  • Vanilla JS
  • Vue
  • React