Up at 5AM: The 5AM Solutions Blog

Welcome to the 2nd issue of the UX Design & DataViz for Life. Find some of the latest UX design and data visualization news items from around the web. This month's roundup includes some exciting articles such as:

In industries, such as in healthcare and the life-sciences where complex information is distilled, compared, reanalyzed, and repurposed, visualization and user experience are essential. With the ever-growing number of projects aiming to make sense of the vast amounts data and the decreasing cost of DNA sequencing, it is more important than ever to stay current with the latest methods and practices in UX design and data visualization techniques and engage the community for feedback. This is why 5AM has started the UX Design and Dataviz for Life curated news site.

There are as many approaches to mockup as there are tech stacks and team variations. If you only have one approach or tool, you may consider how it is limiting your workflow and process. What you choose may be dictated by several things: 

Here are some of 5AM’s best practices for incorporating User Experience (UX) design into your agile software development process.

Need some quick tips on user experience (UX) design for your next project? Here are the top 7 most read UX design articles of 2013. Thank you for your support and continued readership. Let us know which article you liked most? 

Often when trying to convey an idea, we write, and write, and write some more. Though this is often the easiest and most accessible form of communication, it is not always the most effective or best user experience. In the first post of this multi post series “Beyond the Written Word: Showing, Not Telling” we will explore gamification.

In our first two blog posts on color in UX design, Color Limitations and Color and Emotions we looked at some interesting facts about color and some of the context around their meaning. Part three brings these ideas together and provides tips for choosing color palettes for you designs and graphics.

Mention Thanksgiving to any American and they will paint a picture in their head with gold, orange, red, and brown hues. It will also likely invoke a sense of family, gathering, and thankfulness. But color and the emotions we associate with them are not exclusive. If I were to show you a picture of red roses, a champagne bottle with an orange label and a gold foil box of chocolates, you would see the same colors but perhaps think of a different holiday and a different emotion.

This is the first in a three part post on color. This first post addresses some common drawbacks to using color; the second, Emotion and Color, examines common emotional interpretations of color; and the third, Designing A Color Palette, presents some approaches and tools for building a color palette.