Alex Tebbs - UI Developer | IoT in Action
UI Engineer

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About this design

I like to be flashy, but minimalism is important to me. This type of design is popular among photographers, artists, and fashion labels. The stark, unassuming nature of the design provides a blank canvas upon which content becomes the absolute focus.

Remember me? Skeuomorphic design dominated the late 2000's - early 2010's. Skeuomorphic is a funny word which essentially means design which attempts to mimic the physical world. Skeuomorphic design is dominated by gratuitous use of shading and lighting, and in more extreme cases, texture and graphics to make a digital product resemble it's physical counterpart.

When designers felt Skeuomorphic design was becoming too overbearing, there was a large shift in the design world towards stripping out excess shading, lighting, and other affordances associated with the previous trend. This left us with "Flat" design. To me, flat design means focusing on creating clean and usable interfaces without using visual flair as a crutch.

This is everything you should never do. Poor hierarchy, misuse of typefaces, dark UI patterns, no consideration for mobile devices, obnoxious color pairings, awful contrast, distracting elements. Please don't make me do this stuff.

Seriously, .

Liberal use of primary colors, larger type, and colored, illustrative, iconography are a few of the things that make this design feel whimsical or even a bit childish.

I hesitate to use primarily dark color schemes -- black-on-white text is easier to read. However, black is a powerful tool. A darker grey balance can evoke feelings of sleek, modern exclusivity and mystery. Dark schemes can be useful when creating a product or website meant to be a counterpart to an already existing property. I also think a darker UI is a better fit when working on websites that deal primarily with video/other media. This mimics our expectation that video/other media appears on a black background, as it does on our TV sets.

Serif typefaces are seldom used in web design, and for good reason. Sans-serif fonts are friendlier and have been proven to be easier to read on screens, especially at small sizes. However, when attempting to target certain markets or create a sense of luxury, a design using serifs can give the impression of a high-end restaurant menu. Furthermore, liberal white space, thin strokes, and reserved use of pastel shades give this design a feminine energy.

Swiss design (aka International Typographic Style) is a classic style which began to emerge in the 1920's, and is still influencing designers to this day. In Swiss design, typography is king. Common hallmarks of Swiss design include large, geometric typefaces (most ubiquitously Helvetica), rigid alignment to a multi-column grid, and carefully-placed flush-left text. Color is used liberally, but usually no more than one color is used in a piece.

Originating from architecture, the term "Brutalism" refers to design that is intentionally raw and unpolished. In the context of web design, this usually means rejecting commmon user interface patterns in favor of presenting a design so aggressive it almost shocks the user into sticking around to enjoy the content.

But hey, if it's not your thing, I understand. , there's plenty more.

UI Engineer
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IoT in Action

Series of event registration websites

  • Worked within existing Microsoft brand to create multiple engaging global event registration experiences.

  • Managed design feedback from Microsoft marketing teams as well as third-party stakeholders, while keeping design fresh and on-brand.

  • Rapidly implemented ad-hoc feature requests from a loosely-defined spec, due to the live and fluid nature of physical events.

Example site - Azure Percept developer bootcamp registration page.
Example site - Azure Percept developer bootcamp registration page.

While I worked with EAS, we were approached by Microsoft to design, implement, and host web services to manage event registration for a myriad of physical marketing events and conferences.

Our relationship has developed into a multi-year long engagement, with myself and my team responsible for many different iterations of web properties to handle registration for these events, as well as manage the logistical information that comes with physical events such as agendas, transportation and lodging, etc.

Example site - theintelligentedge.com homepage.
Example site - theintelligentedge.com homepage.

Dealing with live events can be challenging, due to their fluid and ever-changing nature. Even when dealing with a series of similar events with a shared agenda, differences in venue, speaker availability, and transportation logistics can necessitate a content or design refresh on the event registration website. Changes were often made to these items just hours before the event was scheduled to go live.

Showing interface for webinar viewing & Korean localization
Showing interface for webinar viewing & Korean localization

During the pandemic of 2020-22, physical events went out of style, and we assisted to transition these events to webinars or other types of purely virtual experiences.

This category of work includes a wide array of registration experiences for many, many different events, covering across Microsoft brands like Surface, Windows, and Azure, as well as integrating third party brands such as Intel and NVIDIA into the visual design. In developing these sites I became familiar with the Microsoft brand as well as their private design libraries such as MWF and Fluent.

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