User Experience

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Decide: How will the interface look? (Part 4)

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Decide: How will the interface look? (Part 4)

Practically speaking, how should an interface look? The answer is situational and depends upon your users. After all, when you design for a client, you are looking out for…

Decide: How do you structure content? (Part 3)

Decide: How do you structure content? (Part 3)

No matter what the content of your database is, having an established hierarchy is absolutely vital if you want the end users to successfully use the software—especially if one of your goals is to provide updates that are intuitive and do not require extensive retraining for your user base. The stakeholders must…

Decide: What kind of development work will you do? (Part 2)

Decide: What kind of development work will you do? (Part 2)

Occasionally, it needs to be said that as developers we should strive for dev work that, well, works. A beautifully designed layout may be wonderful at first glance, but it cannot create a positive user experience if it doesn’t have…

Decide: Who are you designing for? (Part 1)

Decide: Who are you designing for? (Part 1)

Who are you designing for? The simple-yet-complex answer is end users. They’re frequently not who’s paying us, but end users are the most important stakeholder for your software design. Throughout the development process, they should also be…

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Benefits of Offline Syncing

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Benefits of Offline Syncing

If your FileMaker database is hosted, accessing it requires a continuous internet connection both for the server or hard drive it’s hosted on, as well as for whichever device the end-user is accessing it through. But what happens if the end-user isn’t able to have…

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Comparative Visual Communication

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Comparative Visual Communication

As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Many individuals best process and learn information through visuals, and many concepts are best presented through an image or illustration. However, there is a crucial question to ask…

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Making FileMaker-Compatible SVG Icons with Adobe Illustrator

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Making FileMaker-Compatible SVG Icons with Adobe Illustrator

When FileMaker 14 was released in 2015, it included several major new features. Notably, FileMaker was able to support buttons with icons. A staple of web and app design, being able to now incorporate them into Claris databases was a game-changer. These days…

Affordances and Signifiers

Affordances and Signifiers

At times, user interface design can feel like leading the proverbial horse to water: You can get them there, but that does not mean they are going to drink (or correctly use the software). To be clear: this may be caused by…

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Where ya headed?

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Where ya headed?

In software design, it’s common for users to not notice a well-designed feature while almost always taking note of the less-developed options. There’s a simple reason for this: when software operates the way users anticipate…

Dark Patterns

Dark Patterns

A dark pattern is when developers intentionally design a website or app to manipulate users into providing information or making a purchase they don’t otherwise intend to. They are not exclusive to any particular industry, but…

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Creating a Calendar Tool

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Creating a Calendar Tool

Calendars are a key part of any event software. If you use FileMaker to track events, appointments, meetings, etc., there will be time where you or your client will think of how helpful it would be to view your events on a calendar. If you want to make a calendar…

User-led icon sets

User-led icon sets

Have you ever used an app or website where the navigation process was a nightmare? You may have clicked on an icon or link anticipating one action only to get a different kind of result. It’s not only frustrating and confusing, but makes you second-guess every action you take from that point onward. Trust has been lost.