Launch Pad

iOS Accessibility Part 1: Dynamic Type

It's more important than ever to consider all the different ways to make your app accessible to everyone and ensure an inclusive experience. Here are a few ways iOS developers can make their apps more accessible.

design

How to Avoid “Best Guess” Product Design

Too often, we see product and design teams move forward with "best guess designs" that aren't rooted in any real customer feedback. Here are some practical ways to incorporate usability testing into your team culture and get closer to what your customers really want.

design systems

On Design Systems: Scope and Governance

In this three-part series, we'll cover the various strategic and functional aspects of design systems. Part 1 looks at why we've seen a high rate of failure most often attributed to a combination of counterproductive ambitions.

design

Our Tips for Managing Design Teams Remotely (During a Crisis)

Now that we're in the midst of a global pandemic, we are all forced to work at home exclusively. So, it's more important than ever to be thoughtful about how to manage your design team. Here are our tips.

mobile

Rocket Insights wins award for "best visual design - mobile" at 2016 Davey awards.

We are proud to announce that we've won an award for "best visual design" and "best user interface" at the 2016 Davey awards for our work on the Virgin Pulse Apple Watch app. With nearly 4,000 entries from across the US and around the world, the Davey Awards honors the finest creative work from the best small agencies, firms, and companies worldwide. We wrote up our experience working on this app: What we learned designing and building the Virgin Pulse Apple Watch app [https://blog.rocketinsig

mobile

Practical Examples of 3D Touch (aka Power Moves)

The Promise In a previous blog post [https://blog.rocketinsights.com/3d-touch/] we stated how we thought 3D touch would lead to new types of interactions and app design. It would be a lie to say that 3D touch has fundamentally changed the way that apps are envisioned. However, 3D touch is slowly but surely starting to take hold. As Craig Federighi showed last week at WWDC, 3D touch is becoming pervasive: available from the lock screen, control center and, of course, available in apps (e.g., Ube

design

Rocket wins 2016 App Design Award

We’re thrilled (and kinda shocked) that our little agency won “Best Connected Device and Wearable Tech” in the 2016 App Design Awards for our work on the Virgin Pulse Apple Watch app. Awards are kinda silly but it’s still nice to receive recognition for your work. A BIG thank you to our pals at Virgin Pulse and Apple for making this project a real delight.

design

We partnered with Virgin Pulse to design and build their Apple Watch app - here’s what we learned

Rocket Insights recently partnered with Virgin Pulse [http://www.virginpulse.com/blog-post/announcing-the-virgin-pulse-apple-watch-app/] , the leader in enterprise health and fitness, to build a new Apple Watch app, and we are excited to announce the app has launched today in the Apple App Store [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/virgin-pulse/id793322895]. We worked with the team at Virgin Pulse over the course of several months to design and build the app and learned a lot in the process. Below

design sprints

Five reasons why design sprints are the best way to kick off a new product initiative

Rocket Insights [http://www.rocketinsights.com] has been in business less than a year and we have done design sprints with over half our new clients on new product initiatives. We noticed that the projects in which we’ve done design sprints have gone smoother than those in which we haven’t done them. Naturally, we wondered why. So we dug in to find out. Our conclusion is that design sprints offer amazing benefits for product teams in an extremely short period of time (one week). They accelerate

design

The Next Feature Fallacy (or, the case for simple, working systems)

Tell me if this sounds familiar: You released the first version of your product some months ago and it was an exhilarating experience. You went through the highs and lows of launch and had moments of excitement and pride when people started using your product for the first time. But...as the weeks wore on it started to become clear there just wasn’t enough usage. People aren’t using your product as much as you want them to, or as much as your business needs them to. But it’s OK, you rationalize

teams

How to ensure color consistency across an iOS project

Note: This is the first in a series of posts on teams working together better. We'll be discussing issues around that important moment when your team starts a new project and you need to set the technical direction, establish a sound architectural foundation, and ensure consistency. Here is a tip for ensuring color consistency across an iOS project. Argh! Colors! As a man once famously said, 'Argh! Colors!'. They can be frustrating to get right! Here is what an iOS project usually looks like:

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