I always enjoy reading real world examples of the design process in action. It’s fascinating to see the thought process and choices made in arriving at a certain design.
I especially like 37 Signals’ occasional ‘Design Decisions’ posts where they talk through the process of redesigning an element of one of their web apps.
Here is a collection of the ones that I most enjoyed:
- Redesigning help
- Saying more in less space
- Support request form redesign
- Signup chart redesign
- Campfire transcript page redesign
- Calendar picker redesign
- Prompting for an upgrade
- Saving space without losing meaning
- Designing the calendar strip
- Redesigning the Highrise list view page
- Redesigning the permissions page
- Designing the ‘Add Anywhere’ feature
I also highly recommend reading through the comments to each post.
There’s rarely universal agreement with the decisions made, which really highlights how a particular design objective can be approached from many different angles.