Design Scanner

Designed in 2007

An app to inspire and educate creative professionals.

Design Scanner scans the best design sites, articles and tutorials on the web, presenting the content in a beautiful and customizable interface, tailored to a users interests. The result is an experience that brings together inspirational design and informative articles, as well as a utility that finds and manages the enormous, but often overwhelming world of tutorials.

Two apps in one

As a designer I come across great articles, resources, tutorials and inspiration all day. Aggregator apps are something all of us rely on to help manage the massive amount of digital stimulus we allow into our lives. As designers it can be even more intense as we are constantly judging other work, searching for answers to questions and trying to stay on top of the ever-changing landscape where technology and

design are converging. I have my favorite blogs, sites and RSS feeds that provide me with this information, yet, after searching for months, I was unable to find an aggregator that pulled in topics of interest related to design and inspiration and also did a good job at corralling tutorials that come to be so useful for designers on a daily basis.

THE BUILDING BLOCKS

Setting a grid

The grid layout is essential to great responsive design and clean content presentation. I chose this as my primary layout but managing both portrait and landscape layouts proved to be a challenge. I hadn’t taken into account the nav bar between both orientations and also consideration for different gutter space between tiles.

2. Establishing space

Customizing search and article results using stacked tiles in different sizes was also a requirement. I want the user to be able to define the view (in future revs) so I developed stackable tiles to suit both orientations. As a result, a user would be able to merge different tiles with one swipe.