My wife and I are in the final few days of a kitchen remodel. As anyone who's ever lived through a remodel can attest to, it is a big undertaking that can really disrupt an otherwise normal home life. However, for a designer it can also be a time to get re-inspired by the creative process. 

As a designer, I took on the challenge of designing the kitchen myself. I knew there would be risks but I also knew that I could also create a space that matched our family's personality much better than anyone else could. 

Ok, I know what you are thinking, what does this have to do with the practice of design at Symantec. My answer is that it has everything to do with designing and delivering a product that meets the needs of your audience. I will address three key points that will explain what I mean.

1. Understand industry best practices.

At Symantec, it is our mission to protect our customers’...

My name is Erling Amundson. I am on the User Experience team at Symantec and will be blogging about Design and User Experience at Symantec.

Vision is coming up May 7-9 at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. You might know that Vision is Symantec’s annual user conference. What you might not know is that the UX (User Experience) team attends Vision every year, doing research that helps improve the design of our products.

The UX team arranges for a number of research opportunities for people to help us better understand them, their jobs and their usage of our products. We conduct focus groups organized around a variety of high level topics. For example, last year we had focus groups on Enterprise Security, Cloud and Mobile. We also host 1:1 conversations to collect detailed feedback on many of our products. The team is always happy to chat about your experiences with our products at any of the breaks, too.

I have attended Vision several times. Every time I...

With the passing of Steve Jobs, Apple Co-Founder, I got to reflecting on what are some of the key learnings and takeaways of his design genius that he imparted on our industry and me personally.

1. Design is powerful.
Good design is powerful and something that is well-designed from the inside out has the ability to make a huge impact. Steve Jobs famously said that "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." A product that is well-crafted—whether it is digital or physical—can inspire a reaction and action from people.

2. Designs should be tasteful.
Sleek, sophisticated, exquisite, and even cute are some of the...

Designing a user interface which is solid yet flexible has definite advantages. From time-to-time your interface can and will be put to the test - whether it's something that has to go-live immediately, an update to its branding, a request to accommodate something that doesn't quite fit your model, incorporating a new feature or functionality that's cool but tricky, making something work globally, and the list goes on. There are many challenges your interface is likely to encounter in its existence and needs to be able to accommodate. Clearly, doing a full-on redesign every time you need to make a change is neither practical nor possible. The...