A dribbble chapter at Infragistics

 

Show and tell for designers based in Sofia

In the world of design, dribbble is the go to place for sharing your own design concepts and ideas and a treasure island for designers wanting to browse, comment or get inspired by shots (screenshots of the works of others). I believe that this vivid online community is very well known across all digital professionals, if not by the name, then most likely by the distinctive pink basketball logo.

This week the fifth Sofia dribbble meetup took place with the support of Infragistics and the design team from our office in Bulgaria. Together with the design fellas from KickflipX, the same team behind one of the most memorable workshops at UXify Bulgaria 2015, we brainstormed topics for discussion and made sure there were enough swag items, cold beers and fresh chips. We also selected a brand new location in one of the newest co-working spaces in Sofia, 1Hub.

The discussion part exceeded our expectations and the two hours that we planned were only enough for half of the topics. We kicked off the meetup with a discussion about content strategy. As designers, we all agreed that content, not design, should happen first. But we also agreed that this rarely happens.

People shared their workarounds for lorem ipsum, like stripping all the content from your closest competitor’s product or making up funny copy, as described in an earlier Infragistics blog, “Wireframing and Deadpool”. Some people also shared that even when there is content, it is rarely the real deal because it may not have been written by a copywriter. Sometimes it is badly structured, written by the customer themselves, or overwhelmingly long and complicated.

Of course, the topic of “dribbblisation” of design was brought up (the danger of polishing your concepts too much, too early in the process) and risks this involves. A small orange basketball served diligently as the token-to-speak and helped us with the moderation even when opinions got intense.

The token-to-speak orange basketball in the middle held by Vasil Enchev (uffo), a dribbbler with
sharp sense of humor, who calmed us down when we got too serious. Image attributed to the author.

Next we discussed some practical topics, including different ways to earn traction as a designer. The best dribbblers in the room shared their ways of getting followers in the community and the types of projects that converted best. One of the group’s insights was to join “challenges”, e.g. Daily UI elements for 100 days, as a proactive participant. Darin Dimitrov (deezel) shared how a blog post he wrote a while ago got him tons of freelance contracts and with that we kicked off a short discussion about blogging. After another short discussion on contracting as a freelancer and making sure that you don’t get tricked by the client, we settled down to a lengthy discussion about productivity hacks when working out of the office. To be more precise, we spoke about how we focus and stay productive during occasional work-from-home days, working from home on a long-term basis or working from a co-working space. Our hosts from 1Hub also joined the discussion, sharing some reasons and insights regarding why their customers book a desk rather than work from home. When working from a home office, we discussed ideas like pomodoro, a standing desk, and dedicating a certain area of your home to work, work and work.

The most awaited and exciting part of our small event took place during the closing minutes according to tradition. There was a license raffle for which Infragistics provided 5 one-year licenses for the latest version of Indigo Sudio. Happy one year of free prototyping, remote usability testing on indigodesigned and code generation to all the winners!!!

Photo or it didn’t happen, 3 guys and 2 gals went home with licenses for Indigo Studio. Another lucky
group was drawn for an Infragistics T-shirt laying on the desk in front of me. Image attributed to the author.