Author: Kurt Cunningham

  • Create Fully Editable Page Caps in WordPress

    As WordPress’ Gutenberg editor moves closer and closer to a Full Site Editor (FSE), it’s important that we continue to find new and efficient ways for clients to manage all aspects of their sites. This includes allowing clients to manage page template parts that in the past we might have allowed them to edit. In…

    Screen shot of page cap

  • Maintaining A MbM WordPress Site After Launch, From Our Client’s Perspective

    Just about the first question, every potential client asks us is, “Are your WordPress websites easy to maintain?” And to be honest, it’s a fair question. (Skip the backstory and just read the interview.) WordPress is one of the, if not the, most widely used CMS platforms used to build fully editable websites. At the…

    Dare2tri interface images

  • Style Tiles Make For Quick Design Exploration

    There are a lot of ways to kick off a new project. You might host a discovery workshop that allows your team and your client or stakeholders a chance to discuss the product’s current problems and what solutions could be implemented to solve those problems. Or if a big kickoff meeting is not possible, you…

    Example style tiles

  • Hosting a Project Kickoff Workshop Remotely

    During the last decade, our team has hosted a significant number of kickoff meetings, or as we call them discovery workshops. Over the course of a few days, our client, their stakeholders, and our team work to understand what problems our client is currently facing with their technology solution, what issues their users face, and…

    computer and note pad sitting on desk

  • Creating Flexible, Responsive WordPress Gutenberg Layouts

    We use a grid-based layout approach where we assign columns to span specific widths and the content contained within that column stretches to its parent’s bounding box. When asked to build this specific client site on WordPress, this wasn’t and still isn’t a native feature of Gutenberg. So we fixed that issue.

    screen shot of grid block

  • Keeping Sketch Symbols and Live Design Systems In Sync Is a Full-Time Job … So Don’t Do It Anymore

    As a front-end designer at a service-oriented development firm, it can be hard to maintain a design-to-code workflow that is both efficient and practical. While there are more tools and plugins than ever at our disposal, there are also more tools and plugins than ever. At Made by Munsters, our design team is proficient in…

    Sketch application symbols

  • Roundup — Our Missing Communication Tool

    For the past several years, we have been working to develop a better agile process. We revised everything from how our designers and developers work together to how we communicate feature updates, bug fixes, and deployments to our clients.

    Interface image

  • Determining User Needs Based On User Personas

    As product designers and developers, we solve problems that our users encounter. Our work, hopefully, provides solutions to tasks that either take users too long to complete, confuse them or didn’t exist in the first place. But how do we determine what solutions or features are needed? Beyond data and interviewing users, we need a…

    Sticky notes on whiteboard

  • Collect User Data For Cheap

    We found, over our company’s existence, that collecting data doesn’t have to be an expensive venture. Nor does it have to be a long-drawn-out, time-consuming phase of a project. As agile designers and developers, we collect data during the life span of the project.

    Sticky notes

  • Build Your Product For Day One

    That goal: Build for day one. Don’t focus on what’s to come a year from now or even three months from now. Focus on your first release.

    Staff member planning out roadmap