Insights

The importance of creating a vibrant culture for your remote team

As the coronavirus spreads, so does the new normal. For those who were around in the days immediately following 9/11, it’s strangely reminiscent. A new terminology took root (“If you see something, say something”), the news cycle became perpetual, and we adopted new practices, like actually being screened at airports – not just sprinting through

Not so long ago, before ExpandTheRoom went distributed, I would start my workday with a commute that took me down the Westside Highway along the Hudson River. At 46th Street I would pass by the awe-inspiring USS Intrepid aircraft carrier which is moored there and hosts the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum. Every time

A few years ago, the forthcoming GDPR shook up the web design industry — online companies and agencies alike scrambled to understand the legal jargon behind the law so they could protect themselves and their clients. As a response, we created a GDPR service offering to educate our clients on the law and ensure their

Large design agencies might lure you in with a big name, but it’s the lean and nimble agencies who consistently provide real value to their partners.

Your big idea has a starting point. A place where you take it from a thought you had in line at the coffee shop to something with forward movement that you’re going to make happen. Make the path you’re about to take an informed one, when it comes to the flexibility and usability of design.

I have been thinking a lot about Mental Models lately — or rather, why it is so hard to change them. My husband and I recently had our first child and she wouldn’t drink cold bottles. Every time we prepared to go out we had to get together our bottle warming system. We would make

Released on December 6th, 2018, WordPress 5.0 was one of the most anticipated and hotly debated releases in WordPress history. It introduced Gutenberg, the new block based post editor and a drastic departure from the Classic Editor that has been included with WordPress since its inception. In this article we will be taking a closer

Update: Over the last few years, ETR has learned a lot more about how to be successful as a distributed team. We’ve compiled these insights in a related article aimed at helping other organizations better cope with the remote work challenges posed by COVID-19. Each year in Q1, ExpandTheRoom (ETR) has a senior offsite meeting.

ExpandTheRoom (ETR) recently published its first official code of conduct, which verbalizes our expectations for behavior in the workplace and establishes guidelines for enforcing those standards. Like the documents from which we (liberally) borrowed to construct it, we’ve made our code open source in the hope that it will spark conversations similar to the ones we’ve

In many ways, process is the currency on which designers trade. The ability to tell the story of how you arrived at a particular design solution is every bit as important as anyone’s design deliverable itself. The ability to articulate how we’re going to turn a potential client’s great idea into a functional, valuable product

If you design and build websites, you probably feel confident using typefaces. However, when it comes to choosing typefaces, you may have trouble knowing where to look and what to look for. As Associate Design Director at ExpandTheRoom, I design digital products for a variety of brands, from small non-profits to large publishing companies. Part