I've really been enjoying this podcast series. It's helped me validate my thoughts of learning more about business. Keep it up!

My answers...

1. I've been using a new web-app called Are.na to collect my inspiration. It's being advertised as a minimalist Pinterest. I use it to collect Design, Type, Illustration inspiration, but not really for UI. I was using Lingo App for an overall repository, but I reached their free limit and didn't want to pay. It was a good experience, and I would recommend if you're willing to pay.

2. It depends on what project I am working on. My day job is a UX/UI Designer, so most of the time I spend looking through competitor flows to see how they deal with their interactions. I create a folder for each competitor and start screenshotting every screen that's relevant to put in their folder. When it comes to personal design projects, I use Are.na to see my board of inspiration. Because it is a hodge-podge of many different ideas, I feel that it stimulates different thoughts and ideas.

Here is my personal Are.na channel: https://www.are.na/ryan-chen

Invision has a tool called Boards. https://www.invisionapp.com/blog/boards-share-design-inspiration-assets/

Designbetter.co: https://www.designbetter.co/podcast

Inside Intercom (occasionally features a designer): https://blog.intercom.com/category/podcast/

www.tictail.com

Typewolf

Tomi Um did a set of illustrations for Casper: http://blog.casper.com/

Thank you Zoe for your feedback!

I definitely agree with your first statement. As we did user research, we discovered that a common user behavior within their current application was to Export to Excel and Print. It was clear to us that those functionalities were integral to their process because, like you said, to fill a gap between two softwares.

Now the issue facing us with the client is to make design recommendations that would help the user get the information they want as quickly and efficiently as possible. This, however, needs to be introduced gradually. This may be the hardest thing with redesigning internal applications for companies that have mass amounts of data to sift through.

On your thoughts on Excel--I am not fully convinced that it is bad UX/UI. As a designer, I rarely use Excel. But the fact is that millions of people use Excel as an integral part of their job. So far, nothing has replaced it--and Google's alternative clearly is a reskin of Excel.

So if millions of people use it and have been using it for years...does that mean it is good UX/UI? I am torn...

http://productpages.xyz/