I’m a sucker for anything that takes text data and turns it into something visual. This week I came across Location History Visualizer, a tool that creates a heat map using your Google Location History.

Painting multiple rooms or even a single accent wall in your home can feel like an overwhelming project: There’s picking colours, taping trim, sanding, priming and, oh yeah, doing the actual painting.

Maurice Cherry pays it forward. The designer runs several projects that highlight black creators online, including designers, developers, bloggers and podcasters. His design podcast Revision Path, which recently released its 250th episode, has won awards from AIGA and the Creative Market Awards. He told us about his work process, lessons he’s learned from guests, and all his favourite gear, from professional mics to a four-in-one multipen.

There are a bunch of things we take for granted each day. We pick up our smartphones to check messages or play games. We get in our cars and drive off trusting that it will work as we expect and the building we work in won't collapse. In the past, the designs of those, and thousands of other objects and devices we take for granted, would have been drawn with the complex calculations undertaken by engineers. Today much of that legwork is carried out in software. And it turns out many of the things we depend on where designed using an application called Altair.

Patrick Moberg has wasted hours of your life, or of the life of someone next to you in a waiting room. His studio Dots created the beautiful and addictive mobile game Dots (the thinking person's Candy Crush), and its sequels Two Dots and Dots & Co, all of which are on millions of phones. We talked to him about the game development process, his favourite games, and his children's book.

At the end of a long day you're tired, you're lethargic, you just want to fall into the warm embrace of a couch and flick on the sports channel. Or National Geographic. Or that one with all the Real Housewives programs on it. You want to feel happy.

The key to feeling good at home isn't just about how much TV you can binge watch from the couch - it's about how you design every room of your house.

If you're learning CSS, or you want a friendly introduction to some of its terms and concepts, try 30 Seconds of CSS. Each entry on this site shows a different bit of code, demonstrates the result, and explains how each part of the code works.

As the lead product designer at WhatsApp, Charlie Deets makes decisions that affect over 1.5 billion users each month. That means solving some unusual challenges, such as building a chat interface that even illiterate users can navigate. It also means distinguishing WhatsApp's visual "stories" feature from similar features in Snapchat and Instagram.

Looking to bring some character your weekly poker night? These casino-quality cards let you learn the fundamentals of typography and design while your buddy across the table spends another five minutes deciding on whether or not to fold. Now, you can pick them up on sale for 25 percent off their usual price.

In his two and a half years at Fitbit, Jonah Becker has helped the company outrun (pun!) industry giant Apple. As VP of Design, he oversees UX and industrial design teams for Fitbit's line of health-tracking wearables. Before that, Becker spent 15 years running design studio One & Co., which HTC bought in 2013. We asked him how he works.

Branding is a critical part of any company's marketing strategy, which is why many are willing to fork out the cash to hire graphic designers capable of creating stunning visual content that gets their name out there. With the Graphic Design Bootcamp, you can take the first step towards building a career as one of these experts with eight hours of training.

Many of us created two versions of our websites back in the day; a regular desktop version and a mobile version. Using some fancy code, we pushed mobile devices to a m.version of our sites while everyone else went to the regular www.version. But with the advent of responsive sites, we need a way to move all our "m." users to the new, responsive site without breaking old URLs. Google has provided some guidance on doing that.

Darby Barber is a creative designer at General Motors, currently part of the Chevy trucks team. She joined GM at the beginning of 2016 after graduating from the College of Creative Studies. At 23, she is most likely one of the youngest female automotive designers currently in the industry. And quite possibly the most badass.

Building something as complex as a car is an expansive collaborative effort calling on people with diverse backgrounds. There are, of course, the engineers designing the actual mechanics, but there are also the aesthetic and tactile elements that affect how you experience the car, each carefully chosen by designers.

So you can design a mobile app, but can you make it enjoyable - even fun - to use? If your skills could use work in that area, the UI & UX Design Bootcamp is here to help. Lifehacker Australia readers can pick up this important training for only $53 AUD , a savings of more than 90% off RRP.

A little colour can work wonders to liven up a room. If you're looking to decorate a room with a splash of colour, use the "rule of three" to pull it all together.

Whether you're grabbing a drink at a party, a barbecue, or in the office break room, this simple plastic cup insulation trick can keep your drink's temperature exactly how you want it, for longer.

Gender issues are a sensitive topic, but how heavily have you considered them when designing onscreen elements?

Many Lifehacker readers are no stranger to the computing-intensive needs of creative fields like design, architecture, manufacturing and the entertainment industry. Specialised software requires more than a traditional computer. You need a powerful machine like Dell’s Precision range of desktop towers, racks and mobile workstations -- independent software vendor (ISV)-certified and rigorously engineer-tested to maximise your workflow.