Let's make something they haven't seen before.
do your homework, stay on your toes.
Listen to the users, study the problem space, and keep your options flexible. The goal of my design process is to work with the user's needs, the business goals, and the technical limitations to create a design that's prioritized for impact, and flexible to allow growth of new features or formats.
start with the big picture.
Who is the user? What are their needs? What's the format? What's the deadline? Is there time to push the envelope and innovate? If not, how do we take known, comfortable design principles and make something useful and delightful? At this stage, it's about making sure the client is having their real needs met. If they want customer engagement, perhaps a pamphlet isn't what they need, but an instructional video or an interactive infographic. It's about keeping the goal in sight and the mind open. |
unclog the flow.
What are the stories connecting the user's needs? What usability research has been done or needs to be done? What is the priority of user needs that will dictate the logical structure of the product? What needs should we address now, and what do we need to leave for future iterations? How does this fit into the business model? This is where the rubber hits the road and the choices start getting difficult. My job is to communicate clearly with everyone in the room, from dev teams to business managers, and keep the user's needs at the forefront of the design process. Iteration, iteration, iteration. And again iteration. |
get the details right.
How can we use visual design principles to assist users? Is the product visually consistent and useful? How can we integrate the brand presence in such a way as to enhance the delight of the experience- making the enjoyment and the brand inseparable? I've always taken a very active, if not solely responsible, role in the visual design of an interface. It's my belief that good visual design of a product is integral to the goal of meeting a user's needs. Thoroughness, thoughtfulness, and consistency are marks of good design. |
step out of the box.
Capturing a vision sometimes takes more than wireframes and slick icons. Sometimes it takes an animated video-prototype to wow investors, or slick tongue-in-cheek logos to catch people's eye on the street. And other times, it takes something handmade, hand-drawn, friendly while still informative. One of the great joys of this work is going back and forth between different mediums, different solutions. With my background in logo/graphic design, as well as animation and illustration, I have the tools to tackle more.
keep learning.
Starting my career in research settings at Brown University and Microsoft Research set the course for my ongoing mindset: Keep asking questions. Don't be afraid to change directions. Be open to picking up new tools. UX/UI is a new and evolving field of expertise with its own subset of disciplines and specialties, with an ever-changing dialogue and toolset. That means some things change; but not all do. From day one, my top concern has been and will always be the user and their story.
All the rest is frosting.
All the rest is frosting.