Have you ever had a project that is too big or outside your comfort zone and you have no idea where to start? I have no idea where you start either, but start somewhere. The point is that it doesn’t matter. Here’s some tips for when you have something in front of you but you don’t know where to go with it.
I’ve seen UX people run the entire gamut of programming knowledge. I think I sit somewhere in the middle. I can read code and do some basic things but if I were a client I wouldn’t trust me to code up your website. I know some incredible coders (I recommend my friend Tom at moreco.de for anything you need in that realm). I started in college with Computer Science. I switched because there’s two things about code that didn’t completely jive with me. One, I was not very good at it. Two, I didn’t enjoy it very much. I found my passion in UX with my major switch. However, my profession is not one that I believe that should let me (or you) off the hook of having coding knowledge.
One of my New Year’s resolutions was to increase my coding knowledge this year. I’m using CodeAcademy.com and some other resources. For me, I find that the more I actually sit down and fully understand what I’m writing the more I do enjoy it.
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Sorry everyone for the absence. This site got hacked and it took a while to get things going again. We’re back now. I’ve lost a few posts but, fortunately, that seems to be the extent of the casualties.
I’ll be doing some updates to the site, some obvious and some not so obvious. I’ll also try to provide much more consistent coverage in 2012.
Keep designing and I’m looking forward to what 2012 brings.
In the music industry, singles are very important. They are less important for established bands and groups, but are enormously important to brand new and debuting artists. Singles are windows into the artist and if the audience doesn’t like it upon first listen then they likely will not come back. The same process is followed for designers.
If you are not established people will likely take a look at your stuff and decide within the first 5 seconds whether or not they like your work. Whether it’s your website, portfolio, business card or something else, your “single” will decide if people will hire you, recommend you, or ignore you. Sometimes if a first single doesn’t work there’s a chance for a follow-up that does, but that’s rare.
The NFL playoffs start this weekend and I’m very excited. My Atlanta Falcons are the #1 seed in the NFC and I just got NFL Network this week so I’m excited about the awesome coverage they do. Today let’s take a look at how we can take the basic playoffs structure and apply it to design. We’ll ignore two aspects of the NFL playoffs for the purposes of this exercise: 1) The AFC-NFC split and 2) The top two seeds in each conference get a BYE.
1. Top designs get in. We started off with 32 and paired that down to the top 12. Now, you aren’t usually going to create 32 different designs but the idea is that you have a sizable selection to pick from. Apple does this with their designs. They make sure they have 10 designs to pick from. Not 10 derivatives of the same solution but 10 different solutions.
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3D Movies were a huge trend in 2010. A few movies got it right, but most screwed up royally. A lot of them did it post-production just to have 3D and it served no purpose other than to say it was 3D. It added no value to the movie and, in some cases, even ate into the quality of the movie.
The lesson learned here is don’t follow a trend just because it’s a trend.
In UX Design the same problem can arise. We can’t use HTML5 just to use it. We need to use it in a way such that it adds value to the product. Big typography looks great for certain uses in which it fits, but it can’t be haphazardly thrown in a design where it does not fit. Think about your design elements like this: Every single element and attribute of that element should have a purpose. If it’s not serving some sort of purpose then remove it, it’s just bloating your design unnecessarily.
There will be a new format for posts on XenoAbe Design from now on. Short. The posts I’ve put together usually take a lot more time and research than they may appear to at first glance. To make this a much more active website, and community, I will be making shorter posts more frequently. I hope you like the change and I implore you to encourage any of your friends/family/coworkers/acquaintances/world domination hopefuls interested in usability, UX, or technology in general to visit and leave their opinions. I’m supposed to be the expert, but that in no manner means I can’t learn things from others with varying opinions.
By the way, the Kristen Chenoweth reference simply means the posts will be short, sweet, and displaying my talents (I know her from Pushing Daisies and not any broadway plays so I get to hold on to my man card).
Testing? Ew, gross. That sounds like something I loathed during my school years. No, no, this is something else. Usability testing is putting designs up against real users to see how they perform. Let’s take a simple example as an illustration.
A/B Test
This is a simple A/B test. Even testing as simple as this can yield some pretty impressive results. We’ll save the different kinds of testing for a different article but we’ll look at why testing should not be skipped in any design process.
This is a response article to Alexander Dawson’s hierarchy of website users’ needs in his Six Revisions article Human Behavior Theories That Can be Applied to Web Design. His is an adaptation of Maslow’s hierarchy. Shown below is Dawson’s hierarchy:
Dawson's Hierarchy of website users' needs
This is interesting from a number of standpoints so we’ll discuss those points as well as explain why I don’t think he got it 100% correct.
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