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“…if we were focused on making everything easy to learn, rather than easy to use, we would all be riding tricycles. The bicycle is harder to learn to ride, but much more powerful.”
- Douglas Engelbart
UX is a lot deeper than where the buttons go, it's about workflow, and architectural decisions can constrain UI. Using a UNIXy suite type model? You might have trouble editing an earlier decision without undoing all work after that, unless you are very careful.
Some architectures might make auto discovery and drop boxes hard and users will need to type IP addresses themselves. I'm convinced a top notch UI has to be a goal from the start, or it will take twice the work.
Good UX means the actual functionality is designed based on the psychology of the users, not the logic of the task. An undo button is worth more than beautiful code. 2 redundant buttons that do almost the same thing, that could just as well be done by manually entering parameters, is fine if that's what users want and it will save time and stop mistakes.
You're not modeling a task, you're modeling how a user does a task.
Next up, white space. It really is important. Packing 200k things on screen will annoy everyone. Modern UI design might disappoint some in terms of aesthetics, many people hate the ultraminimal look, but the layout is pretty good and paying attention to how everyone else does it makes sense.
When was the last time you needed a manual or google to use an Android app? Almost never for me, because they are self documenting and things just work.
1. I downloaded photoshop
2. Opened it
3. It was white page
4. I drew a red box
5. Stared at it (was it good? was it bad?)
6. Looked at other sites and tried recreating them
7. Eventually I learned how to use photoshop but I still didn't get what made things look good, I just knew X looked better than Y???
8. I started to learn graphic design.
9. I learned lot of design principles, art functions, colors, reptition, texture, ... yet it still didn't click.
10. Gave up but got interested in digital painting timelapse videos, where authors would go over why they are doing what they are doing.
11. I had epiphany!! Everything in design should have purpose. Every thing that's visible or not should have a purpose, a feeling, a message. Everything should be intentional. Participated in lots of competitions and overtime honed visual skills.
12. Ok now I could design beautiful stuff but what to put again, I can make it pretty but what should be the content. Introducing UX research.
13. Turns out you should do some research and gather some details on what you want on the page. Who are you building for, what do they want to see or do, what do you want to show/sell/convey.
Summary of few rules:
- Elements of design: Line, Shape, Color, Texture, Pattern, Negative Space, Mass, Contrast, Proportion, Proximity, Spacing, Balance, Photography, Positioning, Variety/Richness, Consistency, Movement, Rhythm, Tone Of message, Theme, Typography.. you manipulate these to do rest of things.
- Things together are seen as one, things same color are seen as together, and vice versa.
- Contrast makes things stand out, contrast can be achieved by altering color, size, spacing, arrows.
- Colors give feeling (excited, calm, stability), there are color pairs that go together well. Blue/orange, white/red... There can be pairs of 2,3,4 or 5 colors. Some colors don't go well together ie. blue/red. Cue human biology.
- Fonts are either serif or non-serif. No point in memorizing all fonts, just browse good font pairs. Usually different fonts for heading and paragraph makes the contrast easy to achieve. Again different fonts for different purposes like colors: think happy birthday font vs lawyer office logo.
- Best navigation patterns are which are common, not new ones.
- Anything that is inconsistent should be intentional or it leads to confusion. ie. differing space between buttons, random font sizes, different shades of colors, etc.
- Use inspirations liberally and then pick what you feel will work for your project, I use dribbble.
- Colors next to each other look different then alone or other colors. Brain automatically fills up few things. Think about optical illusions where one side of box looks brighter or a dress looks like its different color but both are the same color, but due to their proximity to other colors make brain interpret them different.
- keep in mind how colors work in nature, there is blue ambient color everywhere even in shadows, sun is at top and that affects how we see shadows and see things with shadows having depth.
There is somewhat standardized method to do research, I tried documenting all artifacts that a UX designer working in corporate would produce:
-Define Target Segment
-User segment matrix (access, value)
-Observe/Talk/Analyze Figure out how things are
-Find out possible paint points
-Experience Map / Journey map
-Empathy map
-SWOT analysis
-Competitive Analysis Features
-Stakeholder Mapping
-Analyze and Pick Pain Point
-WHAT WHO WHERE WHEN
-FIVE WHYS
-Crazy 8
-Affinity Diagramming
-Group Critique
-Scenario Mapping
-Solution Generation
-HMW
-Storyboarding ideas picked from crazy 8
-Solo critique
-Group critique
-Business Model canvas
-Value proposition canvas
-Pick Solution
-Feasibility vs Impact Chart
-User Persona
-Solution Creation
-Use Cases / User story (as a user..)
-Feature Brainstorming
-Must/Could/Should/Wont have
-User Journey
-User Flow
-Card sorting
-Wireframes
-Moodboards
-Brief (goals, criteria, spec, etc)
-MVP
-A/B
Here are three steps you can take:
1. Read Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug, User Interface Design for Programmers by Joel Spolsky, Refactoring UI, and (optionally) The Design of Everyday Things (this will get you paying attention to UX and UI in the real world). The core principal of good UX is Spolsky's maxim: "A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would."
2. After reading, go do 10 hallway usability tests on an interface you know well.
3. Then redesign the interface using the principles from #1 and run usability tests on that. Later, rinse, repeat.
The main idea here is:
1. Get some decent grounding
2. Learn from where users stumble over an interface
3. Try and improve the interface
4. Get feedback on your improvements (did they help? what other problems did they cause?)
I try to think UI-first. When I start a project it's not "How do I implement this functionality" it's "How do I make this UI". UX is a lot deeper than where the buttons go, it's about workflow, and architectural decisions can constrain UI. Using a UNIXy suite type model? You might have trouble editing an earlier decision without undoing all work after that, unless you are very careful. Some architectures might make a…
If you're building a specialist, usually business, application then often all the users will be power users fairly quickly, because they will spend all day every day in your application. In this case their priority will be doing things quickly and accurately, and having all the information they need available when they need it. My priority as a UX designer in this instance (or my priority as a designer herder these days) should be enabling them to do this, and not making stuff look pretty and well spaced in the first instance. This will often involve cramming lots of information and icons into a small space and minimising white space, and will sometimes involve making an application hard to use for newcomers. And that's fine! If it is a bit of software that someone is going to be using 40 hours a week for the next 10 years then the priority is the user who already knows the system, and not the user who is learning the system. Although you need to ensure that the system is actually learnable, which is largely about consistency, documentation (gasp!) and tutorials, and surfacing the most frequently performed actions.
I just went through a battle with a UI designer who wanted to break up an existing interface used in a marking tool into several screens because the current UI was hugely cluttered (which it is) and intimidating (yep, looks scary) and hard to learn (actually not, onboarding of a new user takes about 30 minutes. 25 of which is them following a long to a video). The design they came up with would have looked much nicer, but would have resulted in a much poorer UX, as it would have involved the assessor switching between multiple tabs, scrolling up and down and dragging and dropping items across the screen. And doing this literally thousands of times over the course of a couple of weeks. I'd already been through a similar battle with a previous UI designer to eliminate drag and drop in the same interface a couple of years ago because I had a user develop RSI using it. In doing so I made the I terrace uglier and more cluttered but eliminated many hundreds of drag and drop actions a day for each user.
Anyway, moral of the story, sometimes a good UX is only possible if you have a "bad" or at least ugly and cluttered UI. This doesn't mean that you should ignore aesthetics, or go out of your way to make things ugly, but that sometimes cluttered, information dense and unintuitive to new users is the way to go.
Ooh, I’ve been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There’s other good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions for them. It’s not surprising — you won’t create a good cat toy if you don’t understand cats. 1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our physiolog…
https://stayux.substack.com/s/ux-design
UX is a deep topic. But from software-developer perspective you must cover the basics (if you choose so).
My book recommendation list: Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products & Services
https://www.amazon.com/Laws-UX-Psychology-Products-Services/...
Think First: My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers
https://www.amazon.com/Think-First-No-Nonsense-Successful-Ex...
About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design
https://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Des...
I hope this helps, good luck:)
Ooh, I’ve been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There’s other good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions for them. It’s not surprising — you won’t create a good cat toy if you don’t understand cats. 1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our physiolog…
All of my years dealing with UX, the best work I've done has been when I think less of what I believe, what I want, what I think is right; it's not about that. It's entirely about the people you're building for. They aren't users, they aren't UUIDs in a database, they're human beings.
I started my career fairly sure that I knew what I was doing and I knew how to solve problems. I was totally incorrect. People solve the problem for you, but you have to watch and listen. You can fill in gaps and use intuition here and there, but for the most part, you're working in the interest of the people you build for. They aren't using what you build in the interest of proving your sensibilities.
An interface is a story. Even better, an interactive story.
P.S. I also found that it helps a lot if you read the copy aloud when designing it.
Ooh, I’ve been doing nothing but this for 30 years. There’s other good advice in this thread, but my main advice is to pay close attention to people. UX is just applied psychology. If you understand humans well enough then you can create good solutions for them. It’s not surprising — you won’t create a good cat toy if you don’t understand cats. 1. Keep learning how humans use software. This is rooted in our physiolog…
This is great. Everything I could think of and more. All of my years dealing with UX, the best work I've done has been when I think less of what I believe, what I want, what I think is right; it's not about that. It's entirely about the people you're building for. They aren't users, they aren't UUIDs in a database, they're human beings. I started my career fairly sure that I knew what I was doing and I knew how to so…
I love this. It reminds me of my favorite saying about design: “People don’t design ships. The ocean designs ships.”
At work I try always to say “human” rather than “user,” for just the reasons you state. Like you, I think I’ve done my best work when I’ve been able to remove myself from the equation. It’s one reason I like building software that I’ll never use myself — it keeps reminding me that I’m not my customer.