UX Design Bits
Ideas Collected

Deep appreciation for simple

It's not UX unless you start the conversation with who and why.

Change is the only constant.

Good design is Simple, Fast, Smart and Delightful.

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Organize your ideas.

If you cannot organize your ideas how are you going to organize an application?

“Without data, you are just another person with an opinion.”

You cannot think outside of the box when you are working in the box, go for a ride

Find and focus on primary objective

If you are not failing,
you are not learning.

Scope things based on impact

Design is outside to inside.
Development is inside to outside.

Plan

When you have an idea, always sketch first

Don't drill into the detail before you generate lots of ideas.

It's cheaper to fail with a prototype than an application.

If you are not upsetting somebody,
you are boring everybody

“Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative” Oscar Wilde

“Yeah. That is really intuitive once you showed it to me.”

Always. Code your own prototypes. Just learn HTML, CSS and some JS!

“Software needs to be opinionated.” My friend Steve

The journey is more important than the destination.

In the history of apps, nobody started or stopped using an app because of logo or color (unless they are color blind).

If people nit-pick your solution, you didn't spend enough time framing the problem.

Get to the point

Sell your own ideas, don't expect anybody to buy into it

Use animation to orient before using it to delight.

Constantly balance priorities

Innovation is creating solutions not features.

Design is an iterative process.

Keep it simple

Make it beautiful

Never pitch from the tools you use to design.

“If we amplify everything, we hear nothing” Jon Stewart

Manage the viewport.
Think layers. What is fixed? What scrolls?

I don't have the answer.
I have a process to find it.

A prototype can be the tool that aligns the CEO, CTO and CMO.

Stop thinking feature.
Start thinking problem to solve.

When you hit a wall, try going back a step in the design process and anchor the project

If people cannot get excited about your vision, adding the details doesn't help.

When you hit another wall,
go to sleep

Understand the players. Interview people.

Stay happy, kiss your family, ride your bicycle and go to yoga

Constant sharing of design direction.

Don't put everything into one project and ignore the world.

The flip side is equally important, don't tune on the entire world and scatter.

Always have a long term vision, don't lose sight of where you are going.

High quality design is functional and beautiful

What people say. What people mean. What people do. Three completely different things.

A usability test helps you understand what people will actually do.

Without the Who and Why, we create nothing for nobody.

You work on a team. Are all the players convinced?

Design discovery is the most important step.

Discovery is who, why, value, competition, constraints, trends, landscape and data.

Don't sacrifice clarity for brevity.

A designer knows something about everything. A developer knows everything about one thing.

A good designer isn't afraid to throw away good ideas.

Being process-oriented, not product driven, is the most important and difficult skill for a designer.

Beauty is derived from the utility of the experience.

Beauty is the harmony of elements.

Less is more.

Less is a bore.

Create friendly software.

It is simple when your users think it is simple, not when you think it is simple.

You might need complex code to make something simple.

Design is form and function.
If you don't have capacity for both then you are an artist or an engineer.

UI design is enabling humans to talk to the machine.

UX design is motivating humans to talk to the machine.

Should I tell you what you want to hear? Or, what you need to know?

People need simple first and efficient second.

Designing an app is easy. Getting everybody convinced on direction is hard.

Spend more time selling the problem than the design solution.

Make your own list.