The process of approaching design

When I began in this career, I would jump right into Visio or design tool and start designing away. I approached problems directly with designing solutions. A couple of years later, I began to extend the myopic focus into a broader context. I now began every project with finding out what the problem is that's being solved. In my experience, product managers sometimes try to fix problems by band aiding the solution. In many cases, this is a cost-saving ploy or maybe they haven't audited the flow to see where the pain points are.

I've begun to start every project with flow audits and replicating the same experience a user may have when encountering our products. Because I work at a company that has a lot of resources in which to use, this sometimes means looking at Site Catalyst data, or digging up Customer Service call data to see where the pain points are. When applicable, I try to talk to the main users of the product to see how they use the information. I've learned that solid and thoughtful design means starting from the research and working into formulating a solution. Sometimes its as simple as rearranging how information is shown, sometimes its as complex as redesigning the entire flow.

I try to abide by the "keep it simple" rule. As a designer, you become very knowledgeable on the product you are designing, and its easy to get carried away in the complexity of it. Adding additional features sometimes seems like a benefit, until you take a step back and realize that the original goal has been lost. In the process of designing, I take a few breaks and walk around to refresh my thinking. When I get back to my desk and view my design, often I'll print it out and show one of my peers unfamiliar to the project if they understand. I do this because I think its important to have a fresh set of eyes on the design.

I believe good design should be clear even to someone unfamiliar with the project. They should look at the design and understand immediately which actions the user should take, which information is important, and what the overall goals on the page are. The next steps I take are putting the entire flow together and review with the team. I'll post on that later.

Britney Spears: Photoshopped.

Apparently a vandal in Berlin felt it necessary to remind us what the secret of beauty is... Photoshop. Oh, we all do it. There's not one facebook picture that escapes the smudge tool and brightening effect in Photoshop before it gets posted. Don't judge!

I'm just intrigued someone had the wherewithal to create Photoshop UI stickers. Wish I would have thought of that.

Via jezebel

Designer 101

I have often struggled with the fact that I've only been in this industry for a little over 2 years, and will probably not say anything that someone else hasn't already said or has spoken about. I decided that this blog is for me to have a chance to really think about design on my terms and because by writing, I'm able to expose thoughts I hadn't necessarily realized I've been thinking about.


My first job as an interaction designer focused on the interactivity and engagement of the user but in the marketing context. Most of the pages I worked on were short lived and very marketing-ish. After leaving that job, I started working on more traditional UI design, which tended to focus on task completion and form design and all the specifics of where to place a button on a page and how that influences user behavior.


After working in this industry for a relatively short time, I've learned that there is almost always two different ways to influence user behavior:


1. To support the business goals

2. To support user goals


This tension exists and it is up to the designer to weigh out the options and design with these in mind. I often find that I literally cannot sleep at night if I design something that I know will piss off or irritate users. Often times, our business partners will want a solution which is great on the bottom line, but will alienate users over the long run. As a designer, it is up to us to make sure our business partners know that good design will still support business goals, but it may not be the cheapest option from the top.

I've also learned that its okay to make mistakes as long as you can learn from them, which is a philosophy which applies generally to life.

I'm excited to start this blog which has been something I've wanted to do for awhile, but felt I wasn't seasoned enough to do so. I have start somewhere I figured, might as well be now.