If someone asked me to extemporaneously itemize some personally developed axioms (or “pearls of wisdom”) for practicing interaction design, here’s what I would say:<\/p>\n
1. Always question and verify your assumptions<\/strong>, dependencies<\/strong>, and expectations<\/strong> about the project, problem, and client.<\/p>\n 2. The three duties of a designer: advocate<\/em> (for the user), educate<\/em> (the client about design’s value), and facilitate<\/em> (among PM\/Engin\/QA\/Doc, etc. to ensure an agreed, consistent design decisions)…and of course create!<\/p>\n 3. Useful, usable, desirable –> People, context, content, behavior –> goals\/tasks\/values (keep these in mind when possible)<\/p>\n 4. All design is political<\/strong> because of scope, schedule, budget, resources and competing priorities\/goals; deal with it, can’t win all the time.<\/p>\n 5. Design functions in a crazy chaotic web of influences: marketing, engineering, QA, tech support, doc. Design’s just one piece, but not the only piece. (corollary to above)<\/p>\n 6. Asking the right questions early can be more important than coming up with a clever solution. Conversations tend to invite questions, rather than declarations.<\/p>\n 7. Same for identifying the right problem to solve…you don’t want to spend 6 weeks solving the wrong problem!<\/p>\n 8. Always take user feedback with several grains of salt. And remember: No one asked for the iPhone or Prius or Wii before they were invented! A designer is an informed visionary.<\/p>\n 9. Do less better.<\/strong> Remember this when PM\/Engin try to cram features upon features into your product design.<\/p>\n 12. There’s always a version 2. Plan for a version 3.<\/p>\n 13. Beware of edge cases<\/a>! 80\/20 rule, probability trumps possibility.<\/p>\n 14. Alot of design is just perceptual tricks to suggest simplicity, ease of use, etc. Perception is reality.<\/p>\n 15. Lighten up, it’s just design. We’re not nuclear engineers or brain surgeons :-)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If someone asked me to extemporaneously itemize some personally developed axioms (or “pearls of wisdom”) for practicing interaction design, here’s what I would say: 1. Always question and verify your assumptions, dependencies, and expectations about the project, problem, and client. 2. The three duties of a designer: advocate (for the user), educate (the client about … Continue reading “Some personal design lessons\/axioms”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-practical-matters"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghostinthepixel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}