Design Manifesto
What I learned about design during my semester in Human Centered Design…
Throughout the semester, I worked on a variety of different projects that taught me many different lessons about design. Here are some of the different design projects that I have worked on this semester:
The failures and successes that appeared throughout my designs were informative and educational, helping me form my own philosophy in design. If you have ever dabbled in design, you will know from that experience, that design is hardly an exact science. Often, it calls for judgement calls and experience.
As a beginner in design, I was often tempted to just dive right in. I was eager to begin making the end result before I really understood what the goal of my design really was, who it was designed for, and what the problem was that I was attempting to solve. However, effective design calls for a more thoughtful approach.
Design Philosophies
Over the course of the class my experience designing has taught me many lessons that guide how I approach a design problem. Many might seem obvious while others are more nuanced. However, all of these lessons stem from direct experience designing different projects.
— Understand the Problem
In order for a design to be successful and effective, it must address the true problem of its intended users. Sometimes this problem is not always clear. In fact, sometimes what you make think is the problem, is actually just a symptom of another larger problem. For example, lets say that I ran out of gas on my way to work. The problem here is that I ran out of gas and I need more. But what if my fuel tank is leaking? If my fuel tank is leaking, that would lead to me running out of gas quicker. Problems are always more complicated than they same at first glance. It is important to find the root problem of the users and address that with a good solution.
“A brilliant solution to the wrong problem can be worse than no solution at
all: solve the correct problem.” — Don Norman, Design Thinking
One project I worked on this semester was a redesign of a website with a specific demographic in mind. My group decided to redesign the Transitions of PA website as a mobile version directed specifically at teenagers. We needed to discover the true problem of teenagers using this site and design the mobile version in a way that addresses this problem. Our guiding principle in the design was that we needed to make the website more simple. However, teens have grown up navigating the internet and simplicity was a problem that may not have even existed.
Make sure you don’t solve a problem that doesn’t actually exist!
— Know Your User
Understanding the problem your design aims to address goes hand in hand with understanding the user. To understand how to solve the problem that your users face, you must know who your user is! There are many different ways to gain an understanding of the user. Some of these methods are:
- Surveys
- Interviews
- Observations
- Secondary Research
Whichever method that is ultimately chosen, it is apparent that communication with the user is vitally important. During my visualization redesign, I chose a visualization that was made without sufficient understanding of the user. Consider the goal of a user of a visualization. When someone looks at a visualization, they are attempting to understand a specific question that the data is supposed to answer. In the case of the visualization I chose, it showed the different murder rates among high income countries. One message that the data tells is that the U.S. has a higher murder rate than most other high income countries.
In the case of a visualization, a user does not want to have to do work to decipher the message that the visualization is trying to send. The redesign makes this message immediately evident. The user was at the center of my design strategy.
— Understand Technical Limitations
During idea generation, it is important to think big. However, when it comes to actually implementing a design, it is important to consider which solutions are actually plausible. The technology you are using to create your design surely has limitations and ignoring these limitations can lead to headaches when it comes to the actual product creation.
My group experienced this firsthand when we created a gesture-based interface for YouTube playback. Our hand gestures we were attempting to use were often being misclassified. Hand positions that we thought we could use for different controls, actually were not distinct enough for the program to tell them apart.
— There is Such Thing as Too Much
“Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” — Antoine de St-Exupery
Sometimes designers can make the mistake of trying to solve to many problems at once. When considering features to add to a design it is worthwhile to consider what that value that feature actually adds. There is a constant push and pull between adding more to a design and sacrificing simplicity. A good designer must always weight the sacrifice to simplicity that adding a new element causes.
This visualization has room for improvement where simplicity is concerned. Improvements can be made by considering which aspects of this visual are actually necessary to tell the story of the data. For example, the way that the data is laid out can be confusing. The height of the bars seem like they should indicate the magnitude of the numbers and it is difficult to locate a specific country in the jumble of data points. It is also difficult to compare the different data points.
There are many tools that can help make a design visually more simple and easier to use. Some of these are reduction, regularity, and double-duty. By implementing these principles, a design can greatly benefit and become more learnable, usable, and efficient.
—Prototype Prototype Prototype
The human centered design process consists of four different stages that are intended to be iterated throughout the design of a product.
I am here to say that this process works and is extremely beneficial. Specifically, throughout my experiences, prototypes can provide great insights and ideas that can benefit a design greatly.
Again referencing the Transitions of PA mobile redesign, I can explain how prototyping helped improve our design and make it more effective. Before the project was complete, we allowed different people in the class to interact with our design and we observed them using it. What we noticed was that it wasn’t clear that our buttons were actually buttons. We were missing what is referred to as signifiers, which indicates that an interaction can be made. Using the example of a button, a common signifier is that your cursor will turn into a finger pointing.
You may not even notice these small things without thinking about them explicitly, but they can make your design much easier to work with. Without prototyping, we may not have noticed these issues with our design.
Another important reason for prototyping is time. It can take a lot of time to finish building a design and that time is wasted if the design doesn’t accomplish its goals. In fact, this situation in particular can lead to a situation called the sunken cost fallacy. The sunken cost fallacy arises when significant investment is made into a project that is doomed to fail. Because of the investment already made, it is difficult to abandon the project. Prototyping allows us to avoid this situation.
We avoided the sunk cost fallacy when we used Wizard of Oz testing with our gesture-based interface for YouTube playback. Wizard of Oz testing allowed us to test the design that we made without actually implementing it by controlling YouTube ourselves based on their gestures. This ultimately saved us a lot of time because we were able to get feedback before we committed to anything.
The lesson from these experiences is this: Take the time to prototype and observe users interacting with your design. It will tell you things you may have never considered otherwise and ultimately save you time and resources.
Conclusion
I am by no means an expert at design. However, by going through the design process and gaining experience designing various different projects, I have taken a step forward. Each project’s failures and successes brought with it new lessons and have brought me closer to understanding what good design actually is.
While design is anything but an exact science, there are always lessons to be learned and improvements to be made if you pay close enough attention.
In conclusion, the lessons that have shaped my design philosophy the most through this semester have been:
- Understand the problem:
Step back and consider whether what you are trying to solve is the root problem or a symptom of the root problem. Then address this problem directly with your design
- Know the user:
Communicate with the user of your design and make sure to build something with them in mind.
- Understand the technological limitations:
Consider how the technology you are using will limit your design.
- Keep is Simple
Always consider whether adding a new element to your design is necessary and will add actual value. If not, it is likely making your design more difficult to learn, more difficult to use, and ultimately less efficient.
- PROTOTYPE
Make use of prototyping extensively and more than once. This will save valuable time, energy, and resources.
