Oregon State Productions Blog

Last week I got a chance to attend An Event Apart in Seattle, here are some of my notes from the event, a lot was covered, these are just a few things that jumped out at me:

Jeffrey Zeldman – Content First!

• Content is a design problem. Our designs are often hostile to content.
• Design that doesn’t serve people doesn’t serve business.
• Designers may no longer control the visual experience (referring to add-ons like Readibility)
• Design in the absence of content is not design, it’s decoration.
• Responsive and mobile are creating a new interaction design landscape that puts users and content first.

Jon Tan – Big Type, Little Type

• Good typography induces a good mood, users lose track of time, don’t mind it if it takes longer to perform a task.
• Test typography in the worst environment.
• Typesetting should help reading, not interrupt or distract.
• There are no rules, just good decisions.
• Design spaces where stories can be told.
• Type shapes our experience. It paints pictures that echo in our memory long after we’ve left.

Kim Goodwin – Silo-Busting with Scenarios

• Get clients to root for the user.
• Think beyond site, consider all experiences.
• 3 reasons to use scenarios first:
  • Excited team = better UX
  • Humans are not just system components, we empathize with emotions frustrations, hopes and dreams.
  • Silos = Worse UX

• Add something unexpectedly good.

Scott Berkun – The Five Most Dangerous Ideas

• Everyone is a designer.
• You have no power.
• Whoever uses the most jargon has the least confidence in their ideas.
• The generalists are in charge.
• If there are more than 5 people in the room, you have less power than you think.
• You work in sales (regardless of your job title).
• Creativity is risk.

Karen McGrane – Adapting Ourselves to Adaptive Content

• NPR’s API – create once publish everywhere. Displayed different across devices, content is the same. NPR page views grew over 80%.
• Magazine tablet apps are just a snapshot of print version, the web is not print. Ipad magazine sales are declining.
• TV guide created adaptive content before the web even existed, they were creating multiple length descriptions for TV shows.
• Metadata is the new art direction.
• Metadata supports personalized content.

Ethan Marcotte – Rolling Up Our Responsive Sleeves

• Solve the parts, not the whole problem.
• “Chaos was the law of nature, order was the dream of man” – Henry Adams
• A responsive design has a flexible foundation.
• We should start treating layout as an enhancement.
• Let’s embrace the entropy.
• Simplify before you suppress.
• We’ve been focused too much on columns, let’s refocus on content.
• Start with the smallest part.
• If something is not necessary on small screen, why keep on desktop version.

Simon Collison – A Philosophy of Restraint

• We design to communicate and we seek emotive responses.
• We don’t design web pages, we design systems.
• Avoid misplaced vernacular and cliche, makes your design look stupid.
• You don’t have to avoid complexity, avoid creating the impression of complexity, make it more manageable.
• Don’t have to reveal everything, let audience fill in gaps, pause and think.
• CMS template vs. editorial, used to be able to tell story with design.
• Unleash complexity in orchestrated phases, and increase power gradually.

Luke Wroblewski –  Mobile to the Future

• Mobile should not be a dumbed down version of desktop.
• “…copy, extend, and finally, discovery of a new form. It takes a while to shed old paradigms.” -Scott Jenson
• Do little things to make it easier, reduce mistakes.
• Login screens – don’t remove critical features, show passwords by default.
• Our focus on layout keeps us from seizing big opportunities on mobile.
• Keep people on keyboard, consolidate input fields.

Whitney Hess – What’s Your Problem? Putting Purpose Back into Your Projects

• Relying on best practices doesn’t make sites useful. No one size fits all
• Leave the desk to find the problem.
• Market research – what people like (doesn’t tell you who they are) vs. user research – what people do
• Rarely ask about the product/company, get to know user, who they are what they need.
• Specialize in the problem, not the solution.
• Personas – categorizing people based on aspirations, personality, not based on demographics
• Don’t use jargon use own words make it easy to understand the problem.
• Don’t try to be good at it all, pick one “why” or problem
• Understand the problem before devising the solution.
• Sometimes there are no problems to solve, find out if there is one to begin with.

Jared Spool – The Curious Properties of Intuitive Web Pages

• Unintuitive design – something that’s invisible becomes visible.
• Design for gap between current knowledge and target knowledge.
• Visual design – not about aesthetics, more about placement & organization.
• Techniques for uncovering knowledge:
  • Field Visits – go to your users and see them work. Helps identify who the users are and their current knowledge.
  • Usability Tests – watch people use your design. Helps identify the target knowledge and ideal solutions
  • Paper Prototyping – testing early workflow & process ideaspaper prototyping.

• Intuitive Design is how we give our users new superpowers
• Intuitive designs are when what the user knows matches what they need to know
• Identify current knowledge and target knowledge for your design
  • Train the user to grow their current knowledge
  • Simplify the design to reduce the design’s target knowledge

CATEGORIES: Design