Category: Design

Categories
Design

In other news, perfection remains elusive

Here is a hypothetical scenario which may or may not sound familiar to you: A project has progressed to the visual design stage. The process you followed fell somewhat short of textbook. Deadlines are imminent. The first iteration of a rendered design has gone to a client with various caveats:- that feedback is welcomed, that various aspects need to be reviewed, that the design can be progressed based on further discussion, etc. Then the word comes back:

“Looks fine. We’ll go with that”.

The question is: have you failed or succeeded?

Blind vision

As a professional you are almost certainly torn. You want to work towards the best possible result, ensuring the project is effective and represents something both you and the client can be proud for years to come. The craftsman in you wants to hone and improve. You had anticipated further debate, leading to the next iteration. Instead what you appear to have is approval. And the commercial imperative suggests that the time for iteration is past; the client has accepted your work and the process must move on.

The long wait

I suspect these are familiar dilemmas for design professionals. We hear much about the ‘perfect process’ in our industry writing and conferences. Professionalism calls for improvement; often arduous, incremental, glacial improvement that may only be measured in years rather than months. But it is a truism that perfection never arrives.

Reality slap

To remain commercially viable, relentless quests for perfection may have to be set aside for another day. Not, let’s be clear, abandoned completely: defeatism is the path to template-driven mundanity. Without question we should all aspire to better. However the harsh truth is – and you may want to brace yourself – compromise is a fact, in life and in business. Another element of professionalism is the maturity to accept that fact, while knowing that you are still a credible member of the design community despite falling short of perfection.

Conclusion

The lesson from a scenario such as this is almost certainly that we should not present anything to a client that we are not prepared to stand by 100%, or indeed go live with. It can be all too easy to sleepwalk your way to a design that doesn’t represent you or the client particularly well. #speakingfromexperience

Categories
Process

Small viewports… and the death of the fold

Like all the best/worst B-movies, the bad guy you thought was dead and gone has summoned up his last ounce of strength for one last attack. The Fold is back. With a twist.

A short debate

The debate about whether a ‘fold’ exists on the web begins and ends with the following assertions: yes, content goes off-screen in the majority of websites and yes, users are willing to scroll to read it. Period. Note that the second point doesn’t dispense with the need for clients and designers to assign priorities within content and for the designer to create a visual hierarchy based on these priorities. These are crucial conversations in any project. And this is the very area where things are going to get interesting.

Top of the (content) pops

The current mobilisation towards responsive design is laudable, and a great many people are currently wrestling the theory towards best practice. Despite what may be pronounced from various sources across the web, it is not a one-size-fits-all solution for myriad viewport sizes. What we will likely emerge with is a toolbox of approaches for use in a variety of contexts, of which responsive design will be just one. But what ‘responsive’ highlights very effectively, in a way that designing for desktop does not, is the relative priority of content as the viewport shrinks.

Top=good, bottom=bad

Laying out web content for a desktop PC or laptop provides plenty of screen real estate to play with. We can cheat the hierarchy by placing something somewhere else in a vast 960 x [whatever] pixel canvas and create visual priorities through the use of colour, space etc. We can design within grids and columns that allow pretty much everything to get a look in. Whatever sits further down the page is somewhat less important and everything that sits towards the top of the page is more important. But this is far from the absolute scale that we are going to need.

Extreme content. Dude.

For a responsive approach we need to decide on absolute priority, not a vague, general hierarchy. A glance at any of the new breed of responsive sites on a mobile device tells you one thing: the content has a no-nonsense, top-to-bottom hierarchy. This kind of extreme prioritisation is going to form part of the new normal in designing for the web. The conversations right at the outset of the design process will need to address this. “If the user could only see one part of the site, what would it be?” is as basic a question as can be asked but it has tremendous resonance now.

All change

Further, if we are now giving something lowest priority and it will require a significant amount of swiping or scrolling to get to… is it really required at all? And if that element is removed, what about the content which is now at the bottom? These issues have massive potential to skew how we assess content and it is barely credible that the now ‘traditional’ website we have grown so accustomed to will not be affected by these shifts.

It’s what thumbs are for

And what of the fold? The old arguments used to go that if the fold existed, everything needed to be forced into the area above it for fear of users missing it. By the same logic, on a 320 x 480 viewport the user is going to miss… pretty much everything. The same logic would also suggest that those users won’t know to swipe to see more. Except we know that they will.

Web origami

The fact is there is no longer even a single fold. On a small device there are multiple folds, multiple screens to scroll through. But bizarrely the more folds exist the less they matter. Users now expect to swipe and to scroll. So sleep easy and let it be known: the fold is dead.

Categories
Design Process

Late nights, passion and the creativity myth

My first professional job was in a small advertising agency. Despite knowing many fine people there who have gone on to great careers elsewhere, for a graduate designer it was, put simply, a sweatshop.

Working there taught me two important things:

1) I had to get out of advertising as soon as I could
2) Routinely working long hours reduces quality, productivity and creativity

During my time there I was involved in numerous pitches for advertising accounts that were poorly planned and executed, more often than not resulting in failure. Each had another common characteristic: a reliance on working late into the night.

Time would invariably be wasted on various approaches with no structure or purpose until with little time left, the Creative Director would pipe up dramatically “I’ve got it!”. We’d then throw the kitchen sink at it, working excessively late or over the weekend as though it were proof of creativity and commitment. It wasn’t. It was proof of poor planning and a lack of creativity.

I don’t mean to generalise; of course like all aspects of design, well practiced advertising has its best practice processes and systems. Similarly working late to finish a project based on agreed milestones and deadlines goes with the territory.

However when company culture relies on sapping the energies of junior staff members in the name of creativity then there is a problem. The agency I cut my teeth with was all about the creativity myth. The myth that says if you work late enough and throw enough time at it, great creativity will simply happen.

An over-reliance on “passion” in the marketing lexicon of design agencies further fuels the fallacy. Regardless of the intent, what something like “we’re passionate about design” says at best is that “we will work long into the night for you”. As a client I don’t think I would care how much of a flurry you whip up due to your passion, or how many all-nighters you are prepared to pull. It’s results that count. To paraphrase Joe Rinaldo, what’s the ROI on passion?

Time and again it has been proved that effective results come from careful planning, iteration and craft. Otherwise known as professionalism. Yes, you can work round the clock on a labour of love. We all do it. Can you do it on a number of projects in a row? Yes, you can. Can you sustain that pace and a reliance on late hours over a number of years, over a career? You can if you are prepared to have nothing else of value in your life.

Waiting for the creative director’s faux inspiration wasn’t for me. Despite being completely new to the workplace, I could see that it was an ineffective way of working. Although I didn’t know it at the time I was crying out for process, order and sanity.

Happily UI design provides just that, and I am proud to be working now in a discipline that increasingly values a systematic process over flamboyant showboating.

Categories
Books Design UX

I’m a designer. What do I know?

From time to time something comes along to give you a gentle nudge, prompting you to reassess your knowledge as a professional. Such an occasion came last month in the form of the ever-enjoyable UX Bookclub Belfast.

People are liars (apparently)

The book being discussed was “100 Things Designers Should Know About People” by Susan Weinschenk. Compiled from a series of blog posts, “100 Things…” features some eyebrow-raising revelations on the apparent true needs of users, versus what people say they want. The book prompted a number of comments along the lines of “I’m a designer. I knew a lot of this stuff already… but I’m not sure how.”

Is there a designer in the house?

Professional practice in any number of design disciplines, graphic and UI among them, is not absolute, differentiating them from law, medicine or accounting for example. However design should not be subjective. The weakest possible position a designer can adopt in communicating with a client is a “just trust me, I know best” stance. Any sense of the designer-as-artist can result in needless, subjective discussions. In other words, either have a good reason for deploying a particular colour or prepare for a discussion over who’s favourite colour is best.

The appliance of science

One of the many positive developments to have occurred during my time as a professional is the proliferation of scientific thinking in the industry. The influence and contributions of thought leaders such as Donald Norman, Alan Cooper and others cannot be overstated; what they have brought to the table is a shift in rationale from the old, instinctive design sensibility to a more effective, research-driven approach. So we have gone from arguing that a button with rounded corners simply “looks right” (instinctive) to stating that it has affordance and benefits from the Aesthetic-Usability Effect (scientific). What’s more, data supports the fact that attractive things work better.

That’s… logical, captain

Without question this type of approach demands more from the designer: craft, study, insight. It can also supply some much-needed constraints within which creativity can flourish, rather than relying on the artist’s muse. Arguing a point based on data and evidence is less likely to result in needless exchanges with a client over the amount of [insert client’s favourite colour here]. That’s not to say it will never happen, but our position as professionals is strengthened when we can actively demonstrate a thorough knowledge of the rules of the game.

Reboot

We might assume to “know” so much gained from experience or absorbed from years of industry-related reading but regular reassessment of what we assume to be firm knowledge can only be healthy. Plus it is much more conducive to a sustained and successful career in design. Taking the opportunity has never been easier, with the web as a central hub for debates and discussions that lead to shifts in our industry and each of us with a front row seat.

Cliché, okay

Hackneyed it may be, but designers cannot afford to stop learning about the components of professional practice, particularly those of us who have had extended tenures in the field. Old thinking needs to be identified and regularly weeded out. We need to challenge accepted truths time and again, reassess our own subjective views and progress our work and contribution.

Gratuitous Star Wars quote

To paraphrase Yoda, we need to unlearn what we have learned – and then relearn it, sometimes daily.

Categories
Design

Machines of unknown intent

Around six years’ ago we worked with a client who, as part of the project brief, asked for a website that would “still look great in 5 years”. No doubt there was an element of thriftiness in the request (and perhaps a degree of mischief), but fair play to them. It was a hell of a challenge to set a design team.

Aiming low

So how did we do? Well for one the website is still there (and no, I won’t supply the URL…). While it doesn’t look terrible, it certainly displays all of the traits of having been designed six years ago. The giveaway is the 760 pixel width, catering for the large percentage of users then still with monitor resolutions of 800 x 600 pixels. We interpreted the request as having an influence only on the style of the site, while blindly fixing its dimensions to the standard of the time. Using the same flawed logic, we would now be designing sites with a 320 pixel width to suit the lowest resolutions accessing the site.

Post-PC

The fact is there are very few ways of future-proofing a design, particularly when basing it on a style-only agenda. But our chances of success in this challenge were much better at the time our client made their forward-looking request when web access was almost exclusively PC-based. Steve Jobs has recently repeatedly proclaimed that we are living in a ‘post-PC era’. It’s not the fact that Jobs says this that makes it significant. It’s significant because it’s true.

Knowing the unknown

Although we’ve known they were coming for a long time, web-enabled devices are changing the landscape irrevocably. In the past week for instance, it was discovered that Barnes & Nobles’ Nook eBook reader has a browser embedded in it, waiting to be switched on. How could we possibly have designed or tested for this or any of the myriad of new web-enabled devices hitting the market each day, each with their own particular optimal settings for viewing websites? Quite simply through a more forward-looking approach.

Hard sell

The deluge of blog posts heralding the advent of responsive design was something I’ll admit to greeting with cynicism. If someone tells me I “need” to do something, my initial reaction will be to ask what is in it for them. What are they trying to sell me – a conference? a book? In some cases the answer is both, but that doesn’t change the central truth. The argument in favour of an adaptive approach to web-based design is now overwhelming. It’s early days yet, but this is a shift, not a trend.

No-brainer

This doesn’t require signing up to some new dogma, it simply means assessing each project individually on its requirement to adapt to multiple devices. Put like that, doesn’t it sound like pure common sense, if not an essential part of any professional design process? The approach doesn’t guarantee that a website’s visual design won’t look dated in a number of years time, but it will ensure its credible appearance on browsers of all types for a significant period of time, even those yet to be released.

Future machines

With an adaptive design, we can design for the future. Literally. We can prepare designs and layouts for still-to-be-invented machines and devices whose purpose we simply cannot even begin to guess. But they will access the web. And we can design for them.

Isn’t that fantastic?