Unknown Adoration

Diving into the known unknowns and discovering the unknown unknowns and realizing you knew all along.

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Watching a confused user successfully navigate the prototype:

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When a PO says that they speak for the user

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lolololol

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Colleague: "If I was the user, I would..."

by @MaxdeMooij

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but you ain’t the user

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Fresh subjects requested for exciting new opportunity

Tumblr Labs seeks additional volunteers to undergo new, non-invasive experiments on Android. To participate, go to Labs settings on your Android device and flip the switch ON. (Web-based subjects apply here.) 

Exposure to the following experiments falls within acceptable limits:

Doodle Posts by @vanillaburritos: Enables a new kind of post you can draw on with your finger.

Sticky Audio Player by @bitterorca and @brendanp: Docks audio posts to your dash so you can play them and scroll.

Tap to Play GIFs by @vanillaburritos: Keeps gifs in a Schrodinger state until you tap them into life so they don’t bog down your phone’s memory. 

Qualifications

Android machine with the latest Tumblr update.

Tolerance to extreme euphoria.

Standard disclaimer: Tumblr Labs are experimental features that were designed and developed in someone’s spare time. Labs experiments are not guaranteed to work the first time or any time. Labs experiments may abruptly and unexpectedly cease functioning, or disappear altogether. Real features are not regularly tested for compatibility with Labs experiments. To disable a Tumblr Labs feature, turn the switch off. New Labs experiments will be added and old ones removed, possibly (probably) without notice. By reading this message you imply a positive predisposition towards Labs experiments as long as they last and accept that things will inevitably change as time moves on and on. Labs experiments have not been tested on live animals, your taxonomic rank notwithstanding. Please participate in Tumblr Labs only as prescribed.

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Love This!

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The temptation for many brands is to allow the web design process to get political with CEOs, CTOs, CIOs, boards, directors and consultants to all have their opinions represented within the brand website

Iron Paper’s 10 tips for designing a better healthcare website

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If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design.

Ralf Speth (via inspirationmobile)

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You have to prototype. You have to see someone using your product. Only then do you get a refined design. No one gets it right the first time.

Dan Saffer (via inspirationmobile)

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A designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (via inspirationmobile)

A designer knows when they* have achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add, but when there is nothing left to take away

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Seven design tips for Social Design by Paul Adams

In the wake of me designing a system (not a location) for learning new languages, the previous video I posted was very helpful in pointing me in the right direction. Here’s the tldr for the seven tips Paul gives in his presentation:

Explicitly design for personal identity or social identity

Show people things they have in common

Design lightweight interactions with people

Design for feelings, not facts

Give suggestions for who to communicate with

Design the feed story first

Design the friend’s experience

Considering the type of system I’m making (which is not a social network, but will connect people), there are certainly some design tips that I should heed in whatever thing I make. Later in his video, he describes the process of social design as being very different from User Centered Design. It goes a little something like this:

Build a hypothesis

Build a simple product

Launch it

Measure. Iterate

Repeat.

It may be too late to build something at this stage since I’m still designing it, but it would be super cool to gather some buddies and hack on lin'guage until it’s working.

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Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful.

John Maeda (via inspirationlogo)

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5 ingredients for a thriving ecosystem

Juliana Ritch also talked about the 5 ingredients for a thriving ecosystem:

Talent

Diversity

Culture

Capital

Regulatory environment

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When you visit a client and they’re still using IE 8:

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Let The Church Say Amen!

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When a dev asks for feedback on their indecipherable balsamiq wireframes:

by Anonymous

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*silently screams inside*

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When the client decides to give feedback by mocking up a design in PowerPoint

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YOOOO I’M CRYING! I wasn’t aware that this was a thing till now. Got 4 clients who legit do this....sooooooo annoyed.

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How to design doors to be less confusing

You’ve encountered a door like this. One that looks like you should pull on it, but really you’re supposed to push. Those doors you hate have a name: “Norman doors.”

They’re named after Don Norman, a UC San Diego cognitive scientist, who identified this phenomena in his book “The Design of Everyday Things.”

According to Norman, pushing on a door that says “pull” isn’t necessarily your fault. It is just poorly designed. 

So what’s the solution to this mess?

Norman explains two principles of design that make objects, including doors, more intuitive to use.

One is discoverability — that is, just by looking at the door, you should be able to detect what you could do with it. So a door with only a flap would be more intuitively interpreted as something you push on rather than pull.

A well-designed object should also provide you feedback while using it.

Feedback involves any visible, tactile, auditory or sensible reactions that help signal whether your attempted use of the object was successful. In the case of doors, the twistable knobs would signal to you whether the door is locked or not.

And perhaps the true test of a well-designed door may be whether your family cat can open it with ease.

Watch the full @vox video on Norman doors (and human-centered design) 

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I hate doors with the wrong handles!!!!

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When someone hovers behind me while I'm still working out a design:

Submitted by Caitlin.

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People ignore design that ignores people

Frank Chimero (via inspirationmobile)