You’ve embarked upon a user experience project – updating your website or creating a Web or mobile app. You know there will be an element of visual and experience design, but do you understand the basics behind why your designers are making the decisions and recommendations they make? It’s important to understand some design basics in order to communicate effectively with the designers on your team. While many of us have an intuitive feel for what works and what doesn’t, developing a vocabulary to describe your issues and feedback and understanding the techniques required to validate your hunches are important skills in order to ensure the success of your project. This session goes in-depth on which design techniques and principles ought to be part of every executive’s vernacular. By the end of the session attendees will understand the basics of both high level interaction design and lower-level visual design in a way that maximizes energy and time in the approval process, including: • Basic design principles to help executives understand a design’s intent. This includes a basic understanding of layout, color theory and typography. • Design vocabulary, heuristics and analysis techniques • The difference between information architecture and interaction design, and how both have a critical yet often unseen influence on the development of the end project • Why incorporating user research is critical to good design

1. Design Essentials for Executives
“Behind The Magic”
Tweeting our session?
Use the hashtag: #effectiveui
Anthony Franco: President, Founder
Michael Salamon: Lead Experience Architect

3. Why Care About Design

5. Imagine you are
Dr. Min Kao
CEO of Garmin

12. $97.99

14. What is Design?

15. obligatory Steve Jobs quote
“In most people’s vocabularies, design means veneer. It’s interior
decorating. It’s the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me,
nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the
fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing
itself in successive outer layers of the product or service.”
Steve Jobs in an Interview with Fortune Magazine, 2000

17. Graphic Interaction
Design
Design
Design
Research

18. Graphic Design
Making intent visible and emotional.

20. “Effective use of the
Language of Form”
Paul Rand

21. Dictionary:

22. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

23. Text
Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

24. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

25. Text
Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

26. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

27. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

28. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

29. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

30. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

31. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

32. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

33. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

34. Images from “Paul Rand Retrospective” by Imaginary Forces.

35. More than the
sum of its parts...

42. Interaction Design
Exposing intent through actions and feedback.

43. Interaction design is the art
of making things intuitive

44. Don Norman’s Design Dictionary
Visibility
Affordances
Feedback
Mapping
Constraint
Consistency

45. Visibility

49. Affordance

52. Feedback

53. http://www.flickr.com/photos/meganbarton/3023756556/

55. Mapping

56. http://www.flickr.com/photos/docsearls/181012863/

58. Constraints

60. Consistency

62. Takeaways
Interactive elements should be visible, recognizable, reactive
(feedback), safe and consistent.

63. Design Research
Defining, validating and auditing an application’s intent.

64. Without design research,
customers will think your
product sucks

65. But what about Steve?

66. Without design research,
customers will think your
product sucks

67. Without customer empathy,
customers will think your
product sucks

68. Design research gives
designers empathy

70. Pro-Tips
Extras for the Execs.

71. Never use
Comic Sans

72. Don’t Put Social Everywhere.

73. Don’t ask for Comps in your RFP.

74. Never use
Yellow on
White

75. Don’t always copy Apple

76. AVOID USING ALL
CAPS WITH
SCRIPTS

77. Don’t put
Drop Shadows
on EVERYTHING

78. Don’t Use Flames

79. Never let I.T. make design decisions

80. Don’t think re-skinning’s gonna help

81. Don’t say “Make it
Image from: http://stephanielittlejohns.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/pop.jpg

82. Don’t say “Make the logo bigger”

83. Don’t say “Make it Clean”

84. And above all else...

85. Never, ever quote
Jakob Nielsen

86. But you don’t have to
take our word for it.
Jakob Nielsen Indi Young
Ten Usability Heuristics: http://www.useit.com/papers/ Mental Modeling
heuristic/heuristic_list.html Re-imagining the Design of Everyday Things (SlideShare)
Heuristic Evaluation: http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/
heuristic_evaluation.html Stephen Few
Information Dashboard Design - The Effective Visual
Bill Buxton Communication of Data
Sketching User Experience Design
Rudolf Arnheim:
Donald Norman To the Rescue of Art - Twenty-six Essays
The Design of Everyday Things
Lindsay Moore and Austin Brown
William Lidwell, Kritina Holden, Jill Butler Human Centered Design and the Intersection of Physical and
Universal Principles of Design Digital Worlds:
http://www.slideshare.net/EveFife/humancentered-design-and-
Robin Williams the-intersection-of-the-physical-and-digital-worlds?
The Non-Designer’s Design Book from=ss_embed
Original Paul Rand video:
http://imaginaryforces.com/featured/3/415

87. Thanks!
#effectiveui
@anthonyfranco
@michael_salamon
@effectiveui © EffectiveUI 2011