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