Vitaly Friedman’s Post

Design Principles

From guiding principles for experience design, product design, service design to designing voice interfaces and much, much more - a comprehensive collection for every design domain, including guides on how to establish design principles. 👌 As Vitaly points out, design guidelines should be seen as guardrails for people working across organizations. They help teams stay focused, make the right decisions and steer conversations in the right direction. What is your experience of working with design guidelines? How does your team strike a balance between guiding principles and the flexibility needed to adapt them to different applications and product areas? Let us know in the comments! 🙏

The only way is forward. Keep learning to keep growing :)

"What is design" — this question is making the rounds again. While a reasonable summary fills a page, a thorough discussion fills a library. At work, it's better to ask "What is design's contribution?" — to the org, the project, the goal, etc. If one *must* ask "What is design", my response is "Who is asking, and why do they want to know?" The answer varies tremendously across contexts. There is no single correct, useful reply. It's totally fair that non-designers expect designers to be able to give them an answer. "You are a designer. Tell me, what is design?" When asked, a designer will typically give the definition that applies to _their_ work. But design is a highly specialized activity. Graphic design overlaps only slightly with interaction design. No one quite agrees on how that is different from user experience (UX) design. All of these are different from industrial design. And so on. Even if the designer *had* reviewed recent work in Design Studies, they would not come away with a straightforward answer. Design has been defined and described in many ways. Some argue vehemently about the "correct" definition, some call for a "big tent", and a few roll their eyes and say #DTDT! ("defining the damn thing"). Mostly, articles written about this exact problem go unread, uncited, and unmentioned. Even the meaning of "designing" has changed over time. Bruce Archer (1965) wrote that "A key element in the act of designing is the formulation of a prescription or model for a finished work in advance of its embodiment." That doesn't quite match with how we work now. Continuous Design, as described by Maria Skaaden, Jeff Sussna, Sonja Sarah Porter and others, aims for a more adaptable approach to thinking ahead than Archer's did. Many agile [software development] teams have tried similar things, with bad (sprint zero) and less bad results. But it all comes back to this: Why is the question being asked? A very general "what is design" fills a library, a very specific "what does design do for us in this context" fills a sentence. I don't expect the question to ever go away, but I do hope that designers start asking "Why do you want to know?" / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / Image (because algorithms) from Graphis magazine Nº 1. The text loosely translates as: "Overview of all areas and parts of life as it has presented itself to peoples in all ages, as it will show itself in a new image to future generations; the symbols of spirit and thought in writing and allegory, technology and craftsmanship of the artist, the evolved forms of nature, the created design of the artistic genius, the reflection of life through film and photography. From the vision and sketch to the care of detail in the process of realization —GRAPHIS — creative refreshment for the art lover — an indispensable tool for the artist."

Service Design - 2023.12.21 Study Note 06 - Split and Omnibus Theories of Service Design The difference between service design and experience design, interaction design, etc. has been a hot topic. In <This is Service Design>, there is a schismatic and totalising statement that might help you understand this better. "Just as when palaeontologists discuss taxonomy, you'll find "splittists" and "totalists". Schismatics will discuss the differences between concepts such as service design, experience design, design thinking, holistic user experience, user-centred design, human-centred design, new marketing, etc. Omnibus theorists will point out that the commonalities of these approaches far outweigh the differences, and will show that the names don't matter at all compared to the principles shared by these practices. The authors of this book are firmly on the side of the "totalisers". Frankly, as long as you're doing something like this, we don't care what you call it." Like the authors of This is Service Design, I strongly advocate for the "totalisers". This goes some way to answering the question of why many people in other industries feel like they're doing service design-related things because a lot of the underlying logic is inherently similar. As a cross-discipline that first developed out of the fields of marketing and management, service design has always borrowed quality methods and tools from other disciplines, so it has a high degree of overlap with many fields. Using the terms service design, interaction design, and experience design to encapsulate different concepts is very one-sided, as these terms may have different syllabi in different schools and different responsibilities in different companies. I came across Dave's article again yesterday on "How to Translate Customer Requirements into MVP Features?" In this post, Dave details the process that product managers use to turn customer requirements into MVP features using tools such as affinity maps and feature maps. As I've said before, swapping product managers for service designers wouldn't be out of place. Reference: 1. This is Service Design, Mark Stickendorn / Marcus Hommes / Adam Lawrence / Jacob Schneider

Design processes vary, but good ones are iterative and user-focused. #usercentricdesign #uxdesign https://lnkd.in/gTemVtnR

Ever since design systems became a thing, I've been frequently frustrated by how some teams approach them. I'd predicted at the time that I would be, but had hoped I was wrong. My frustration with them lies in 2 places: 1. Some designers use them as an excuse to stop thinking. It's easy to tell yourself that a heap of decisions have already been made and they are out of your hands. If design system says no, then the answer is no. It's hard to believe that an AI won't soon be able to replace people with that approach. The reason that people say "it depends" so much in #UX is because it's true a lot of the time. Using a design system as a strict set of rules (rather than an efficiency tool), is ignorant to that. 2. Design teams often have the wrong attitude toward them. Some believe that if everyone just uses the components in there and doesn't stray from them, then everyone will create usable and accessible designs out of the box. This simply isn't true. It's often good designers arguing for new components and for leeway in using the existing ones. But those designers are often treated as bad, troublesome designers within the team. People like Carol here (pictured) are treated as being good at their job for sticking to the rules. The design team blames organisational influences for causing sub-par user experience, without reflecting on how their own approach contributes to the problem. Here's a quick test. How many date field components does your design system have? If it's just one, then your design system can't cope with many of the common contexts that dates are used in. If the image here makes no sense to you, I'll post a link in the comments. #DesignSystem

Design systems are supposed to be not just maintained but updated and improved as well. A continuous creativity and feedback sessions loop within the team on how to fix and improve many issues, with among them, accessibility and inclusivity based on WCGA standards. In most of my projects in the past 3/4 years, the team used to have weekly design critiques meetings to discuss new ideas on fixing colour contrasts, components styles and elements, new designs etc... En bon entendeur, 💁♀️ #designsystem #uxui #productdesign

In user experience design, there are no hard rules that guarantee success. Instead, there are general guidelines, principles, or rules of thumb that you use to inform and evaluate your work. These guidelines are called heuristics, and when you evaluate your (or your competitor’s) work against these heuristics, it is called heuristic evaluation. One of the most popular sets of heuristics are those created by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich. These are: Visibility of system status: Keep the user informed about what is happening behind the scenes. Match between system and the real world: Ensure the conventions you use match what the user is already familiar with in the real world. User control and freedom: Allow users to step back, undo and redo their actions. Consistency and standards: Ensure interface elements like labels and icons behave consistently throughout the product. Error prevention: Anticipate, and plan for errors. Where possible, eliminate them; and for other cases, ensure users can easily recover from errors. Recognition rather than recall: Do not expect users to remember or recall information. It is always easier to recall information when we have clues to point us towards it. For example, it is easier for us to pick (i.e., recognize) the right answer from a list of options, rather than attempting to answer from memory (recall). Make sure your interface has cues to help users recognize information. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Allow users to customize or tailor the interface to suit their needs so that they can perform frequent actions more easily. Aesthetic and minimalist design: Remove clutter and any superfluous information so that users can focus on achieving their goal, instead of getting confused or overwhelmed. Help users recognize, diagnose and recover from errors: Avoid technical jargon. Write error messages in plain language and ensure nothing gets lost in translation. Help and documentation: Provide easily accessible and searchable documentation. References and learn more: https://lnkd.in/dKGeztQS #interactiondesign #humancomputerinteraction #interfacedesign #technology #mac #interfaces

Completely agree with David and I wrote an article about shattering the design system here 💥 design systems stifle creativity but help keep consistency; we just need to get the balance right! https://lnkd.in/eShcA69n #userexperience #userinterface #designsystem #designsystems #design #productdesign #ux #ui