paper & pencil

Good Reads This Week

Interesting and insightful articles from this week... while most are the usual user experience related topics, there are some around freelancing as I begin my adventure in independent consulting.

20 Tools For The Freelance Designer On A Shoestring Budget
Links to free or cheap tools for image editors, feedback and usability testing, cross-browser testing, programming, and billing, invoicing and timetracking. (via FreelanceSwitch.com)

Convert Design Evolution
Fun video showing the design evolution of an iPhone app. (via Sporter)

Managing UI Complexity
Techniques for managing complexity in an interface. (via @Konigi)

Behind the Typedia Logo Design
Really great overview of designing the new logo for Typedia, which is a shared encyclopedia of typography. (via Twitter)

Your Future in 5 Easy Steps: Wired Guide to Personal Scenario Planning
Scenario planning is a great tool to work through an uncertain future. (via @MarkFrisk)

Design guidelines for e-commerce product pages with eyetracking data
10 guidelines for designing product pages such as clear calls to action, prioritizing important content, simple layout, quality images and helpful descriptions using bullet points. (via Core77)

Information Interplay: Visual Design, Information Architecture, and Content
Good designs and good design teams are strong in all three areas. (Via UIEtips)

Renting an Idiomatic Experience
Learning keyless ignition idiom. (via Alok Jain, IxDA list)

Are You a Visual Thinker?
Capturing key ideas in visual form engages people and they're most likely to read them. (via XPRESS)

Playfulness in design and in the process

In the past week I've come across 3 articles on designing for delight as well as usability. Evidence of this, according to Fred Beecher, is in the undeniable success of the iPhone despite its many usability flaws, which he describes in detail (good tips on what not to do). I love this line:

While it’s still my responsibility to prevent things from sucking, now it’s also my responsibility to add a little playfulness.

Chris Fahey aims to put "three delightful details" in his designs:

...a humorous error message, a helpful hint at a difficult juncture, a way to skip a step in a process, etc.

And Dana Chisnell describes the 3 levels of happiness in a design: Mindfulness, Flow and Meaning.

Absolutely we should strive to delight in our designs. We should also have this goal for the design process. This is easily accomplished by making the design process visible and involving everyone in it - whiteboard sketches and walking through paper wireframes or prototypes. Especially when it includes markers. Seriously, who doesn't like to play with markers?

It also helps to introduce humor when there is a conflict over how to address a specific function. Suggesting something crazy like having a little head pop-up, usually of some colorful executive, a la "Clippy" style.

I've found when everyone can share in the designs and share in some laughs, it is much easier to arrive at a shared vision.