Ah, designer land — the work a designer can output is phenomenal and we often take it for granted. Designer land is filled with politics, just like any specialization — filled with norms, do’s and dont’s.
Today I’ll be writing about one of the strongest do’s that many designers don’t take into mind when designing a product.
Stop Listening To The Crowd
A designer is suppose to experiment. Just like with most positions, you can learn the foundations and after that you’re on your own. You can be mentored in the direction that you wish, but you have to continue learning on your
own.
Personally, I’m just a code geek who loves coffee and has a strong passion for beautiful design but after working in freelance I’ve realized one thing:
Design is a subset branch of sciences
A designer who cares about what they do will conduct
experiments, think between the lines and break down every single pixel to each color.
Experiments
Experiments, and subsets of those experiments. Your job as a creative artist is to create for
thepeople. With every upcoming year we are looking more and more into quality of life, studying behaviours to make products easily accessible for all while maintaining a unique feel.
I have never studied design, I have read several books, but I realized very quickly how after you’re finishing with the foundation of arts, you are quickly pushed into design principles — another foundation.
Although I believe these two highly benefit a designer, I believe there is a lot more to becoming a designer than two, three or even four years of schooling. A designer should be pondering thoughts at all parts of the day, paying attention to the way people interact with the things around them. Conducting experiments with their work, asking those around them which one of
A-Zis better.
No, I didn’t mean asking if there should be +1 pixel on the border width of an element, or the font size should be a little bigger, or instead of using #eee, we use #ddd for accessibility.
Take a close look at
fig 1.Which of these is the normal for a basic login form on a website or a mobile app?
Of course the one on the left, but have you thought of that — where does a user hold their phone. A user will most likely be holding their phone in their right hand, with their thumb near the bottom half of the screen. Do we want to make the user stretch his thumb and risk the phone dropping out of his hand?
A lot happens in the subconsciousness, and this one little phone drop could possibly lose a customer and even induce indirect hate towards the product.
break down every single pixel to each color
Again, I don’t mean increasing the font size by a few pixels, or changing a color by a few shades. As a designer you’re taught to use specific colors to create specific mood, BUT have you ever thought about fluctuating moods due to a seasonal changes? Environmental changes?
… to be continued