Archive for the 'design' Category
What do you do near the end of a design project? I often find myself digging into the crevices and finding last-minute ways to make the design really sing. I try to clarify the communications (wireframe annotations, consistency, make sure everything is updated) and take a step back to make sure that the designs I’m finishing really do fit the goals of the work.
Sometimes the edge cases are the hardest to focus on, because they aren’t central to the core ideas. So when I overheard Dan S. say that he was at the point in a project where they were polishing the edge cases, I smiled.
Edge cases are an abstract thing, but when described in this way, they remind me of furniture…cases that hold things that you don’t use very often. You don’t want rough edges on your furniture, and you don’t want rough edges on your designs. So take Dan’s advice…give yourself time to polish them. Do they make Pledge for edge cases?
Fave idea of the week : April 4th, 2008
Friday, April 4th, 2008Working in a user experience company, I use a bunch of words to describe user-centered design: user experience, user engagement, interaction design, experience design, there’s a lot of words out there that triangulate the ideas around experience strategy and design, and they almost always are about the Web.
That’s why it was wonderful to hear Jesse advocate for designing for human engagement. Funny how a slightly different words can open up a world of possiblities. Thinking about the best experiences I’ve had…with a product, a place, a site, an activity…I can’t think of one that wasn’t smack dab in the center of human engagement.


