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Product Design Done Effectively

This story started when I was two months into my new workplace— a client had requested a mobile-based application that has some similarities to Uber, but with a different business purpose. Ideally, it was a good startup to introduce lean UX to the project team and to see if the process would work, because most of the time people talk about processes but really don’t follow them. The problem is that we often don’t have the time to think through and checklist all these processes during a sprint.

So what’s up with human design and product design?

Well to me, product design is all about making the correct decisions to solve problems that relate to their customers or the world that we all live in. What I truly believe is that good product design should bring inspiration, win the hearts and soul, solve the problem areas and also the market the product being presented. But I do find the lacking of a “WOW FACTOR” when it comes to design often due to external factors that other entities faces.

With proper human design, users can be empowered and feel more naturally attracted towards the design.

Human design is something that enables the gateway between the designer and the targeted audience. With proper human design, users can be empowered and feel more naturally attracted towards the design. Designing for humans is not a new topic. Many big corporations have used the word designing for humans and tried to make a difference in their branding and marketing in their products. Some made big headlines but in reality, they were not that well made.

What I wanted to do

I wanted to create a solution that would inspire the client to be more interactive with me giving out the flexibility to the client to give their ideas towards the design.

So I did this first

User flow

Before going into a design I wanted to understand who our product users were:

What are their needs?
What are they going to do with the product that we are giving?
What are their behaviors?
What type of computer literacy do they have?
How necessary is the application should be for users to be used.

All those long set of requirements had me talking back and forth to get the necessary requirements. After identifying their pain points I came up with a simple user flow for the application. By this I am able to identify any loopholes in the application in the initial state before the wire-framing. This helped me to understand what the user groups that I found out in putting my persona together needs and aspect by application.

Well I am a Brain to hand person

With the hypothesis I discovered in the initial flow, I create my paper sketches for the application, and set out the application flow into a meaningful manner. I will draw the main functions of the application/product just using a pencil in an application frame (mobile/desktop), and then order them how the application flow should come.

Making a wire-frame with pencil sketch helps me to find out the changes in the layout and additions, and new ideas of what should be the best paths, and also what paths are the easiest paths to get the work done.

I draw the full paths from start point to end point

Design for humans by looking in to small details in visual designs

Most people believe that visual design is all about being a superb artist who knows how to put colors, text, and elements all in the correct places, and swing the magic wand and tell the magic words… and “WAHHH” everyone falls in love with your design.

I would be happy if it is that easy.

User flow in visual design

I personally think that designer should have a certain level of skills to create human understandable designs rather than putting up flamboyant designs. That ability comes with experience in working in various areas that would support a designer to deliver quality and effective products.

So what do I think about Designing for Humans?

I think that this topic mostly goes head to head with physiology in design. We always try to put the elements in the places that we think they are in the correct place to be and we justify those decisions we took to our clients. I don’t find anything wrong with it but I think we can improve the status of our design by adding few basic ideas into it.

I want to know about the Cognitive psychology and how it can affect a product and how a product designer can effectively use them to improve the quality of the product.

Figure Ground — As humans, we have the ability/ tendency to identify objects from our eyes from their background. The product that you design should allow the users to identify which parts to focus on and which parts that they can safely ignore in a composition. I use elements and content areas to highlight that grabs the attention of the user’s eye at the first point of contact allowing the user to focus on the areas that matter to the users and keeping them on the flow of the application.
Similarity

Source: Creative BeaconSource: Andy Rutledge

Humans identify shapes really easily. When coming to shapes we automatically separate the shapes into groups of individual categories in our mind. When we see the shapes in applications we consider the functionality of the similar shapes to be the same. we look into the color, text size, presentation of the elements to identify what the function of the shape can be. So in order to give out proper indications, I have used the same set of shapes to convey the same functions and the same set of colors and text so the user can identify the function easily.

3. Proximity — When two set of same color objects are put closer together we tend to think that these elements are in one group. But if we put the same set of objects in two groups with a distance people tend to believe that they are two different groups.

It’s a powerful way of preventing similarity of color and shape in the application allowing the users to make a different decision based on them.

Source: Andy Rutledge

Focal Point — Most of the time the applications or products we design fails to give a focal point towards the application user. Users get too much of distractions and loose the interest in the main functionality of the application. In order to do that I used colors that grab the attention of the users first and the placement of the elements in a meaningful manner so the user will see it at the first point in using the application.

Source: Smashing Magazine

I really think that we need to think more about the human factor when come to create the application not because elements look nice when put together or someone else told to do so.

This is my experience in adding better human experience to the products that we create. Hope you have better experience than me so I would really be thankful if you can give me your feedback so I can improve my self.

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Designing for Humans was originally published in Prototyping: From UX to Front End on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Designing for Humans

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