Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Eleana Gkogka http://ift.tt/2okWpgB

It is mother’s day today and I cannot help but cherish a story that my mother used to tell me. It goes something like this.

It was a cold and rainy day… The covers got too heavy for the little owl and she was running late for school. Rushing to catch her bus, she forgot to pack her lunch. A few moments later, the owl mother found the lunch on the table, she grabbed it and quickly left for the school. She wouldn’t let her precious little girl get hungry.

On her way there, she ran into the cuckoo mother. What were the odds? She had the same problem; her daughter had forgotten to pack her lunch, too. The owl knew that the cuckoo mother was late for work and she seemed very stressed about it, so she offered to deliver the lunch for her. The only problem was that the owl mother had never seen the cuckoo’s daughter before. So how would she recognise her?

It was easy! The cuckoo mother advised her to look for the most beautiful bird in the class and that would be her daughter. Soon, the owl mother interrupted the class by delivering her little girl’s lunch along with a sweet kiss for dessert. Now, it was the time to find the cuckoo’s daughter. She was scanning around looking closely, she even put her glasses on but she couldn’t, she really couldn’t find a bird more beautiful than her baby owl… The time was pressing and the teacher was getting annoyed, so she turned back and gave the cuckoo’s lunch to her own little girl.

It’s funny cause it’s true! We all know that there is no love like a mother’s. But here’s six more things that this story can help us realise.

We only see what we want to see.

It seems a lot easier to see what we prefer to see, rather than face the unpleasant or uncomfortable truth of what is actually there. We tend to ignore anything going against our expectations. Designing for expectations is as important as innovating. Too much of the latter and we can create an uneasy experience for our users. We should keep a good balance of 20% new and 80% familiar, especially during the first interactions.

Designing for expectations is as important as innovating.

Your truth might be completely different from your neighbour’s.

The truth is subjective and it depends on a variety of factors such as location, culture, race, age, gender, personal experiences, and the list goes on. When designing, we should always invest in defining our audience and understanding their needs and belief systems. Words, and often images, can have different meanings or weight and we should choose them wisely.

We should always invest in defining our audience and understanding their needs and belief systems.

Names are invented for a reason. Use them!

Everything around us has a name, from objects to people. Names not only help us distinguish something or someone, they can also be very powerful if used right. When we are born, the name given to us becomes the thing someone uses to gain our attention. When someone uses our name we know they know us. Our name is the most intimate thing and when people use it, they can make us feel important and connect with us. They can even gain our trust or make us like them more. Addressing our users by using their name can help them connect with our product and feel as if real people are behind the screen.

Our name is the most intimate thing…

We don’t work well under stress.

People obviously respond differently to stress but it is proven that stress makes it harder for our brain to function, disturbing the process of translating information into something meaningful. It can interfere with our ability to learn, interact and make decisions. This is why we need to give our users the right amount of information and enough time to process it, in a safe and controlled environment. Help them learn and prepare themselves to make decisions when under pressure.

We need to give our users the right amount of information and enough time to process it.

If you want a job well done do it yourself.

It is a common belief and a controversial idea. We can easily object that there are cases where we need a professional in order to get things done and this is true. What is also true is that people like having control, or they can easily get frustrated and walk away. Our job as professionals is to make our users feel powerful by giving them the right tools, enough control, and guidance in order to be able to get things done on their own.

People like having control.

Bad communication is a real problem. Cuckoo birds are left starving while owls are getting fat.

The goal of all communication is for the receiver to understand the message that is conveyed and often take an action on it. In order to achieve that, a message has to be concrete, meaning to be specific, definite and vivid, rather than vague and general. We can always help or guide our users into specific actions by using a message and call to action that it is easy to read, interpret and understand.

A message has to be concrete.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Six things a children’s story can teach us about people and design. 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.

Six things a children’s story can teach us about people and design.

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