Springboard – Medium | Cathy Reisenwitz

Experience is many things. It’s expansive, influenced by many factors. It’s subjective. What feels great for me can feel terrible for you. And it’s fascinating. Why do we experience things the way we do? How do we find and craft the experiences we want? And how can we create the kinds of experiences others will want?

What follows, then, is the fact that experience design is similarly a collection of several disciplines: art, psychology, data collection, marketing, neuroscience.. I could go on.

TED talks, with their deep explorations of human behavior, are filled with wisdom that UX designers can learn from. I’ve created a list of six of my favorite talks. Only one is by a UX designer. The others are journalists, scientists, business people and authors. Each talk offers information that speaks to the processes, questions, and goals that form the heart of UX design.

1. Simplicity Sells

This is, hands down, the best TED talk on UX. Recorded in 2006, then New York Times technology columnist David Pogue put technology’s worst user experience offenders on blast.

He did this in order to showcase a perennial UX challenge: How to make a product full-featured enough for people to want to buy it, but simple and intuitive enough for people to want to use it.

He offers designers a few dependable rules: Give users options — not too many, though — and make them easy to find; be consistent; mimic the real world; and use labels.

Ultimately, though, what Pogue wants to teach isn’t rules, but intelligence. Intelligence means not having “United States” in the U section of the drop-down when 80–90% of your users will be selecting it.

It means not hiding the option to shutdown your computer behind a button that says “start.”

2. The Complex Relationship Between Data and Design in UX

In this talk, Rochelle King, VP of Design at Spotify, focuses on the questions that designers need to ask to extract the most useful data.

For Spotify, this means asking the same questions that a music venue might ask of its audience. How long did people stay during a concert? How often would they return to the venue? How loud was the applause?

King then explores the user research and prototype testing process that took place at the company during the release of a new user interface. It’s a fascinating case study. Not only does it give designers valuable best practices, but it also reveals the power and potential of UX Design itself.

To wit: Spotify found that a darker interface led to users listening to music longer and believing that the app gave them access to a much broader range of music than before.

3. The Impact of Persuasion

Much of design theory comes from cognitive science. The process of interaction may be physical, but perception, representation, problem solving, navigation, query-formulation and language processing are all topics of cognitive science. Don Norman kind of invented the discipline. Today, he directs the Design Lab at University of California, San Diego, and writes books on design, usability engineering, and cognitive science.

In this 2011 talk, Norman explores what the will in “free will” and why that question matters. As designers, we want to persuade — not force — the user to act. For example, Lay’s designed their potato chips to persuade users to eat the whole bag. But what does that do to the health of a society? And what is a designer’s responsibility in the creation of those experiences?

The talk is a wonderful meditation on the morality of design, asking designers to think about the societal impact of their work.

4. Designing for Simplicity

John Maeda knows a thing or two about the interplay of simplicity and complexity. His early artwork defined the complexity we now take for granted in interactive motion graphics. You can find his work in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Cartier Foundation in Paris.

Then, in 2006, Maeda published his bestseller: Laws of Simplicity. It was the culmination of a research project aimed at helping people simplify their increasingly complex lives.

So he’s thought a lot about which is better: a simple design or a complex one. The answer, he ultimately found, is: It depends. Being a good designer is about delivering value in a way that feels simple to the user. And neither simplicity nor complexity alone can meet that challenge. The extent to which either dominates should depend on what you’re building, and for whom.

5. How Great Leaders Inspire Action

If you’re not familiar with Simon Sinek and his best-selling business book, Start With Why, I suggest you run out and by it stat. His catchphrase “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it,” doesn’t immediately sound relevant to design. But dig deeper, and you’ll find that it is, in fact, the very basis of good design.

His talk at TEDxPuget Sound in 2009 is a great reminder to hook emotion into your designs. His insights around motivation — that people are gut-driven and make decisions primarily based on intuition — are certainly valuable to keep in mind as you design good experiences.

6. Good Germs Make Healthy Buildings

Jessica Green studies how architectural design choices impact the microbial biomes of buildings, and then figures out how we can use that information to design spaces that optimize for human health.

Green describes her work as “bioinformed design.” This is a term that could just as easily describe UX design. I mean, we are designing for living beings.

The talk explores Green’s research process and the principles at the backbone of her design philosophy. While the implications of designing for optimal germ health are fascinating, this talk is ultimately a lesson in designing with purpose. What is the philosophy of your design? And how mindful are you to follow that philosophy in your everyday work?

These talks are only a sampling of design-related TED talks. Here are several others that are just as fascinating:

In How to Make Choosing Easier Sheena Iyengar applies insights from behavioral economics to decision design.

David McCandless’ The Beauty of Data Visualization offers some excellent reminders of why your work matters.

How Giant Websites Design For You is an explanation of the challenges of making changes with compelling real-life examples from Margaret Gould Stewart’s work at Facebook and YouTube.

Midway through 3 Ways Good Design Makes You Happy” Don Norman starts talking about the neuroscience of design, and it’s fascinating to learn what design does to the brain.

David Kelley’s How to Build Your Creative Confidence is geared toward non-creatives, but can benefit anyone who occasionally suffers from a crisis of creative confidence..

If there are any good ones I missed, let me know in the comments.

Springboard prepares you for the careers of tomorrow with mentor-led online courses. Check out our free guide to getting started in UX Design.

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