Visual design has the potential to make or break a user experience. The reason most people believe graphic designers exist is to make an interface look pretty. While this is an important part of the process, most people don’t realize that visual cues are designed with the end user in mind.
When you begin the artistic phase of your project, there are three important elements to consider:
1. Design for Your Target Audience
A few months ago, we put on a webinar about usability testing. One of the questions at the end was about justifying spending on usability design and testing. More broadly, how to convince management that good design matters – and is worth investing in. This is an industry-wide question and one, which user experience professionals are often asked in an “elevator pitch” kind of situation.
Welcome to the post Qt DevDays 2013 edition of the UX Blog. I suspect that many of you who follow this blog also attended DevDays and I hope you enjoyed the show as much as I did. I met a lot of great people, saw some interesting demos and presentations and even gave a few talks that seemed to hold people’s attention for the full time slot. All in all, a pretty great week.
Congratulations! You've finished your usability test. What's the next step? How do you organize, analyze and present your findings and recommendations? Keep reading to find out!
Organize
When we say that a user experience (UX) has “visceral appeal”, we mean that it elicits an immediate “I like it” response. A visceral response is an emotional reaction that involves little or no active thought. It is often called a “gut feeling,” and it can be either positive or negative.
According to Merriam-webster.com, visceral is defined as:
1. felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body: deep
2. not intellectual: instinctive, unreasoning
We've all seen them. We use them on a daily basis, often multiple times a day and without much conscious thought. They're everywhere. Doors. Interestingly, doors can show us why we should care about the user experience.
Doors are straightforward, right? They open, and we walk through them. Nevertheless, sometimes something so simple on paper can actually be rather confusing in real life.
