How can you experiment with visual design in UED?

In my experience so far as a designer, I agree that Sketching and prototyping are essential in UED. They help generate ideas, communicate concepts, and validate designs with real users. Tools like paper, wireframes, and interactive software can be used. It's a great way to experiment and iterate. These process also helps in simplifying and breaking down design process.

To me, sketching and prototyping are your dynamic duo in the world of UX. They're like the detective and the sidekick, trusty companions, always at the ready to help you navigate the complex labyrinth of design. Once you've got your sketches to help corral the user data you've accumulated, you move to prototyping. This is where my opinions might diverge from everyone else's. I believe prototyping is best done with an audience. In my article "Wireframe Like a Caricature Artist" I explain how prototypes can be built in front of and in collaboration with stakeholders to reduce revision cycles and gain instant alignment.

Sketching is not only one of the most accessible methods of exploration, but helps you rapidly get out ideas. At its core, sketching shows the intent of a design and helps communicate flows, hierarchies, layouts, etc.

The two quickest ways to improve your design process: → Sketching → Prototyping These steps are essential in User Experience Design (UED). They help generate ideas and communicate concepts clearly. Using tools like paper, wireframes, and interactive software can make a difference. Sketching allows you to experiment freely. Prototyping helps validate designs with real users. This process simplifies and breaks down the design workflow. It’s a great way to iterate and refine your ideas.

Context is King. You should always test your important features with potential users and in the proper context. Then you can see how your design will interact with the end user. Experimentation is an essential part of any design process.

Design systems are an essential tool for UI design. They help to ensure the designs are consistent, efficient to design and iterate, and consistent. By creating a library of reusable components, it allows teams to more easily work together and collaborate, and makes the process move much more quickly and efficiently. It also helps with handoff to engineering when there is a set of established reusable components.

Design systems can help UI/UX designers to experiment with visual design in a number of ways: ? Experiment with different color palettes, typography, and iconography to create unique and engaging visual experiences. ? Try different layouts and compositions to find what works best for your specific product or feature. ? Test different visual interactions and animations to create more user-friendly experiences. Overall, design systems are a powerful tool for visual experimentation in UED. They can help you to save time and effort, ensure quality and accessibility standards, and create more consistent and engaging visual experiences.

I also feel design systems help to create a consistent and standard design path for every product phase. And with a good design system will give rapid update during the visual design phase and also create a good record of various visual option in UED.

The power of a design system is often misunderstood. It's not just a way to ensure aesthethic consistency but also a way to improve on development leadtimes and cross-team communication. If you're still treating your design system as a 'brand guidelines' document, then you've missed a trick and severely undervalued what is actually the most powerful generative toolbox your company can leverage.

Design systems play a crucial role in ensuring consistency across different products and platforms, regardless of the size of the business. When a design system is carefully crafted, updates and sharing become seamless, thereby simplifying the workflow for designers downstream. Similarly, on the development side, once a design system is approved, it should facilitate smooth implementation, enabling organizations to adapt and evolve effortlessly as their needs change over time. This ensures that design and development processes remain efficient and effective, ultimately contributing to the overall success and growth of the organization.

A way I push myself and my team is to play a game. "What if this was designed by..." and I imagine what my design might look like if it were designed by Github, Slack, Linkedin, Apple, Spotify, ect. You can pick any other app and play with their spacing, shapes, and colors as it applies to your interface. You will get many horrible ideas out of this process but it will shake you out of your rut and help you think of new patterns. Your visual design skills are only as good as the library of patterns in your head and your ability to mix, match, and apply them.

I often see a lack of exploration within UI as opposed to other visual mediums. One way I’ve been able to push my team on this is to take a single hero screen and iterate on it multiple ways, making sure to be finding inspiration along the way. I’ve found that the best solutions end up being a mixture of these iterations, solving for the best usability and leading to increased desirability for the user.

When looking for inspiration, you must always keep the entire project, the entire concept of your work in mind. analyze references not superficially - fonts, colors and layouts, but conceptually. understand the principles and reasons for choosing a particular design pattern or technique.

Experimenting with different styles can help you to generate more robust solutions, though if you already have an established design system in place then you really shouldn't need to. Such diversity in aesthethic approach should be reserved for entirely new products, or incomplete design systems. Introducing novel treatments to an established product suite is a surefire way to damage trust and erode consistency.

This is an area I see far too little engagement. Especially with new UX Designers. If you ask them to explore a different style they have a tendency to rearrange the layout or change font sizes. What I want them to do is give me a design that's in the style of Art Deco or Minimalism or Retro or Abstract, and then find their designs there or find an engaging fusion.

Apply Design Principles Is crucial. Consistency - elements across the board. Hierarchy - clear organization to prioritize Modularity - reusable components (eg: Angular, Figma) Flexibility - variations and customizations Accessibility - ensure accessibility to all users Documentation - clear guidelines and instructions Support the evolution and growth of organizations' digital products and platforms.

Yes design principles can be easily applied during visual design phase and these creates a good pattern to drive consistency and balance. And a good design guide is actualised.

Design principles are essentially rules that are used either in conjunction or as part of a design system. As an example; the Nielsen Norman group has established a list of heuristics to measure against any given design. These can be considered best practice principles of design, and are a bit like a set of global rules. Design principles can also be company/project specific though. They can refer to styling treatments that are specific to a single product, but global within that product.

A good feedback network is key to keeping your visual ideas in check. Hopefully you are working on a team and have your peers to share their thoughts early on in the process, or you deliberately seek feedback from the actual audience of your design; the users. You are likely serving people from multiple walks of life with different life experiences. Extensive feedback helps to widen your perspective and avoid any biases you may have had going into any project.

Without feedback, UED ceases to be a concious and invaluable excercise and instead becomes just an unconcious byproduct of software development. You should seek to gather as much information as possible before idea generation even begins. Once you have something to base your designs on, you'll continually look for internal feedback, measuring it against the research you already have. After you've exhausted the access to tacit knowledge you have you'll return to the end user and stakeholders to validate what youve come up with. The feedback you receive here dictates whether the design can go into development or not.

La iteración es esencial porque permite un proceso de refinamiento y mejora continua. Cada iteración brinda la oportunidad de realizar ajustes basados en feedback real y datos analíticos, lo que asegura que el dise?o final no solo sea visualmente atractivo, sino también funcional y alineado con las necesidades del usuario.

In my opinion, a visual design, especially a digital one, is a living entity. Its breaths are the refinements that are made, its heartbeat is the dynamicism that it brings to speak to different users in a unique and distinctive way. User feedback, A/B testing, and my favorite multivariant testing is the nourishment that brings the design to life. Small changes that make a visual design mature are what sets good design apart from great design.

Using A/B testing may be of the most effective ways to determine if a product's visual design makes sense. By doing this, we can basically compare the behaviors of a user base to see which way works best.