In Defense of Eye Candy. We’ve all seen arguments in the design community that dismiss the role of beauty in visual interfaces, insisting that good designers base their choices strictly on matters of branding or basic design principles. Lost in these discussions is an understanding of the powerful role aesthetics play in shaping how we come to know, feel, and respond. Consider how designers “skin” an information architect’s wireframes. Or how the term “eye candy” suggests that visual design is inessential. Our language constrains visual design to mere styling and separates aesthetics and usability, as if they are distinct considerations.
Yet, if we shift the conversation away from graphical elements and instead focus on aesthetics, or “the science of how things are known via the senses,” we learn that this distinction between how something looks and how it works is somewhat artificial. Why aesthetics? Aesthetics and cognition#section2 Cognition is “the process of knowing.” Here, aesthetics communicates function. » Storyboarding & UX – part 3: storyboarding as a workshop activity Johnny Holland. The previous article in this series described a step-by-step technique for drawing storyboards to help us as designers understand the issues we try to solve, and to communicate existing issues and potential solutions to others. When it comes to research techniques, the great news is that storyboarding can also help others articulate their own issues and ideas. It’s to this purpose we now turn. The importance of doing as well as talking One of the great truths about user experience design is to observe what people do, rather than only listen to what they say.
Thankfully, there’s a whole host of various activities we can do with workshop participants to reveal user requirements and behaviours, beyond talking and listening. When to use storyboarding as a workshop activity At Digital Eskimo, we have had great success with using storyboarding as an activity in workshops. Storyboarding is useful in the following specific instances: A practical guide to storyboarding as a workshop activity. » Storyboarding & UX – part 2: creating your own Johnny Holland. When thinking about storyboarding, most people fixate on their ability — or perceived inability — to draw.
What is far more important is working out the point you wish to make with your storyboard, and the actual story that will carry that point from your storyboard across the room and into the hearts and minds of your audience. In this article explores the value of establishing a reason for the storyboard first, and then how you can create a storyboard using the thinking you’re already using and the skills you already have. Get your story straight During a recent move, I discovered a whole book filled to the brim with comics that I had drawn during my primary school years. They were typical fare: myself and my schoolmates cast as a band of affable brigands, lurching from one side of the galaxy to the other having all sorts of unlikely and – let’s be honest – highly illogical adventures.
Establish if a storyboard is the best way to tell your story What’s your point? Roll camera End well. » What I Bring to UX From … Market Research Johnny Holland. What I Bring To UX What were you doing before you made it to UX? Our series investigates the stories. See all posts Research plays a vital role in UX, as we need to understand our users and their motivations in order to design products which meet their needs. Market research is all about finding out what people do and why. UX and Market Research: Why Can’t We All Be Friends? There are a lot of similarities between UX and market research. I’m not aware of any well known UXers who started out in market research (or at least, who openly admit it!)
Doing Market Research Few people actively plan to work in market research and my career planning was, in retrospect, a bit haphazard! Having graduated with a degree in English, I started my career working for a large market research agency in the continuous consumer panel division. As is common in large research companies, the interviewing was done by a specialised fieldwork division so I wasn’t actually speaking to users very often. » Storyboarding & UX – part 1: an introduction Johnny Holland. The fields of user experience and service design typically use storyboarding to sell design solutions. They do this by casting personas in stories, showing the benefits of those solutions. They often look quite polished and professional, and can be daunting to some in these fields to pick up a pencil and try it for themselves. But not only can you draw these scenario storyboards yourself to sell your solutions, you can also use them as a powerful method for devising those solutions in the first place.Storyboards are part of the intriguing world of sequential art, where images are arrayed together to visualise anything from a film to a television commercial, from a video game to a new building.
They’re an effective communication device, bringing a vision to life in a way that anyone can grasp and engage with, before investing in producing the real thing. In three articles I will introduce you to the world of storyboarding: Introducing storyboarding… Yet another UX silver bullet?