Rod Motta - User Experience Visual Designer » Design Patterns

An intuitive design is…

Rod Motta — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:28:44 +0000

Recently, I had the opportunity to watch Jared Spool’s great talk on First Use Experience. In his talk, he argued that an intuitive design is:

When the user is focused on their objective and not on the actual interface itself
Invisible (user only pay attention to something intuitive when it’s actually not intuitive. What makes something intuitive is actually something personal. We have to know something about the people we are building for
When Current Knowledge and Target Knowledge are at the same place. There are two ways to accomplish this: Raise Current Knowledge to meet Target Knowledge (Training), or reduce Target Knowledge to meet Current Knowledge (Simplifying)
Is all about focuses on experience. Trend/ Pattern we see over and over again: Technology > Features > Experience
Is a result of constant team critique, and critiques are essential to creating intuitive designs.

Certain web design styles are popular for a reason

Rod Motta — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 05:18:14 +0000

Sometimes popular web design styles can deter us since we love to create something original. As designers we like to see variety, but of course, our internal and external clients like to mimic and see consistency. Some of the more popular web design styles are:

Illustrations
Printed paper
Realism
Imageless & typography-focused
Minimalism
Vintage look
Large images & photo backgrounds
Rich & slick user interfaces

While many designers seem to be very against trends and already popular styles, one must understand that these certain styles are popular for a reason. That reason is that there is already something about them that works, whether it be efficiency, viewer-connection, or interesting visual appeal. The goal is to always view popular styles from an intuitive standpoint, and take from them what works best. This is the only way to learn and gain experience as a web designer, even when developing one’s own particular style.

Quick thought on Web vs Desktop design process

Rod Motta — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 02:39:32 +0000

There is a world of differences to consider when designing for web or designing for desktop applications:

From fundamental interactions to keyboard driven navigational paradigms to accessibility issues to screen layout to basic behavior and reaction of buttons, links, etc…we have to consider that a product with a rich client and a web client are two completely separate applications striving to assist the user in meeting the same goals. Of course, it is a little more complicated than that but perhaps it get us going in the right direction.

Is breaking the rules okay when a design calls for it?

Rod Motta — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 05:36:13 +0000

This 10 web design rules that you can break article, made me realize that “Rules you should break” or “Standards you shouldn’t follow” articles appeal to everyone rebel side. Some of you guys may wonder what Jakob Nielsen would say to “Breaking the rules is okay when a design calls for it”.

I think rules #4 “Make your site’s goal obvious”, #5 “Navigation should be easy to figure out”, #7 “Don’t put animation in the way of your content” and #9 “Don’t have a splash/landing page” can be broken for personal portfolio or some entertainment sites, where a more creative approach might be appropriate, but not so much for e-commerce, news or corporate sites.

#6 “Use different colors for the text and background” should be “Use Contrast between Text and Background”, not different colors. Most of the examples here use variations of the base color, and use contrast to make the text readable, just like it supposed to be.

#8 “Stick to web-safe fonts”: I’m getting into using Cufon and Typeface.js (I used it for 2 projects), they offer a great solution in terms of progressive enhancement (better than sIFR), and think this is one area where the old rules no longer apply.

I also liked the tables joke and the tone it sets to encourage designers not to be so serious all the time!

Neat visual nav

Rod Motta — Wed, 06 May 2009 05:08:54 +0000

Neat visual nav at Stylous.com. Check it out in action to see how it works.

INSPIRE: From the Adobe Experience Design Team

Rod Motta — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:42:55 +0000

I came across this new website from Adobe called INSPIRE, an online publication of the Adobe Experience Design Team, which will easily attract anyone into software, web & graphic design.

The Adobe team shares valuable, real-life experiences both written & via videos.

Here are some interesting content:

Adobe and the future of multitouch (really cool!)
Collecting User Feedback: You’re Doing It Wrong
Icons In Space

Great Self Promotion

Rod Motta — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 01:01:21 +0000

The 37better Project, from the 37signals guys (archive from 2001 – some links may not work), has some really cool promotional things that they did for their company. It brought them tremendous exposure. The 37betters were linked up everywhere and discussed at length in all the right places.

Slow times are a perfect time to start putting together self promotional materials. What are the patterns in your business? How can you demonstrate competency beyond what everyone else is doing? Every designer has a portfolio of their designs, but how many have a portfolio of their minds?

Mega Drop Down Navigation

Rod Motta — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:28:18 +0000

Here’s a study on how mega drop-downs overcome the downsides of regular drop-downs: Mega Drop Down Navigation Menus Work Well By Jacob Nielsen

Here’s a screenshot of a great example not listed in the article above:

UI design patterns libraries

Rod Motta — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:23:18 +0000

I’ve collected a set of UI design patterns libraries. Some of them present patterns with descriptions and advices such as Yahoo, others collect screenshots of UI designs, such as PatternTap. With all the available sites, you have a lot of patterns to tap into for your sites and applications!

Let me know if you know another good UI patterns collections that are not listed above.