UIE Brain Sparks

Storytelling is a natural form of expression. We’ve all been telling stories from a very young age. Scenarios are the stories that drive design decisions. They put the design into the context of how and why the user will interact with it. Kim Goodwin uses her immense experience to outline the relationship between personas and scenarios and how to bring them into your design process.

Prototypes help, be they paper, wireframes or PDFs, to exhibit a design idea. They allow you to communicate your idea visually and test aspects of the design. As effective as they are, they have their limitations. Nathan Curtis of EightShapes uses HTML prototypes in his team’s design process. Using HTML, they test functionality and interactions in ways that are impossible while using static PDFs.

Mobile design is becoming more important everyday. As the technology and capabilities get better so does the users’ experience. Taking advantage of this technology affords you to opportunity to create experiences that your users have only dreamed of. Luke discusses the capabilities of mobile devices, new usage, and the future possibilities.

Great design principles guide your team to creating designs that delight your users. Having a set of great principles will allow your team to turn ordinary design into extraordinary design. But not everyone has great design principles. What even constitutes a great design principle? Jared dives into our latest research on what teams are doing it right and which are missing the mark.

Conducting research and gathering data are crucial parts in the process of creating great design. But once you have all of the data, what do you do with it? How do you know you’re extracting the right conclusions and not leaving anything important on the table? Steve Portigal discusses the methods of synthesis and ideation to approach this crucial next step.

Analyzing data is a great way to make design decisions. But when your analytics log contains billions of clicks, how do you distinguish which ones you should use in forming those decisions? Users’ behavior and activity can provide you with great information and insights. But when do you look to that and when do you trust your own instincts? Julie Zhuo discusses Facebook’s design process.

“Thinking mobile” goes beyond scaling down an existing app to fit a smaller screen or making decisions about what content to include. Because the app can be used anywhere by nature and the interface is manipulated with thumbs and fingers, there are much more than just aesthetics to consider. Josh discusses mobile design with Adam Churchill.

The surge in mobile technology is incredible. Manufacturers ship over a million touchscreen phones every day. These devices allow people to interact with the web in new ways. Streamlining your design for mobile helps you focus on what is absolutely necessary. In this podcast, Luke joins Jared Spool in a discussion about designing mobile experiences.

Mike Lee is the Senior Digital Strategy Advisor at AARP. With much of the organization’s 53-year heritage being within “traditional” media realms, shifting it’s publishing and broadcast businesses into the online world is no small task. In this podcast, Mike joins Jared Spool to discuss some of the design challenges, the ways AARP has transitioned to the web, and how they have been exploring and taking advantage of mobile and tablet technologies.

Information Visualization uses the brain’s innate ability to recognize patterns to create visual representations of data. When you see a great visualization, it’s as if you are looking through the eyes of an expert. Noah Iliinsky gives examples of the types of visualizations in common use, why and when they are useful, and how to think about different types.

Whether it's on the design side or development side there are tricks and techniques you can benefit from. Often, these tips can save you time and frustration. You may not even be aware of them unless someone actually shows them to you. Being able to see someone else's approach reveals knowledge that you can't find anywhere else. In this podcast, Jonathan Snook and Steve Smith join Jared Spool to discuss some of their best tips and techniques they learned from each other.

More types of devices are accessing your web content everyday. Have you figured out how to accommodate them? Ethan Marcotte is leading the charge in this area, with his work on Responsive Design, which can help your content scale and adapt to new devices.

Translating information and data into a useful visualization is challenging. When creating information visualizations, as with any design process, it’s imperative to keep your audience in mind. With quality visualizations, they can understand and analyze complex information. In this podcast, Noah joins Jared Spool for a discussion about how to interpret information visually in a way that is most effective for users to process the information and be successful in their tasks.

Stephen Anderson, designer and creator of the Mental Notes card deck, believes your users must be emotionally engaged if you want them to exhibit a certain behavior. Stephen uses simple visual representations to help people make choices and understand complex information. In this podcast, Stephen and Jared Spool discuss creating designs that engage your users’ emotions.

Certain tips and tricks you can only learn from watching the best in the field do what they do. Peeking over the shoulder of an expert can teach you valuable techniques and insights that you won’t find in any book. That is exactly how the designers at Sidebar Creative learn from each other.