User Interface Engineering

I recently sat down (virtually) for a conversation about design with Luke Wroblewski, who is speaking at UI11 on communicating successfully with visual design.

We talked about the design life cycle, what stage certain products and web sites are in, and the similarities between writing and designing. It was really fun for me, as I always learn alot from Luke’s writing.

Here’s a snippet from Part 1 (on Luke’s blog: Functioning Form).

‘In the first stage of the lifecycle the role of visual design is to convey usefulness. I quote you here: “visual design bears the responsibility of communicating the possibilities, limitations, and state of interactions. It tells users what they are seeing, how it works, and why they should care.”

In later stages, the role shifts to usability and then to style. However, there are actually very few product types out there that are only differentiated by style. As you mention, gaming machines by Alienware and Dell may be one type. When new chips come out, both brands’ machines simply get a little bit faster. But Alienware looks sooo cool, that they get the nod when all other things are equal. Clothing is another area where style is a huge differentiator…but there are also attempts at providing better functionality, too. Like Gore-tex.’

This entry was posted on Friday, September 22nd, 2006 at 8:03 am and is filed under Design, Experience Design . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.