I gave this lecture on principles of interaction design to software engineering students as part of Google’s TechExchange program.
Design principles are tools to create easy-to-use, consistent user experiences. They’re not laws, but guidelines to help you keep users’ needs and capabilities in mind as you go through the design process. With interaction design, the focus goes beyond the item in development to include the way users will interact with it¹.
These principles will guide you in making good design decisions for your users and avoiding common mistakes.
#1 The Isolation Effect
Among multiple similar objects, the one that differs from the rest is…
Have you ever texted a friend with a link to a“Throwback Thursday” song or party jam you used to play? Or how about those times when you come across an awesome new beat and want to share it your friends? Nothing beats the gratification you feel when you are the one that introduces someone to their new favorite song.
But just after you send the link to the song, you realize you both don’t use the same streaming service…
That’s where the Disc app comes in. Disc is a social platform for sharing and discovering music through your personal network…
I’ve been working in the tech industry since 2012. I know, I know, not a lot of time, but across 4 companies, 2 roles, 2 major cities and an engineering degree, here are three things that have stood out to me being a female in tech.
The right mentor changes everything.
In high school I had a physics teacher, Mr. Herman, that I was particularly drawn to given his corny sense of humor and dad jokes. When he suggested that I take his intro to engineering class in 11th grade I was hesitant —but with Mr. …
A few years ago I pivoted by career by doing a full-stack UX design bootcamp — one of the best decisions of my life! I’ve been asked many times about my bootcamp experience by others also considering user experience design, and so I hope sharing my story will help.
What the heck is UX?
A little bit about me — I grew up with traditional immigrant parents who believed in three career paths: medicine, law, or engineering. In other words they wanted stability, and they helped me become excellent at math and science. But I also loved art, and got offered a small but exclusive…
I recently started working on a start-up app idea with friends. Our profits so far? $0. Here are some of the design tools we’re using that let us be productive while keeping money in our pockets.
Totally Free
Pexels & Unsplash. Great selection of stock photography.
The Noun Project. A variety of icons.
Google Forms. Good for user surveys and feedback forms.
Kind of free
Zeplin. Goodbye redlines! Zeplin let’s you upload artboards directly from Sketch with all of the specs automatically generated. You can even download assets directly from Zeplin in various formats. The free version is limited to one project.
In a recent UX interview I was given a design challenge, aka the new-normal for most design jobs. The ask?
Design a leaderboard experience including a television display and simple smartphone app to enroll.
Thats it. No specifics, no constraints, just “design a leaderboard”… 🤔
Framing the problem.
It helps to take a step back and ask 1) what’s the problem we’re trying to solve and 2) why are we solving it? To frame the design challenge, I made some assumptions came up with the following problem statement:
People enjoy healthy competition, and when it comes to exercise competition can provide extra motivation…
