Practitioners-Guide-User-Experience-Design

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Well, sure, pay attention—but to what? It’s used in many countries to alert drivers of
some kind of hazard ahead, but what should they be looking out for? This version is from
Germany, and in fact it’s often accompanied by another sign, which might show a car
driving on a rough road or rocks falling from an embankment. That’s not a very elegant
design solution.
Visual designers also tend not to focus on content, and one reason is they often have
to start working before the actual content is ready, so they work with dummy text. A
common problem is that they’ll make a design with text that looks great but won’t be
representative of the final product’s content. They may also want to break conventions,
like those found in human interface guidelines, which can lead to confusion for users.
Much has been made of how Steve Jobs said that Apple didn’t design according to
customers’ desires because customers don’t know what they really want until you give it
to them. To his point, what user could have told Jonathan Ive, chief of design at Apple,
that he wanted the iPhone interface to look and feel the way it does? What do users know
about creating a home page as sparse and yet engaging as Google’s? I’ve even read some
arguments that the fundamental talents required to be a good UX designer are different
from those that make for a talented visual designer; supposedly good UX people are better
conceptual thinkers and have a better grasp of psychology, and visual designers are more
creative and innovative. This kind of crude generalization is bunk.
Visual designers can definitely be myopic and headstrong about working with a more
purely aesthetic set of goals. There are certainly times this can drive you crazy. But I’ve
also found that they can work absolute wonders with what I’m proposing in my sketches
and wireframes, and there are so many ways they can help tell the story of a product.
Visual designers tend to be marvelous storytellers, understanding how to use color, type,
photography, and even white space to convey a clear and powerful message for your
company or client. You absolutely want to harness that talent for your users.
I’ve found that by learning some of their language and how to see through their eyes,