UXPA Boston 2015: Delicious Design (Sengers & Chaffee)

Rachel Sengers and Jennifer Chaffee collaborate on IxD and Visual Design at Design for Context, and presented at UXPA Boston 2015. They specialize in complex transactional applications.

“T-Shaped practitioner” proposed by IDEO

• a core speciality + breadth across specialities
• Lots of skills overlap between IxDs and Visual Designers.
• If we collaborate, will have a stronger outcome.

Creating a productive working arrangement

• On each project, negotiate who’s going to do what
• Know each other’s skills, preferences, career goals well
• How can we help each other to facilitate other’s work?
• Planning involves creative brief, user & business analysis, etc.

Collaborating & iterating on wireframes

• Identify patterns in the wireframes so that graphic design is most efficient
• Will also simplify coding if consistent patterns are well mapped
• Keeping patterns consistent make it easier to improve with better visual design after feedback
• Conflict between too-similar affordances: Visual Designers have deep visual vocabulary to leverage in usability issues
• Visual designer thrives on realistic content (lipsum text “doesn’t tell me anything”)
• How does the content need to scale?
• Show the content hierarchy so that visuals can reinforce it
• Bring visual designer in early to develop a shared understanding
• Without mental framework, hard to make design decisions
• Annotate wireframes well, but don’t throw over the wall; conversation is key

Facilitating change during visual design

• IxD is in more user sessions, so it’s her responsibility to communicate to visual designer and be voice of user in critique
• Don’t want the designer to simply color in shapes - need to enable opportunities for change
• IxD should point out challenging areas to visual designer, inviting change
• Point out areas that warrant extra design exploration
• Also, point out “must be”s so it’s clear when something can’t change (and don’t need to waste time reinventing the wheel)
• Often problem can be solved visually rather than with interaction or placement
• Focus on key screens when time/budget is tight

Creating a collaborative environment

• Support exploration, sharing ideas, solving problems, reviewing work in progress, and create new ideas
• Can be real or virtual environment
• Use GoToMeeting to work remotely together
• Helps to provide rationale for visual design decisions (again, no throwing over the wall)
• Will explain color, typography, imagery, layout
• Rationale deters subjective responses
• Good to know what’s been tried and what didn’t work
• In critique, make sure that what is working doesn’t get washed out by what still needs improvement
• Review planning documents to make sure that you’re still on track