Design stuff for non-designers (Part 1)

First Thing Monday, edition #119

I had a non-designer friend ask me recently, "Do you have any advice on resources / books / courses that you think are great for entry level learning of the basics in Design?"

"Is there anything in particular that you are hoping to learn?", I asked.

They mentioned that they'd love to learn some visual design basics, and to learn more about information architecture. Ultimately, they were hoping to level up on presentation visuals, and to get better at creating maps and diagrams to communicate complex ideas. They'd heard the terms, UX Design, UI Design, Service Design and others, but that weren't sure what these were. They'd heard of personas, user flows, journeys, service blue prints, but weren't really sure what any of these were, or whether they were worth learning about.

"I'm trying to describe something that I'm not quite sure I have the language for."

And this is one of the problems with design these days. It has become so fragmented and so specialized. As a result we've created all these confusing terms.

When it comes to learning about design, it's no wonder people don't know where to start.

So in this multi-part post, I'm hoping to write a short guide to design for non-designers. To give a break-down of some of the key design terminology, and to provide some hand-picked resources that have served me well over the years.

Let's start with some basic terminology.

Here's a list of 10 areas, or disciplines of digital design. Let’s go through it.

Visual Design

Visual design is to digital as Graphic design is to analog. Visual design focuses on the aesthetics, including color, typography, layout, hierarchy and imagery.

Being skilled in visual design is super important to craft great experiences. But it also helps non-designers create better slide decks! I think everyone can benefit from having a basic understanding of visual design principles.

UI Design

User Interface design (or UI design) is tied heavily to visual design, but perhaps more specifically tied to the visual elements of a digital product interface.

A UI designer ensures that it is the design is aesthetically pleasing, while being intuitive and easy to use.

User Experience (UX) Design

UX design is all about creating meaningful experiences for your users. That starts with a deep understanding of who your user is, and what their needs, behaviors, and emotions are throughout their interaction with a product or service.

UX Design is often used as a blanket term that incorporates other design disciplines, like user research, information architecture, interaction design, usability, UI design, and so on. It's the term that really took off in the late naughties.

Product Design

Honestly, I think that there's a whole lot of overlap between UX and Product design. Our industry gets bored of terms, and invents new ones. In many ways, product design is just a re-brand of UX design.

But Product design is also broader than just UX design, as it encompasses the entire process of bringing a product to market, from identifying user needs, conceptualizing solutions, prototyping, testing, and iterating.

Product designers are responsible for the overall vision and strategy of the product, alongside our Engineering and Product partners.

Product designers are also expected to be good product thinkers - which is to have an understanding of the product's purpose, where it sits in the market, how it meets a users’ needs and achieves business goals at the same time.

Interaction Design

Interaction Design is another term that can mean different things to different people. To me, interaction design is about the way a user moves through our product. An interaction designer is thinking deeply about optimizing how a user flows and moves through a digital product, with the help of intuitive through navigation and interaction patterns. Interaction designers use prototypes, storyboards and flow diagrams to design end-to-end experiences.

I'd say that less and people are calling themselves interaction designers these days, as this is now considered a core competency of a product designer.

Information Architecture (IA)

IA is all about the structuring and labeling content in ways that are match our users mental models, helping them to find information and complete tasks as quickly as possible.

I actually worry that we're not placing enough emphasis on good information architecture practices these days. So much of design is about Figma these days, but we really need to ensure that we set the foundations first before we draw any rectangles or push any pixels.

Closely related to information architecture is the newer discipline of Object Oriented UX Design, or OOUX for short. This approach helps to create more intuitive and scalable designs, made up of the real-world objects that align with the user's mental model.

Service Design

I never do a great job of defining service design, but it usually involves more than just screens and digital interfaces. Service designers are the conductors of services that can happen both online and offline. Service design involves the planning and organizing of people, communication, in store experiences, communication touchpoints, and other components that to improve an end-to-end customer experience.

Service designers are experts at complex diagrams, like service blueprints or user journeys, that help us see a map of the experience, as it is today, or how it will be tomorrow.

Motion Design

Motion design is about, erm, motion. It's the integration of animation into an experience to guide users' attention, and if done well, make interactions more enjoyable. And it's a little bit fancy.

Motion design isn't just about full screen, high impact animation. It's often used at a very micro-level.

In fact, there’s a while sub-discipline around micro-interactions: those small, focused interactions that help users accomplish a single task or convey a specific piece of information. Micro-interactions are often used to provide feedback, show the result of an action, or subtly guide the user through a flow. Adding just the right amount of animation can make your micro-interactions delightful.

Design Systems design vs Systems Thinking

One big area of product design these days is the Design systems designs. That is, designing and developing a comprehensive set of guidelines, re-usable UI components, and principles that help teams design consistent, cohesive digital products.

Design systems design is not to be confused Systems thinking, which is the understanding of the interconnectedness and complexities of systems, and how changes in one part of the system can affect the whole.

Of course, one key skill of product and design systems designers is to have that 30,000 ft, system view, to help us find the patterns and connect the dots across our experiences.

Content Design

And last but not least, content design centers around the design of words. Creating and structuring content in ways that are clear, user-friendly, and accessible. Crafting a tone-of-voice that matches your brand. And sometimes, choosing one specific word over another, on a button or a label.

With the rise of chatbots, voice assistants, and other conversational interfaces, content design also incorporates conversation design: the design of interactions and experiences that mimic human conversation.

The goal of a conversation designer is to create a natural, intuitive, and efficient dialogue between users and the machine, while factoring in the user's context, intent, and emotional state.

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OK - so that was part one. I'll be back soon with part two, where I'll try and share some of my favourite links, books, podcasts and the like.

Until then,

Ben