using samples from my portfolio.

1. Know what problem you are trying to solve.

It’s surprising how often the problem is not articulated and not well understood, even by stakeholders. I acknowledge that creative things can come out of solving the wrong problem but generally it is a waste of sparse resources and time. You’ll be much more effective if you are crystal clear on what problem you are supposed to be solving. Take the time to understand the problem space thoroughly. This will allow you to focus on the most important interaction pattern in a user interface, as well as keep your design simple, find a sweet spot and go for max impact.

2. Love the medium.

I love creating things with algorithms and pixels. (Full disclosure, I love many traditional media as well.) Although I am fundamentally a designer, I understand programming. I had to learn to code for my Masters degree and subsequently held a couple of UI programmer positions. Although engineers relentlessly try to make UI/UX designers frustrated, I enjoy working with them. Not unlike engineers, I have a “fixer” gene; I constantly (even obsessively) look at virtually everything, digital devices included, and imagine how I would make them more appealing and usable.

Ph.D. THESIS ABSTRACT

This dissertation investigates whether superimposing physical and digital media to create new interfaces for CAD has merit. Findings are presented from experiments performed with Illuminating Clay, a prototype interface that superimposes modeling clay and computer-based topographic analysis. The objective was to discover whether these new kinds of interfaces could successfully combine the cognitive, motor, and emotional advantages of physical media with the capabilities of computation. Findings indicate that Illuminating Clay can indeed supplement a designer's eyeball analysis with more-accurate feedback while retaining the tactile and spatial advantages of working with a physical material. Salient issues pertaining to the design of tangible, and augmented-reality user interfaces were raised by these experiments: what the appropriate scale limitations should be, what the appropriate type of feedback is from computation, and whether real-time feedback is necessary.

3. Establish your source of inspiration.

Whatever it may be -- brainstorming, meditation, napping (Edison did this), or inhaling the smell of rotting apples (P.B. Shelly did this) -- find the things that ignite your imagination and fuel your creative energy. I admit I do all of the above and I’m also a daydreamer. I like to imagine scenarios and play them out in my head. I harness my runaway imagination to previsualize user experiences. I get ideas by observing people and nature really closely. I also look at art and read voraciously.

4. Make the most of visceral appeal.

 Evolution, in preparing us for survival, has provided us with emotional reactions to all kinds of inputs to our senses. Tapping into those automatic, instinctual reactions holds great power for the designer. These include our emotional reaction to images, sounds, colors and shapes. There is not a one-size-fits-all approach. The right aesthetic is very context and user group dependent. But there is no doubt that aesthetics matter deeply, both on a cultural level and on on a human brain level.

5. Be a structuralist.

Understand how to “build” a design from a core concept. This requires constructing the foundation and the bones, before you add the veneer. Many people thing a design is just a collection of qualities, but it’s more like a building or an organism in that it has a hierarchy of systems. You need to form the core concept before you can for the sub-concepts and before you can add the details. A UX design has information organizations (or architectures), and interaction patterns, including primary patterns, sub-patterns and exception patterns. Understanding how to build a design allows you to have successful outcomes and also deeply understand the scope of a design project.

6. Compartmentalize.

It’s not just a battlefield skill. It can allow you to be a user on the one hand and think like a designer on the other hand. In art school we learn to look, really look at the world, like we are seeing it for the first time. Naïve looking is an invaluable skill that can allow you to be the user (to some extent) even on your own designs. Any designer also knows that we need to be dreamers on the one hand and practical implementers on the other hand and managing the implementation of a UX design on time and within budget requires dogged persistence. In order to not let the implementation side kill my inspired side, I need to be able to shut out the deadlines and details for short periods of time and make sure that the design is maintaining the magic.

7. Be a process fanatic.

It is difficult to implement a design successfully, even develop a core idea for a design, without honoring process. Following UI/UX best practices gets you partway there, but if you observe closely how processes affect outcomes, then I guarantee you will preach the process religion. It’s like making sausage. Do the right steps and sausage comes out at the end. That said, all design and implementation processes are not as simple as making sausage and require some amount of trial and error, or “iteration.” Don’t let anyone convince you that needing to iterate reflects badly on you; it is a necessary and powerful tool for achieving a satisfactory outcome. Taking a methodical approach to design refinement and implementation is a sure way to be realistic about scope and to complete a project on deadline. 

8. Love the constraints.

Every project has limitations of time and resources, and the technology can only do so much. This is actually a good thing. Scarcity and challenges breed creativity. Don’t bemoan the constraints on your project, but instead embrace them and use them as a springboard to create clever and innovative solutions.