Page 2 – Design and Code

Design in General

Will It Fly?

A thought experiment for evaluating the potential of your product ideas

This is part of the series on how design can help you build better product.

Thought Experiment

At the end of the previous article Say No to Dogmatism in UX Design, there’s a list of questions for you to examine your product ideas.

Is there a user pain or problem here?
Is the pain painful enough?
Is there an existing solution?
Is the existing solution good enough?
Is this the right problem to solve?

By answering the questions above, you’ll be able to have a more realistic estimate of the potential of your ideas.

Let’s take a look at a few other examples that include some of the products that we’re all pretty familiar with and analyze their success or failure using the list of questions that we just saw.

User Research

The Best User Research Happens in Silence

“I don’t want to waste time doing user research because that will only give us something trivial.” That was one of the many reasons I heard from other designers about why we shouldn’t do user research.

“Research” seems to be a dry word, something in stark contrast with the beautiful colors, the nice-looking visuals that some of us are so obsessed with. Combined with the fact that poorly planned and conducted research reveals only answers that we already kind of knew, no wonder some of us embrace the kind of misconception that doing research is not helpful at all.

Knowing the right way to research is hugely important in product design. To have deep and meaningful insights, it’s best to shut up, observe and analyze. That’s, in my opinion, how the best research happens.

Interaction Design

“Victim” of Bad Designs

Bad designs have real consequences. I’ve lost my groceries and almost lost my bank card because of — well, bad designs.

Want to Evangelize UX? Start with Competitor Analysis and Data-Driven Design

With products or services created by design-led companies such as iPhone and AirBnB gaining recognition, product teams nowadays are more aware of the existence of design, and yet many still think of it as something that is of lower priority than engineering or product management.

Miscillaneous

Build a Highlight Reel of Yourself

It’ll be good for your self-esteem.

It took me almost 30 years and a lot of reading to learn this: keeping a highlight reel of ourselves is so important for fostering healthy self-esteem.

People with healthy self-esteem are collected and nonreactive in the face of doubts, judgements or insults. Life is tough. When the outside world doesn’t give us love or respect, healthy self-esteem is that thing that lifts us up, allows us to love ourselves, fends off whatever nonsense thrown at us and moves us forward.