Design Manifesto

I am a senior computer science major at Colorado College. The software design class I took during my junior year was my first experience with design. However, these past two months I have been focusing more on the design process. In April, I designed a web application to encourage collaborative learning in math classrooms for children who are blind. My professor, Varsha Koushik, and I conducted several interviews and iterated over multiple design ideas. This past month I have been taking a Human Computer Interactions course that provided the opportunity to complete two main design projects. We discussed what makes designs good and what makes them bad. We have also been learning about how to create good designs. During these last two months, I have grown an interest in User Centered Design. This design process played a huge role in my own personal design process. I would like to outline five themes that define my design process.

1.Be Aware of Time- It is important to create a timeline so you can plan out the project at the beginning. There are many moving parts to consider when designing, so you need to stay organized in order to meet all your goals in a timely manner. I like to do this by first, writing out everything that needs to get done. This includes interviews, paper prototype, and final product. Once I know all the pieces to design my product, I put them in chronological order of when they need to be done. Lastly, I assign a realistic date to each piece for when I want to complete them. During this process, I typically work backwards (reverse chronological order) if there is a due date to make sure it gets done in time. When assigning a date to a design step, you want to give yourself more time than you think it will take to complete the step so you don’t get behind.

Below is a picture of my timeline for the Interactive FAC project. I like to use Google Documents and create a checklist because it allows me to cross off a task when it is complete.

2. Interviews are key — Interviews are how you get the most information about the user’s needs and wants. In preparation for the interview process, I like to consider 3 things: who I am interviewing, what questions I am asking, and what I will do with this information.

3. Be Ready to Adapt — After you meet with your interviewees, you should be able to use the feedback they give you to make your project better. If you can’t adapt you are not allowing your project to reach its full potential. Design is an iterative process. You should develop, ask for user feedback, then make changes accordingly. Repeating this until you either reach your deadline or until your product is good enough to deploy. In an ideal world, you would be able to continue this process indefinitely. Taking in user feedback and letting go of your own ideas will allow for a more inclusive and user friendly product.

I was able to adapt from user feedback in both my Design for Others and Interactive FAC projects. We first got user input on the projects themselves, then we made paper prototypes. We then got user input again and made changes to our paper prototypes before developing our med-fi prototypes. After our med-fi prototypes were done we got user feedback once again and made changes accordingly. We had to make several changes to our designs after getting feedback from our users at each step in the process. Letting go of our own ideas was challenging in the beginning, but once we realized how much the user feedback was improving our design, it got easier. Below is a picture of one of our interviewees testing a paper prototype for our Design for Others project.

4. Keep it Simple — Your project should be so simple that the user intuitively knows how to use it. The users should not need help or get stuck in places. This is more challenging than it seems. Sometimes as developers and designers we think that something is intuitive to use because we made the design for the way we think, when in reality it may not be intuitive to the majority of users. One way to combat this is to keep a simple design. A product should be designed so that a user can not mess up, but if they do, there is an easy and clear solution. I attempted to make simple designs in both my Interactive FAC and Design for Others projects. In the Interactive FAC project, there are only a few buttons per page and clear ways to return to the previous page. In the Design for Others project there is a clear menu button with labels that are intuitive for the user to use. We made sure that on any page that is not100% intuitive, there are clear instructions that help the user navigate the page.

Below is a picture of the Apple Watch design from our Design for Others project. We kept this design very simple. There are only four places for the user to click and it is intuitive what information they will get from each option.

Below is a picture from our Interactive FAC project. We wanted to have a space where the users can easily learn about the symbolism in Rudy Fernandez’s “Destruction by Fire #4.” The users can click the circular buttons and a pop-up will display the symbolism information about the piece they selected. We wanted to make sure this was clear to the users so we added some instructions at the top of the page.

5. Visual Design that Draws Users In — Your project should be aesthetic. The way it looks should encourage the user to use it and not deter or frustrate the user.

One way that I have made sure my projects are aesthetically pleasing is by making a mood board. Making a mood board before you start prototyping will ensure that the overall look is consistent and on theme. I have done this with several projects but am most proud of the mood board for the Design for Others project. In this board we wanted to keep the aesthetics similar to the original Meow Wolf website but simplify the design. Below is the mood board we came up with.

In conclusion, my biggest design philosophy is User Centered Design. During my time designing in Human Computer Interactions, I narrowed my overall design philosophy down to just five themes. Be aware of time so that you are able to plan your project accordingly. Interviews are key because they allow you to get the most information about design needs. Be ready to adapt your design because your first iteration will not reach your project’s full potential. User feedback will make your project more inclusive. Keep your design simple so it is intuitive for users. And lastly, create a visual design that draws users in. By following these five themes you will be able to create better designs that users love to use.

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