Sharpen Your Eye

Goal

Perception improves with practice. To make good designs, we need to practice perceiving existing designs. With practice, we hope to grow in our ability to:

• Perceive the context for which a design was intended
  • … and the contexts in which it is actually used, and the hacks and workarounds that people use to make it work in their context
• Identify some goals of the designers and the constraints they designed under.
• Identify choices that the designers made, and alternative choices they could have considered.
• Identify elements and patterns common to many designs, and why they might be chosen.

Glossary

• Hack: A clever solution to a problem, often using something in a way it wasn’t intended.
• Workaround: A way to use a system that was not intended by the designers.
• Constraint: A limitation that designers must work within.
• Design Pattern: A common approach to solving a design problem. Example design patterns:
  • “Back” button
  • “Hamburger” menu
  • Color coding
  • Information “cards”
  • Size representing hierarchy
  • Proximity representing relationship

Instructions

Design examples will be posted in Perusall

1. Free observation. In teams at your tables, spend 5 minutes simply writing down everything you observe about the design. Try to write down as many different types of observations as you can. Don’t critique yet.
2. Discussion. Discuss your observations with your team.