Predictions for how we design
These are my brief thoughts on how the field of design is changing, but it’s not just about ‘how’ things are designed that are finding their way into current trends and change, it’s increasingly the ‘why’ too, with a growing emphasis on understanding the psychology of users and the little ways in which design can make a big difference, as well as understanding how your experiences can still be fulfilling even when the conditions in which they are experienced are less than ideal.
Designing for Failure
Making the MVP of MVPs
This year we’ve seen a rising trend amongst the design community towards designing for failure: by identifying potential failure points and understanding worst case scenarios, we can move quickly with a humanised response to deliver a positive experience.
And here’s why we’ve seen this trend… It’s fair to say as designers we always strive to imagine our work in its best light, but this isn’t always how an end user will see or experience it. Even in product and service design, there’s a lot of discussion about journey mapping and understanding the ideal user journey, but what happens when the non-ideal user journey is experienced, or a user that hasn’t been considered tries to interact with whatever it is that you’re designing? The conditions in which your design will be experienced can vary massively across a multitude of different devices, screen sizes, platforms and that’s not even considering the different states of mind each of your users will occupy, how much time they might have or how easy it is for them to understand what it is you need them to do or interact with.
By considering the failure points of our design, we can make sure that we’re able to understand which elements of the experience are the most important, but also potentially dependant upon specific conditions, like having a consistent internet connection or minimum device spec. By building an understanding of worst case scenarios and potential for failure, we can develop an approach to either design and accommodate our users for when these failure points occur, or how we might deliver an alternative experience to achieve the same goals, bringing a positive experience and humanised response to an otherwise difficult moment.
Using little things to make a big difference
Building an understanding of psychology for design
Often the most simple-feeling experiences can create the most memorable and have the greatest impact. This comes down to understanding as much as we can about the real people we are designing for and what motivates them, as well as how we can create return value and positive habits from simple actions and a sense of reward. Never before has having an understanding of human behaviour and psychology been as much of a benefit to designers. By understanding the science of decision making it ensures the experiences we are designing will have much greater impact; from mental processes like Cognitive Fluency, where we can use common design patterns for popular and familiar tasks, so that our users get to grips with new experiences much faster; to Hick’s Law, where the use of space and the grouping of elements can significantly increase the time it takes for users to complete their tasks.
Simplifying everything
Would your gran be able to use the thing you are designing?
Nobody buys a Swiss Army knife for 15 different things; In the age when you can buy an internet connected air freshener with built-in bluetooth speaker, we’re in danger of overcomplicating the things we design just because it’s possible to make things more ‘interesting’.
Now I’m pretty sure most of us have seen Jurassic Park, so we should all be aware of how nature (human or otherwise) can find a way to screw up even the simplest and well-designed plans, along with the idea that just because we ‘could’ do something it doesn’t necessarily mean we ‘should’. This doesn’t just apply to the regeneration of pre-historic DNA, but to the design of all things.
Simplifying what and how our users interact with is now an increasingly common focus for design, especially when combined with user research frameworks like Jobs To Be Done, which allow us to understand the tasks that people need to complete, but also the frustrations and barriers to getting them completed.
When you need your users to complete a goal, interact with specific functionality or navigate complex information, simplicity is key and the modern, bold aesthetics in design have been born out of this. Growing frustrations with the mystery-meat navigation and information overload of the past are key drivers for a renewed simplicity in design, utilising strong colour and bold typography, but still structured with precise grids and layout underneath.
This is just scratching the surface, so there’s a lot more to be said on this topic, even with just these. But in conclusion, a lot of what we’ll be doing as designers has got less to do with actual design and more to do with bias and psychology; understanding people being these squishy things prone to information overload and emotions, with us being more sympathetic to the human condition as designers being a great place to start, so that we end up making better things rather than just a taller Jenga stack.
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I’m Head of Design at 383, a Customer Experience studio based in Birmingham, in the UK. I’m passionate about creating human-centred experiences through thoughtful design and understanding human behaviour as a creative tool. I’ve also been known to grace the pages of National Geographic with my photography and make the odd public speaking appearance ranting about narrative strategy.
If you’d like to say hi, you can find me on Twitter.
