Making Design Decisions

Eric Lund
Eric Lund
Aug 31, 2018 · 11 min read

When someone asked renowned Graphic Designer Milton Glaser what he did for a living, he responded by saying, “I move things around until they look right.” While the answer sounds simple, arriving at that place takes some work. It takes a lot of well thought-out design decisions to arrive there.

Pushing pixels, picking typefaces, choosing colors, and using enough white space are just part of the job. There’s a lot of other decisions that I make when developing design concepts. This is how I approach it.

Understanding The Why

Designers are problem solvers. In order to design something, I have to understand what the actual problem is. Once I understand it, then I can start designing solutions for it. To get to the root of the problem, I’ll start by asking questions. Here are some of the questions I’ll ask:

1- How does your company make money?
2- How are business decisions being made?
3- Who are your competitors?
4- How do you stand out amongst those competitors?
5- What is the current design solution not solving?
6- What problems are you trying to solve with the new design?
7- What does success look like?

Understanding The User

Understanding business goals is extremely essential, but it doesn’t fully comprehend the problem. Next, I’ll need to understand your users. Some questions I’ll want to understand are:

1- Who are your users?
2- What problems are they trying to overcome?
3- How does your product help them acheive that goal?
4- What are they hiring your product to do?
5- How do they interact with your product? Why do their behaviors reveal?
6- What are their delights when using your product?
7- What are their pain points when using your product?

Using Storytelling To Make Design Decisions

To understand the next step I take in solving design problems, let me tell you a little bit about my personal background. I first graduated with an English Degree. I love writing and storytelling. I think a design is most powerful when centered around a story. People connect with stories. Storytelling adds a layer of emotion that people connect with. It adds more depth and personality to create a more human-centered design. I think Aaron Walters, VP of Design Education at Invision, nails it here:

“Because personality greatly influences our decision-making process, it can be a powerful tool in design. With personality as the foundation of your designs, you can layer more emotional engagement on top.” — Aaron Walter

These Are The Designs You’re Looking For

After discovering the why and developing a compelling story that connects with users, I begin developing designs that solve a problem. Then, I can present these designs with confidence because I had reasoning behind my design decisions. I can explain the story behind the concept and tie it back to business goals. I’m also able to make solid arguments as to why the designs were the best solutions. Here are some examples of designs that I worked on that went through this process.

Blendtec

Blendtec is a company that sells professional and home blenders. They made lots of there money through trade shows and selling their blenders at Costco. There was a real area of improvement when it came to selling blenders online. I was tasked with the job to help create a design solution that improved the user experience of buying blenders on their website. To see how I went about solving this problem, it is important to see their previous design. Here is a screenshot of their old shopping page.

Here is the old design of the Shopping Page.

Recreate The Shopping Experience

The previous design wasn’t bringing in the sales they wanted. The new design needed to create a better shopping experience. To begin, I looked at what was successful with the shopping experience at Costco. It was a much more personal experience in the store as a sales rep would demonstrate what the blender looked like in action. I needed to translate that experience into their website in order to be successful.

One big problem on the website was that the content wasn’t engaging. There was lots of copy, but it wasn’t broken up in a way to guide users down the page. Looking at lots of text is overwhelming and turns users away. I decided to add more visuals to break up the text. I used more product shots and lifestyle shots that would tell a stronger story. It would also create an experience similar to buying a blender at the store by seeing the product in action and imagining how the blender would fit into your life.

Solving Usability Issues

Next, I looked at a user’s journey of buying a blender online. When it came to selecting what color of blender, the experience was difficult by having to choose a color from a drop-down menu. Some blenders had lots of color options and this was creating usability problems with a long list to choose from. I wanted to create something more visual and put less work on a user. I did this by designing buttons that would immediately show the different color options without having to click on a drop-down menu

Here are the new designs of the Shopping Page.

Commercial Blenders

Blendtec also sold commercial blenders to companies like Jamba Juice and Cinnabon. These blenders could handle more volume and were a lot more powerful than household blenders. The previous design wasn’t showing off the real value of the product to retailers. Here is what the previous experience looked like.

Here’s the old design of the main Commercial Blender Page.

Here’s the old design of the individual product page.

Much like their previous design, the large chunks of text were not very engaging with users. People weren’t discovering all the great features because the design wasn’t creating an experience that was very appealing to read.

It also wasn’t showing off one of the main benefits of Commercial Blenders, the ability to have them installed into your countertop. This was a huge business goal that needed to be solved. I also wanted to create a more visual way to show off the different categories of blenders and accessories you could buy. Here is the design I came up with.

Here is the new design of the Main Commercial Blender Page.

Here are some of the new designs of the individual product pages.

These concepts created a more emotional design by using lifestyle imagery and copy to tell a story. I also used other design principles to create a better experience. Here are some of the changes I made to improve the design:

1- I broke up the content with images to make the text easier to engage with.
2- I used a stronger text hierarchy to give importance and structure to the content.
3- I used lots more white space to let the content breath and not feel so heavy and dense.
4-I used a stronger typeface on the heading to increase readability and guide users down the page.
5-The dark grey body text on a light grey background didn’t offer much contrast. I changed the font color to black and changed the background color to white to increase contrast and readability.

Culinary Crafts

Culinary Crafts is a catering company. They were known for creating a one of a kind dining experience with their unique foods and presentation style. They had won award after award for their catering services. The problem was that their current website and brand wasn’t telling that story. It wasn’t capturing the elegant experiences that they were trying to convey.

I wanted to redesign the experience to create something more elegant to achieve their business goal, but I also wanted to create a delightful experience for their users. In order to gain this insight, I looked at the problem through two of their most popular users: people looking to book a wedding and people looking to book a corporate event. I thought the experience would be different for each person so I began to ask people who were in those types of scenarios. This is what I found out from people who booked a caterer for a wedding:

  • People booking weddings wanted to create a memorable experience to last a lifetime.
  • People booking weddings wanted their guests to remember something unique
  • People booking weddings wanted those details handled so they could focus on making memories with family and friends. They didn’t want to worry about food. It was their special day.

Here is what I learned about people booking a caterer for a corporate event

  • People in charge of booking corporate events wanted to look good in front of their boss
  • People in charge of booking corporate events wanted to create a rewarding experience for their staff. They wanted to express how much they cared for their employees.
  • People booking corporate events wanted to show their boss they saved money, but they didn’t want it to look cheap.
  • Customer service was also important to them. Some people noted that some caterers weren’t very friendly and even though they were cheaper, they never hired them again.

With those things in mind, I set out to create two different experiences. I looked at telling those two different stories through design. First, I looked at the wedding experience. The current design wasn’t telling that story that resonated with users.

Here is the old design of the wedding section.

When I looked at what people were saying was important to them when booking a wedding, a felt their previous site was missing a lot. Also, showing off Culinary Craft’s unique and elegant catering services weren’t being represented. I set out to tell that perfect day and how Culinary Crafts would provide that experience. Here is the design I came up with:

Here is the new design of the wedding section.

I wanted to create something elegant so I started with typography to tell that. The gold font paired with either a cream or black background offered that experience. I also used a body text that was more classy but still maintained its readability.

The previous design had no headlines and no text hierarchy. I changed that up by writing some headlines that connected to what people mentioned was important to them when booking a wedding. My goal was to tap into a more emotional experience.

The Corporate Experience

When designing the corporate experience, I looked at what was important to users when booking a corporate event. Users wanted to look good in front of their boss and they wanted to book something unique that employees would remember. I looked at the previous experience and analyzed what was being communicated.

Here is the old design of the Corporate Event Page.

Here is the new design of the Corporate Page.

The first thing I looked at was the top image. It was wasted real estate. It was taking up all this room and wasn’t showing off any food or the unique experience that Culinary Crafts provided. I decided to use an image that more represented that experience.

There were also some business goals that weren’t being met with the old design. One thing was that users were spending lots of time looking at pictures of different corporate events. Their current design didn’t offer an easy way to get to that page. It could only be found by the drop-down menu at the top. I decided to show off the most popular corporate events with an image slider that directed them to more corporate event pictures.

Culinary Crafts had also made a video series showcasing their unique style at different corporate events. This could only be accessed through the drop-down menu at the top. I added the four most popular videos with a link to quickly get to the Corporate Video Page.

Making Design Decisions With Data

As I mentioned before, one thing we knew from looking at the data was that users were spending a lot of time looking at images of catering events. Their old design was showing pictures, but the images were small and hard to navigate.

Here is the old design of the Corporate Events photos page

Once you clicked on “View Photos” it took you to an individual event. Here is the old design of that page.

Here is the new design of the Corporate Events photos page

On this page I decided what was important was showing off pictures. I changed the design to accomplish that. I also took the description of the event and moved it to the individual event page. That way I could use more room to quickly show off a lot more events and make the experience more delightful to users.

I also used spacing to quickly show what pictures belonged to each event. I tightened the spacing between the photos and the event title. I gave a lot more spacing between the next row so users could quickly see what belonged where. This cut down on cognitive load trying to figure out what picture belonged to which event.

I also wanted to give users options to how they could display the pictures. Someone might want to see the most current events or someone may want to look for a specific event. I gave the user options to organize chronologically or alphabetically. I then used color to show which option was selected.

Here is the design of the new individual event page

I decided to make the pictures larger since users spent a lot of time looking at them. I also made the picture sizes consistent. The previous design utilized horizontal and vertical images. I opted to use one format to clean the design up. I felt this design delivered a better experience of looking through the photos. This would directly tie into business goals of showing the Culinary Crafts experience and persuade users to book an event.

Conclusion

The ability to make good design decisions is powerful. It enhances the user experience by creating a feeling that this product is easy to use. It also provides great value to the product by setting it apart amongst its competitors. Great design solves user problems while meeting business goals. It crafts an experience through user research that tells a story. Great design can be defended by explaining the design decisions you made to get there. If you can’t defend it, the concept isn’t well developed enough to solve problems.

Eric Lund Design

Eric Lund is a Designer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He designs experiences so refreshing they could be the next LaCroix flavor. Go on, take a sip.

Eric Lund

Written by

Eric Lund

Product Designer

Eric Lund Design

Eric Lund is a Designer based out of Salt Lake City, Utah. He designs experiences so refreshing they could be the next LaCroix flavor. Go on, take a sip.

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