It’s easy to pump an idea full of features when designing. A set of stages where you think to yourself “Oh that would be great!”, “We’ll need this…” when in actual fact you won’t. Next time, sit back and ask yourself to simplify it. Then simplify it again. You’ll find doing that will increase the experience for the user as well as pulling unneccesary bloat from your design, whatever that might be.
So next time just stop and simplify.
It goes without question that our profession is one of the easiest in a physical sense. We don’t cut tree’s, move rubble or trek through the urban jungle all day long. Our work is done at a desk whilst sitting on a chair for an unusually long amount of time in comparison to other day jobs. Designers tend not to work from 9 til 5, we either work early to late or late til late. We tend not to be succumbed to the general daily working hours unless you’re very self confident in the way you can step away from your machine until the next ‘working day’ starts.
I would hazard a guess that the majority of people within our industry are probably cooped up inside four walls a little bit too long, too long for our mental state and most definitely too long for our physical well being.
A lack of mental fitness can almost certainly break a designer, it’s like a large dark cloud covering our creative brain bringing us to a complete halt. It can stop our inspiration in its tracks. What almost surely affects our mental and creative ability is our physical fitness. Personally I can directly relate to me being physically fit and my creative peaks against being less physically fit and feeling I’m not doing the best job I could.
My physical fitness enables me to be more awake during the day making me more efficient when I need to be and creative / inspirational when called upon.
It would seem that a few people from the industry also seem to think the same, three names which spring to mind are Jeffrey Zeldman, Chris Spooner and David Perel who all go to the gym on a regular basis. Jeffrey has discussed in one of his Big Web Show’s about the reasons why he started taking more care with his physical fitness, I believe Chris has explained before that heading to the gym or walking his dog Jake is one of the only opportunities that he gets to leave his office during the day. If he didn’t have those things to do he’d almost spend all week without leaving the same building.
Quite a while ago, Andy McMillan, the founder of Build Conference in Belfast started a little food blog. In one of his first blog posts he said that he wanted to lose a certain amount of weight before his next conference and he setup a sponsorship page to give him the inclination to do it properly and stick with it. I thought it was a fantastic idea. Around the same time, I hadn’t been to a gym for quite some time and wanted to do something about my physical fitness.
A short while after I started dieting… thinking that I would be able to lose some sort of weight before I went on holiday. A short while after that I stopped dieting. I had no self-confidence in myself to be able to continue with it, at the time I was quite stressed and that overwhelmed me. I’ve since longed to do it again, but properly.
The day came when I randomly jumped on the scales, looked down and went into instant shock. I was literally at the peak weight which I’ve only been at one other time in my life. I was upset and angry that it had got to that. It is not that I did not know that it was happening but it still came as a shock and I knew something had to change.
I went away and researched how not to diet, I didn’t want to get taken in these so called ‘diet groups’ and I simply just wanted to be healthier. I found that your body burnt calories by itself when you were sleeping so you started at a certain point and if you ate less than your daily allowance then you’d start to lose weight. Sounds obvious?
I went from eating pizza’s, McDonald’s, pub meals and general rubbish to healthier meals like salads, fish and vegetables. I started having pro-biotic yoghurt’s for breakfast, soup for lunch, fruit throughout the day and ending with a dinner of chicken salads. This happened everyday during the working week, I kept to it Mon-Fri. On a weekend I ate what I wanted and still do. I also stopped drinking bottles of coke and sandwiches, I now keep away from bread as best I can. I gave up alcohol and only very rarely now have an alcoholic drink.
I started this new life in June and to date, I’ve lost over a stone in weight without trying. A few weeks ago I joined our new local gym and am going 4 times a week, this will increase over time as my fitness levels increase.
I feel more creative as I’m happier with myself and definitely happier with my work. That large black cloud now very rarely rears its ugly head which I’m more than happy about.
I truly believe that if you feel that you have the cloud hanging over your head, try to go out and find some sort of physical exercise that you can do. Whether it be joining a gym, running or swimming I firmly believe that you’ll feel better for it. I certainly do.
With all the good intentions in the world, you’re setting yourself up for a big fall if you think that thing you’re in the middle of designing is ever going to be complete.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve been in the same position, in the early days. Way back when we were designing static websites with just a few pages it was quite easy to work through the process of designing and building. Over the course of a year we might only have to add one or two things but probably nothing which would change the physical design of the templates we had already constructed.
We as designers no longer design websites. FACT. Whenever someone asks what I do, I generally say that I produce the DIBI Conference because avoiding answering the long drawn out answer for what I ‘really’ do is just easier. Answering ‘I design stuff’ just doesn’t cut it anymore and if the person you’re talking to is non-design and non-technical they look at your completely blank anyway. Websites are old news, they’re the 5 pager you designed for your local cleaning service. Due to the huge array of content creation systems like WordPress / ExpressionEngine / Joomla, we as designers could in essence create some templates and then let the user develop the content. That is all well and good if creating content is just what your client wants.
A website is no longer a website. It’s a business, I’d go as far as saying that 90% of websites are predominantly the main money earner in most businesses. Whether that be direct revenue like advertising, product buying or the lead in for a sale. Within every business things change, and when things change adjustments have to be made. Designers need to listen, look, analyze and improve our designs on a constant basis. Just because things might work for the first few weeks after a design has launched doesn’t mean it will in a few months.
We don’t plan, sketch, wire-frame, structure and architect for nothing. We need to listen first and act, if something needs to scale, it needs to scale! If it’s going to scale then you had better get it in your head that the design will change over due course. Iteration is key, if you’re designing and building something, get it out of the door early and sit back and watch. Analyze how users are using it, what can be made better and just because it is live don’t ever think that its done and dusted.
Clients tend to think that once they have their ‘website’, web app or system that everything is finished. They find it hard to understand that just because it is live it’s not actually finished. I’ve tried to explain this multiple times and have ended up with that cold blank stare. I’ve since figured out a much easier way to discuss why the design and development of a system is never complete and this is what I say.
You buy a brand new house, it’s very big and strong. It’s made of bricks, has a sturdy waterproof roof and you’re all ready for moving in. The removal men help you move in putting all of your worldly belongings in the right place. Two weeks later you notice some cracks appearing around the door and window frames. Not because the house is breaking, but its settling in to its foundations. Nine out of ten times these little cracks just need filled over. Over more time you’ll realise that you need a lampshade, carpets and a new colorful wall in the entrance area to the house. Your house is never finished, in the same way as your new system will never be finished.
Your design will never be complete because it was never meant to be in the first place. It can only ever be great as perfect is only ever in the future and you’re not there yet.
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I’m one for looking further in to design more than just the surface aesthetics. I like to know the reasons why things have been done in a certain way. I regularly ask myself questions like;
I’m currently working on a set of projects which are all linked. Each project is pretty epic, not because of sheer size but more because of the importance of the data they present. I’ve been asking myself the three questions above every time I sit back and look at the design. I’ve been researching persuasive text and the theories behind what text people read against text that people glance over and take no notice of. These theories are easy for me to understand as I have a huge interest in psychology and neuro-linguistic programming anyway.
Placement and content organization/structure is another area which I understand very well, if you want to read more about the subject you can find a great article on Web Designer Depot.
This leaves me with Call to Action buttons, the one area that I’m not expertly knowledged in. I’ve always wanted to be, I’ve always wanted to test designs by doing A/B testing but have never been in the situation to do so until now. Just the other day I tweeted about the subject to get some clarity from my twitter followers. I’d sat playing with the same call to action button for about an hour, working the right color in to the design I was creating. I sat back and thought, “What happens if this color doesn’t invoke the action I want?” I wanted to know if there was a specific color which converts more than any other. I was greeted with a series of links, specifically from @JohnONolan which said that the color red has a higher conversion rate. I was taken back as I would have took a wild guess that green would have been the better color as it’s usually linked with ‘go’.
Evidently there is something behind a green call-to-action button as the likes of 37Signals Basecamp website and Squarespace use green. I couldn’t even think off the top of my head who uses a red call-to-action button so went on the hunt and found Carelogger who were showcased in an article and Performable.
There is definitely something behind this red call-to-action but though, out of the tests that I could find the red button could out do the green button by anyway near to 20%. That’s a huge number of extra conversions for whatever type of service you’re offering.
I will test this myself when we launch the current project and split test against using a green / red call-to-action button, it would be great to hear your own thoughts about test you’ve done or case studies you have read. Below are a few articles which I found on the subject.
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Described as 'The Parky of Web Design', I'm the Product Designer at happie.st, and founder of Industry Conf. I design, write and speak.
