- [Instructor] The Universal Principles of Design book arranges principles alphabetically, which makes it good for browsing and reference. However, I tend to group design principles into related families. Here are the four major families that I think are useful with some of the most important principles in each family. We've been working in the visual system family up to now, and I have a bit more to tell you about gestalt principles. Then we'll move on to some of the other families. For now, let's go back to that horribly designed page of sports equipment, and see if we can use design principles to improve it.
For the first step, what if we made the size of the balls different, with rough correspondence to how big they really are? This version is noticeably easier to use when trying to pick out a particular ball. Baseballs and tennis balls are small, so the eye can zero in on them and ignore the larger balls. This is another gestalt principle. It's called, gestalt similarity. The visual system assumes that things of a common size and shape are probably related.
To see it in action, focus for a moment on soccer balls. See how your visual system naturally picks them out. They have a consistent size and shape, which the visual system uses to see them as a group. But we've got even more ways to use design principles to make this page better. We saw earlier that proximity causes unconscious grouping, so, bringing all the items of a type together would be better. We can group by color, too. That's another gestalt similarity principle.
Let's put that together, and see what we get. Now we have background color grouping balls of a given type. We have the shape of the ball and the size of the ball, as we did before, to give visual cues, and balls of the same type are mostly close to one another. Here's the original versus the end result. Even to the untutored eye, the one in the lower right is way easier to use, but now you have a much better idea of why it's easier to use. You've just learned four important gestalt principles, by the way, gestalt similarity by size, shape, and color, and gestalt proximity.
Let's go on and look at some principles that are more related to cognitive effort by the user.
Author
Released
1/10/2019- What a well-designed app looks like
- Leveraging cognitive design principles
- Decluttering crowded screens
- Understanding your users' needs
- Recording and analyzing user observations
- Storyboarding your ideas
- Helpful techniques for the design process
- Dealing with conflict in design evaluation
Skill Level Beginner
Duration
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Introduction
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How this course will work1m 38s
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1. Why UX Design Is Important
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A well-designed app example1m 59s
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The value of good UX design1m 37s
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Obstacles to good design2m 41s
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Starting on the UX path4m 4s
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2. What Makes a Design Good or Bad?
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Design principles in context2m 25s
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Cognitive design principles3m 43s
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Why crowded screens are bad2m 11s
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Bringing it all together1m 37s
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3. Understanding Users and Their Needs
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Building a design team2m 57s
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Choosing users to observe2m 16s
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Questions to ask users2m 42s
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Observation exercise1m 41s
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4. Ideation: Finding, Refining, and Culling Design Ideas
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Innovation and ideation3m 47s
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Storyboarding4m 40s
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Types of storyboards2m 9s
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Media for storyboards1m 3s
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Storyboarding evaluation1m 40s
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Storyboarding exercise1m 15s
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Prototyping4m 41s
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Evaluation phase2m 47s
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5. Helpful Concepts and Techniques for the Design Process
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Types of design projects3m 21s
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Dealing with status quo bias3m 12s
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Be bold2m 2s
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Breaking free from the past1m 46s
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The shapes exercise2m 43s
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The economics of UX design1m 56s
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Conclusion
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Next steps2m 24s
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Video: Design principles in context