Tuesday – August 05
If you think that the title is too general, that it allows me to talk about many design related topics, that I could wait to see how you react and change the text… You’re right! And that’s exactly the idea I want you to keep in mind as I explain why it’s good to generalize your designs. Normally, before starting any project, a market analysis, a requirements analysis, among several other existing studies should be carried out to understand as much as possible, the needs of the client or the final product before starting to design and thus have a satisfactory result.
However, despite all this, there is one factor we forget, impossible to determine until we “finish”, the user. Many will say that this is why we carry out studies on how the product would be used, but it is still something theoretical, a mere assumption, that can change (and you know it will) once the delivery is made, this is known as desire paths. The desire paths, are the most powerful tool we have to understand the behavior of a user and how to use the product, the image, the website, among others, and here comes into play the general design, make, create, design, something so that leaves room for the user to experiment and use it in their way. Without wanting to, it will be the user himself who tells us what he wants from the product, in a clearer way and without having to ask him.
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Making generalized designs is an intermediate step that can be more complicated than the final design, because you not only have to leave space for the user, but you also have to keep the intention of the product clear and also take into account the small unique differences between people.
Once we have this design, we can deliver it and see where they place it, the colors around it, the terrain, the surface, how they handle it, where they apply more force, what part of the page they look at, where they use that logo (apart from those mentioned), and a host of variables that are impossible to analyze just by asking, and will be just a matter of adapting to this information, but we can see it as a cycle, where each delivery will give us information on how the next version should be, understanding that this “final design” is not the “final design”.
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Oscar Álvarez –
Mechatronic Engineer