Everything About Design You Should Know

Broadly speaking, usability testing is a technique used in user-centered interaction design in order to evaluate a product by testing on users. It allows companies to test a basic version of mobile app or website before dedicating time toward coding and developing stage. Why worry about usability so early when prototyping already has a big todo list? Because “ Unless your product is usable, all your testing will tell you is that people don’t like terrible products ”. Without any doubt, usability testing can start without prototyping, and those tests may pinpoint the best way to structure your information architecture or prototype’s navigation. Some popular preprototyping tests include  Card Sorting ,  Tree Testing  and  Interviews . It’s different between testing a prototype and testing a functional website, and let’s look several helpful tips for prototype testing below. * Be careful with Lorem Ipsum Text  - Every time when Lorem Ipsum text appears, it ...

Interaction Design, also known as Interactive Design (IxD), is the field to design the behavior of human-computer systems. As an interaction designer, we have to create the content and functions of products that are useful, easy to use, user-friendly, technically feasible, and of commercial interest. All of these are meant to improve the user experience. This article is going to talk about 10 basic principles of interaction design. Whether it is for the traditional graphical user interface or for any smart electronic devices, you can’t find it more useful. 1. Follow the user's mental model Most of users are operating the interface just based on their instinct. In short, when they encounter a button, they will think this button will be triggered to meet their needs. But if this button get triggered in some other operation ratner than user's expectation, it must be a bad design. 2. Meet the user's needs The most basic principle of interaction design is to meet the ...

Originally coming from the rock music, the terms of “ high fidelity and low fidelity ” were used to describe the sound and playing skills of the rock and roll at the end of the 1980s. Likewise, there are three levels of fidelity in design including low, mid and high fidelity to refer to the level of details and functionality built into a prototype. The debate about using low versus high fidelity prototyping is on-going and it’s worth thinking how much a prototype should resemble the final version of your product. In the following, I will walk you through the basics and difference lying in the high fidelity and low fidelity, explaining why and how to make lo-fi prototyping for better design. 1. What is the difference between high fidelity and low fidelity prototyping? Generally, there is no fixed recipe for successful prototyping, but there is a distinction made between the high fidelity and low fidelity prototypes. One of the major differences between them is the refinement of...

Have you ever spent half a month designing a high-fidelity prototype, but it was denied within a few minutes? So much time and energy have been spent but in vain. I have met similar things so many times. However, such tragedy can be totally averted: the rapid low-fidelity prototype is a wise choice in prototype design. 1. What is a high-fidelity prototype and a low-fidelity prototype? Low-fidelity prototype: it only focuses on functions, structures and processes; it only provides the most simple frameworks and elements; it generally does not provide color, but expresses itself in gray scale. High-fidelity prototype: it provides more visual details; it is almost equivalent to a UI effect picture, and only needs to replace the actual data and materials in the development process. 2. Why make a low-fidelity prototype? In product development, the goal of a prototype is to express its ideas, functions and content, in order to get feedback and improve the product. The most imp...