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Comment by tlow | Hacker News Reader

This is not new and is almost entirely covered in two reference resources I use as a designer.

1. Universal Principles of Design https://g.co/kgs/X19MeR

2. The Humane Interface by Jef Raskin https://g.co/kgs/JfdBkB

Please just post the URL instead of using a redirect link, especially if you're just doing a google search for the words you posted.

1. https://www.google.com/search?q=Universal+Principles+of+Desi...

2. https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Humane+Interface

I just used Google's built in "share" button, is that incorrect in some way?

less friendly as it obscures the destination to the user. it could have been a rickroll or something pertinent given the url

I think this is bikeshedding.

Edit: bear in mind vanilla search URLs include personal info, which you need to know how to identify & strip.

I use Universal Principles of Design as an engineer as well. Before starting a new project, I'll flip through the pages and compile a list of principles that are particularly relevant for the project. Then as the project progresses I'll check that list from time to time to help me steer it in the right direction.

Thanks for the links! Do you happen to have any resources specific to web-design as well? I was recently given the task to program a frontend and the design-part proved to be the most complicated one. The more the better; not only geneal guidelines, but also common design patterns etc — I can utilize them all.

Edit: Specifically, I think I can make the website easy to use, but I have no idea how to make it look good.

There are lots of resources available, but I think following a design process might really help you most at this point.[1] You're going to need to conform the the style and practices of of the larger piece to which your part will fit in. Good design has to be consistent so that the user can have a continuous understanding. From this perspective, might it be possible to generate "working art" and approach the final visual treatment later? Also, for "beautiful" design to shine, usually this involves the removal of all extraneous elements, since good design is really about distillation.

Rough Design Process [2]

1. Discover

- Have you identified your users and the need that you are hoping to solve with this "part/feature"?

- Usually users are broken into different segments, a persona is just like a rough representative sample of the different segments.

- It sounds like you work for a for-profit organization, therefore you must also understand who your stake holders are and what they think the business needs are (they can be wrong and you might have to help correct this).

- Are there already people doing something like what you're trying to do? Not only should you benchmark competitors, you can look for analogous situations in totally different domains and still use this to help inform you.

- Redefine the problem your own way.

- review research claims, scientific literature, external info

2. Ideate - explore insights

- design objectives

- develop user POV and need statement

3. Create

- low fidelity prototypes based on the perspective of your user needs and POV from (2), explore solutions to the problems

- you should be going for volume at this stage because this is a discovery oriented process for finding unknown unknowns

4. Test

- escalate the fidelity of prototypes enough that you can gain feedback from potential or actual target users

- end points for higher resolution prototypes should definite measurable analytics and success metrics so some prototypes can be selected for further refinement, ideation and testing

- you can conduct formal usability testing, but the point of a prototype is to create an object to fuel conversation and discovery

[1] "1 hour of research saves 10 hours of development time" http://bokardo.com/archives/1-hour-of-research-saves-10-hour...

[2]This is my derivative of Stanford's Design Thinking process taught at dschool.stanford.edu, for a worksheet example see: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57c6b79629687fde090a0... on dschool.stanford.edu)

Thank you very much for the detailed description of the process behind design; I appreciate that you put it in concrete terms and actionable steps.

I'm specifically building an internal tool for service-requesting, thus the users will be from our own company and there is no competition to speak of. Most of the points you listed still apply, of course, but I'd still like to ask if you have any tips that could help me in this concrete situation.

And also, where would you recommend me to look for inspiration? (apart from "just look around on the web") Nowadays I often look at tailwindui.com to get an idea how some particular component could look like, but there must be something better. Awwwards and dribbble (at least at first sight) are too landing-page oriented — not something I could use in an internal service.

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