Just a quick thought I had this morning: my puppy, Pixel, is the perfect user-testing subject. Pixel has pretty basic needs: feed me, shelter me, scratch my belly, be kind to me.
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That’s it.
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Now I’m not comparing human-users to dogs, but human’s needs and wants, at a basal level, are pretty simple. The scope of those needs are vast and varied, but once the need is established - we just want to get it met.
Too many times when designing something I find myself overcomplicating things, trying to “think ahead” of the way my users will interact with a component.
At the end of the day, the thing I’m building has to do the thing it was designed to do.
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That’s it.
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Everything else is superfluous. What my high school art teacher would call “Visual Bullshit.”
My designs tend to lean to the simplistic already, but when I tell people that I am usaully referring to the visual aesthetic. Pixel would agree that I need to be more simplistic when tackling the functionality as well.