Designs by Puppy

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.


That’s it.

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.


That’s it.

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.

FIN