Human-Centred Design

The exercises I completed this week were mostly focused on creating UI.

For the first of these, I excluded colour to create the layout, using only black and white. I used Inter for the typeface, as it is clear and easily read, altering the weight to emphasise headings. I created buttons, the more important button to continue is more easily visible, being filled with black, and the less important previous button is transparent with a drop shadow, making it still visible to the user, but not as eye catching, as it will be less used. If i did this exercise again, I would switch the positions of the buttons, as it may cause confusion for the viewers who may visualise the placement as a timeline, and choose to go forward with the button on the right.

I created three more versions using colour, for the first of these I used a soft green background, contrasted with a bright blue, which helps to make the title in the top bar more significant, as well as the call to action of the bottom left button. The next version I made kept the black text, buttons and top bar, but swapped the white background for green. This helped the previous button to stand out, as the translucence of the button caused a slight colour change from the background. The final version is my least favourite, as I find the brown is not as bold against the yellow, and the bright yellow background may be straining to the eye on a phone screen.

I created a UI card of the band Khusugtun. for the heading and buttons, I picked the red from the musician’s clothing in the image, and the background is a softer shade of the background colour in the image, allowing the darker text to be easily read. I also curved the edges of the frame, which is more aesthetically pleasing, as the curved edges follow the roundedness of the buttons. Although I am pleased overall with this exercise, reflecting, I would remove some of the text and make the rest larger, or extend the frame and increase the text size, as it will be displayed on a small card within a web page, possibly even on a phone screen, so may be difficult to read in the context it is intended for.

An aspect of this lecture I was most interested in was the work of Don Norman, particularly his book, The Design of Everyday Things, as it indicates that the role of a User Experience Designer is not confined to the digital world, and their work is needed across all fields. An example of this is his highlighting of the issue with many doors, where we pull, as it has a handle, a problem most of us have faced. In his book, he also emphasises the key ideas in the role of a UX designer, such as designing to solve a problem, and keeping up with technological growth by predicting the difficulties users may face when navigating new technology.