As the new year begins, there are lots of buzz about resolutions. Walking down a hep street in Bangalore, I overheard few designers discussing their new year resolutions. Interesting ones indeed!
So I go on to list resolutions for UX designers - few stolen from their conversation and few of my brain kitchen helping my designer friends to decide the best one(s) for them.
- Go wild with one project
Defy very design rule you learnt back in college. Let your heart rule over your designs. Just Do it! You never know, this can turn out to be the best design of your lifetime.
(photo credits - shockmedia.co.zw)
- Exercise your left brain
God has already bestowed you a super active right brain. Creativity, imagination, feelings, visualizations are your tools. But take a resolution to exercise your left brain as well when you are planning your project, to produce an “ANALYTIC” and CREATIVE masterpiece that everybody would love
“A designer is an analytical thinker with an aesthic sense”
(left brain vs right brain) photo credits - shutterstock
- Go social
Designing is one of the coolest professions. There are dozens of ways you can use social media to your benefit
- Follow and interact with top names in the domain for a regular intake of knowledge
- Keep posting your prototypes on social media. Read - Embed prototypes on social media.
- Join design forums to learn new technologies in this field
- Follow CanvasFlip on Twitter and Like our page on Facebook to be updated with design inspirations and lot more 😛
(Go Social)
- Redesign something just for fun
Pick up any of your past designs and redesign it. You will explore how you can do 1 thing in 10 different ways. Or, if you are not willing to challenge your own design, try out redesigning Facebook, Whatsapp, Skype etc. Boast your design over the big players.
(splash colors and redesign a beautiful design) photo credits - mckenzie.com
- Promise yourself you will do user testing with your prototypes
With the stringent time limitations, it is really difficult for you to perform user testing for every project. But we have a way out! With CanvasFlip you can perform user testing at the very initial stage - prototyping stage. No extra efforts! just prototype and share. Rest of it - gathering data, molding them into an usable form and presenting them to you effectively is our resolution. Happy testing!
(user testing)
- Help some early stage startups
Help them to find better product market fit with fewer failures.Help them focus on their UX from the start. Startups are very passionate about their ideas just help them design a great UX for themselves. Charity?? No! Its a great learning to design something for a completely new domain
(help a startup)
Oops I missed the most important one -
- ” Clean your desktop off. Really!” 😛 😛
(Beautiful isn’t it!)
Hope you loved reading through the blog and it inspired you to adopt 2-3 (or all) as your 2016 resolutions
Do let me know if you had some other interesting ones last year and how you followed them.
Leave a comment below or send a mail at monika[at]canvasflip.com