Hidden By Design – Details, episodes & analysis

Prototyping is the art of creating early models to test ideas, emotions, and processes. To make it easier we have split it into three main types:

1. Bassive prototypes (like mood boards or soundscapes),
2. Business prototypes (minimum viable products for market testing)
3. Interactive prototypes (hands-on user interactions).

On of the main benefits of Prototypes testing, is that you get earyl understanding and you can iterate and refine concepts before committing resources. Overall making the whole thing a bit cheaper to develop.

We also talk about seeking truth in feedback, where one easy method is asking what to change and why.

Data collected through prototyping becomes valuable only when analyzed and understood.

Prototypes save time, validate ideas, and turn creative concepts into polished, functional designs.

In this episode you will learn

• What a prototype is, and what different flavours they come in
• When and what to use prototypes on
• How to listen to feedback and understand
• How to collect and use data

Resources

The lean startup - Eric Ries (yep, I looked it up :) )

How to win friends and influence people - Dale Carnegie

The worlds WORST Chewbacca sound effect is in this episode.

If you never heard about Diegetic and Non-Diegetic sound effect, you are not alone, but after listening to this episode, you will know what it is. And you will know how bad Thorbjørn is at saying.. Dialec.. Diaga.. Diegetic!

We are going through movies, games and a lot of other things in this episode, and applying the knowledge that Martin is giving us.

You will learn

What a a sound effect is, different types

Why use sfx? What is the benefits?

SFX in the context of design - how we get there

Emotion

References

The Gunfighter

I Hate Fairyland - Comic Book

How to Sound Design Your Life

UI is not design!

And with that out of the way, lets get to the meat of this episode.

This is an episode about understanding what User Interfaces (UI) is and isnt.

Now that you read this far, then I feel I need to make sure that I mention that design cannot exist without an interface, and so, in that way, they are connected at a very fundamental level. Its like paint in a painting, a painting cannot exist without paint.. but paint is not the painting, it shows the paiting.

This episodes starts with us talking about what users interfaces are, and this in the end, we do a lightning round of the laws of Gestalt.

In this episode you will learn

What UI is and isnt
The difference between GUI and HUD
Cognitive load
Chunking Gestalt

References Season 1 Episode 4 - Constraints and Conventions

Season 1 Episode 12 - Gestalt

This episode is about the relationship between emotions and decisions. We discuss how emotions are the brains way of making decisions, where as an example "hot state" decisions are made at high emotional influence.

Think about your emotions like a cup with a tiny hole in the bottom, everytime something fules that emotion, you put a bit of "emotional water" in the cup, if the water fills into the cup faster than it empties, then at some point, the cup overflows. These hot state feelings anger, love, or happiness, which leads to unreflective actions. So, if its happiness, you will start laughing uncontrolably, and what you will see is all the funny things happening, that will keep filling the happy/funny cup.

Understanding emotions is crucial for designers that wants to create designs that resonate at a deeper level with users.

You will learn:

• The brain is a predictability machine
• Hot State - Cold state
• What is a body budget
• How we make decisions

References:

How Emotions are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain - Lisa Feldman Barrett

Why do we need to be great storytellers? And where does Storytelling fit into Design and user experience.

This is what we are talking about in this episode. By listning to this you will learn:

• The difference between a layout and a Composition
• Aristoteles story formula
• How to use storytelling in your designs

Resources:

Simon Sinek - Ted Talk

Simon Sinek - Start With Why

Anthony Jeselnik

Studying aristotles poetics

Aristotles 7 Elements of Good Storytelling

Interaction Design - Storytelling

Screencast - Aristoteles six golden rules of storytelling

Design Ops is there to help Designers "Doing the job that matters"  

NNGroup defines the Design Ops as "The orchestration and optimization of people, processes, and craft in order to amplify design’s value and impact at scale."

As soon as more people works together, and groups start to form in companies, then the overhead and bureaucracy becomes a factor in the way that everyone works together. This slows things down and becomes a burden to everyone.

This is where the Ops role comes into play.

In this episiode of Hidden By Design, we are talking about what Design Ops is, and what it can do for your organization.

You will learn:

• What Design Ops is
• Why and When you need Design Ops
• The 3 fundamentals of Design Ops

Thank you for listening to our podcast

Resources:

Nielsen Norman Group - Design Ops

Frog.com

Nothing is also something! And that is exactly what we are talking about in this episode of Hidden By Design. Most people are afraid of Whitespace, and in many cases that is a problem if you are a designer. This conversation will let you know the basics about whitespace, and some practical advice on how to use whitespace.

You will learn:

• What Whitespace is
• That nothing is also something.
• Elements vs Global whitespace
• Functional and Emotional whitespace

Resources:

Hidden By Design - The Laws of Gestalt

A Book of Lenses

5 Best Tips on How Using White Space in Design to Improve Better UX

The Power of Whitespace

Understanding the difference between simple and simplistic, is fundamental to being able to do great design. The second thing you should learn is that users dont care about your design! Once you have these two things in place, then it becomes easier to focus on the right things when designing.

Anyways, I think you should just listen to this episode, which I believe is one of the best we made so far.

In this episode you will learn

• The difference between complex and complicated
• The difference between the amount of clicks and the value of clicks
• Why people do not care about your product or your features.

Resources:

Start with why - Simon Sinek

Living with Complexity - Don Norman

A while back, we asked around for everyones favourite designs and what good design meant to them. In this episode we go through some of the answers and have a discussion about that.

Thank you to all who contributed, it was really a pleasure reading and discussing all of this with you.

Time and the use of time is massively underestimated as a tool for anyone who is creating experiences.

As a designer, and creator of creative content, there is two types of times. Physical time and Experienced time.

In this episode, you will learn how to relate to time as a designer, and how you use this knowledge to change the users experience of time in your creations and designs.

We are going to cover FOMO, Peak end Rule, Parkinsons Law and to Goal gradient effect amongst other things.

And then a little easer egg at the end... dad humor is the best.