Todays class was focused on the importance of starting on paper. In today’s ever-changing  world it can be hard to keep up with the latest challenges, however there’s one thing that has never changed throughout it all; drawing.

Why Paper?

• very quick
• it is cheap
• flexible and fast
• enables collaboration

Starting on paper helps you to generate ideas much quicker than you would if you were to start designing digitally straight away. it is cheap which allows you to create lots of sketches and therefore come up with the strongest idea.

64% of designers said in a survey that paper and pens were their primary source of sketching and brainstorming for a project.

Relearning to Draw

Sketch-notes are a great way to loosen up your skills and get used to sketching again. it allows you to generate ideas whilst taking notes and is especially encouraged as interaction designers as it creates a more interesting read and therefore and overall better experience for the user.

Why Sketches?

sketches/visuals are processed 60,000x faster than text EG drivers will process symbols much faster than if text instructions were used instead

Speed Drawing Task

to help loosen our drawing skills again, Paul set up a speed drawing task in 3 rounds where we had 20 seconds, 10 seconds and 5 seconds to draw a padlock, a speech bubble, a house, a camera, a magnifier glass, and a heart. this was beneficial as it made us think about the bare essentials needed in each drawings.

 

Laws of UX

Millers Law

Millers Law is defined as the number of objects an average person can hold in working memory is about seven, also known as The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two.

Number 7 is therefore called the Magic number. Obviously, it’s not a strict number for chunking as the range itself varies from 5 to 9. Seven(plus or minus 2) is a way of grouping content so that it could be organised better for human understanding.

What ways do we implement Millers Law?

• Phone Numbers
• Card Numbers

EG-read the numbers from left to right and try to remember it.

7 8 9 6 5 1 2 6 6 5

Now close your eyes and try to recall this number. (This is typically very hard and most people can’t remember the full number)

Try doing it again by putting them into groups.

7896 — 512–665

This process is known as chunking. By ‘chunking’ numbers into smaller groups it helps us to remember the numbers faster and for a longer period of time. People do this by grouping phone numbers and card details so that they can recall them.

Instagram Userflow Task

Outline the instagram user flow from memory as if you were uploading a picture. Think of all the screens and states you encounter.

This task was beneficial as it made us stop and think about the process of apps and what the most important aspects of the user flows are. When you use apps like Instagram, its very easy to forget that someone has sat down and user mapped the entire app screen by screen and has laid out the process bit by bit just like above. it can be so easy to overlook the actual user flows of our favourite apps as we navigate them so mindlessly. This is why exercises like this are so important as it brings us back to the basics and Mae us think about all the important aspects we need to include in our own apps that we create so we can create a digital product that is as easy and smooth to navigate and enjoy.