Damn, I really need the toilet, but I am far away from home!

We have all been there, out for a walk, and in need of a toilet! And it appears that the close we get to home, the more we need to go! At a point when we are there, its almost unbearable!

What I tell my kids when in this situation, and what helps me, is to imagine that the toilet is not at home, but somwhere else.. setting the goal further away, because somehow this helps!

This is a bad example, but it shows the idea perfectly. The closer you are to a goal, the more motivated you are to comlete it. And this appears to be true, also when you need a toilet.

In this episode of Hidden By Design, we are discovering the goal gradient effect, and how you can motivate people by setting a goal and being clear about their progress. A bit of its daily uses, and where you can find it in your daily life.

You will learn

What the Goal Gradient effect is.

How to use the Goal Gradient effect.

Some example of the Goal Gradient effect.

What is bad design, and how do you identify it?

Sometimes you will look at something, and think.. bah, that is a really bad design, the experience is totally off. And often you know this instinctively, but what if it is just a matter of your not being the one this was designed for, or you simply being in a bad mood.

Fear not, Hidden by Design is here to help you. We have questions you can ask about the design, and then you can use this as a parmeter for finding out if the design is good or not.

It is not nessecary for all designs to live up to all of these, but if a design fail most of these

Bonus: In this Episode, both Martin and me falls prey to a very famous Bias, which bias is this?

The questions:

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.

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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.