Our team decided to interview the most intrigue creators on good design and test their works with the Attention Insight platform. It predicts how user’s attention distributes in design. We hope that these short talks will inspire you and give some useful insights on catchy design. Enjoy!
Happy to introduce you to Oriol Torné Codina, UX/UI Designer and Illustrator from Berlin, Germany! He is a creator who loves to craft beautiful interfaces and delightful experiences that engage users and help them meet their needs.
Why have you decided to step into design field? What inspires you and why?
We all live surrounded by design. Everything we use since we wake up: the bed, the alarm, the toothbrush, the mirror… have been designed to satisfy our needs: every shape, texture, material is a product of creative minds that spent time thinking about a need that had to be covered. Sadly, most of the people just take it for granted and don’t think about it.
Design is a mix of creativity, functionality, usability and technology, fields I have always had interest in. And the idea of improving products, creating new and enjoyable solutions for people’s needs is what inspires me to keep learning.
How do you measure the success of your design?
I measure the success of my designs by qualitative and quantitative approaches. Calculating the success of a product by measuring the KPIs (Key-Performance-Indicators) is important because of the stakeholder’s expectations. These can be achieved via user testing, taking advantage of tools like heat maps and interviews.
But for me is also important to measure the user experience when using the product by hearing the direct feedback and watching how effectively my product interacts with the user at an emotional level. Making happy customers is more important than to make customers happy and building trust takes more time than just a simple and non-human data analysis.
What is your biggest challenge in design creation process?
My biggest challenge in the web design process is to understand the user’s needs, problems and translate them into effective, usable and pleasurable experiences within the interface. Another important matter is to make the UI interactions as human as possible, including illustrations and funny quotes.
What principles do you follow when creating attention grabbing design?
I use quite a few design principles in UI:
- Aesthetic is important because users perceive pleasing design as more usable. So always be aware of the latest design trends on Dribbble, Behance or Instagram.
- Doherty Threshold: (Almost) always make your transitions or microinteractions be faster than 400 ms. That ensures a smooth interaction between user and machine.
- Fitts’s Law: Don’t be afraid of creating your buttons and clickable surfaces big. Time to acquire a target is a function of the distance to and size of the target.
- Hick’s Law: Don’t overcomplicate user’s life, spare decisions and choices. The time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
- Law of Prägnanz: The human eye likes to find simplicity and order in complex shapes because it prevents us from becoming overwhelmed with information.
- Law of Proximity: Objects that are near, or proximate to each other, tend to be grouped together.
- Law of Similarity: The human eye tends to perceive similar elements in a design as a complete picture, shape, or group, even if those elements are separated.
- To make your design stand out, you should always add some “eye candy” so users will love to use your product and therefore, come back. Also, don’t forget to give a consistent look to your design using color, graphics, typography and hierarchy.
Get inspired by Oriol’s works: www.dribbble.com/orioltorne or www.behance.net/orioltorne