The vanishing designer An Article by Chuánqí Sun uxdesign.cc Visionary designers have lost their conceptual integrity to an industrial complex optimized for consensus, predictability, and short-term business gain. The rise of customer-obsession mantra and data-driven culture cultivated a generation of designers who only take risk-free and success-guaranteed steps towards the inevitable local maxima of design monotony. The same, the same, the sameDesign as an engineering problemThe heat death of designDesign with courage uxmonotonycraft
Beyond Artboards An Essay by Chuánqí Sun medium.com The Pursuit of Lossless Design-Development Handoffs. Can't developers just see?We are the ones who paved the pathUntil we get there processinterfacesdesign
Functional Prototyping. A Missed Opportunity in Web Design An Essay by Chuánqí Sun medium.com Prototyping allows engineers in various industries to “fail fast, fail cheap”, “select the best from the pool”, and “bring in the reality”. prototypessoftware
Don’t Be an Ostrich An Essay by Chuánqí Sun medium.com You just handed off a major redesign. Three months of research, twenty-seven major revisions, and hundreds cups of coffee have all culminated in this pinnacle of glory. It’s finally done! Except it’s not. It’s not, even after you have answered every single question the developers have about your red-line. It’s not, even after you have addressed all the technical constraints developers encountered during the implementation. It’s not, even after you meticulously documented all the patterns and styles into a library for reference and reuse. It’s not, because neither you nor the developers have talked to a real user. At the bottom of your heart, you are secretly wishing: My design looks great on paper, so let’s keep it on paper. You are an ostrich. Post-occupancy evaluation
A case against "pixel perfect" design An Essay by Chuánqí Sun uxdesign.cc I feel the push for the “pixel perfect” design has largely overlooked many of its practical, social, and ethical implications. We are working against the grain of the woodGood design is practical design
Five basic rules Five basic rules: (1) Record your work as notes to your future self and colleagues. Write notes so that someone fifty years from now (or more) will understand and be able to use the factual information you collected, perhaps for purposes quite different from the original reasons. Clearly separate facts from interpretations so these are not confusing to a future reader. (2) Establish a clear and consistent notebook format and process. I always include the data, place, main activities or events, weather conditions, and other people involves. The day, month, and year is the most important link between that particular point in time and other people’s records, separate data sheets that I filled out myself, photos, and most important, collected specimens. Documenting collecting strategies and protocols receives special attention. In the moment, these may seem like common knowledge for the field team, so sometimes no one bothers to write them out. (3) Don’t lose your field records! (4) Pack a camera, create a visual record. No matter how many words you write to describe a fossil locality, you can’t beat an actual photo, taken on the spot, annotated in pen, and pasted into your notebook. There is no substitute for a photograph you actually mark in “real time” in the field as the best way to preserve a lasting, accurate record for yourself, or for someone who has never seen the site or object in question. (5) Learning through sketches and diagrams. Photographs are great, but drawn what you see is a more powerful way to learn about spatial patterns and relationships. Even if you are not an expert at drawing, you can make sketches that are much more informative than words would be. Always include a scale, an orientation, and labels in your diagrams. Anna K. Behrensmeyer, Linking Researchers Across Generations Best practices