InVision Raises $1.5M For Beautiful, Interactive Prototypes
You need compelling visual design and a great user-experience or you’ll have lot’s of beautifully written code that will never get used.
It’s great to see a product like this that put’s the emphasis on “design” and “experience”, and helps keep the control over those things where it really belongs. Product design is a collaborative effort, but at the end of the day users want something clean and easy to use, and looks good doing it.
UX like a Home
Building any complicated structure, from a house to the interactions of a mobile application or a web site, requires planning and process.
Planning the UX is a bit like creating a blueprint for a house. A house has rooms and hallways, walls and floors, and when the house is built, those things typically never move. These are the solid “fixed” pieces of the plan. In good UX design, the fixed pieces are consistency in branding, navigation and global features. These things don’t change once things are live, or users get confused and lost. If Search is at the top right of your web site, for example, it should be at the top right on every page.
That’s why we create wireframes…our blueprints.
Once the house is built, walls can be painted, carpet can be laid, and appliances can be selected. That’s the “design” of the house, the “branding” and although those things can change, they don’t change very often. In UX we select appropriate colors and naming conventions, the “tone” that works with the brand. We create experiences.
That’s why we separate wireframes from design.
After design comes content. The content is often fluid, timely and relevant. It changes as needed to keep things fresh. In a home, that’s the people and the memories…constantly changing and moving forward, adding and building on what came before.
That’s what makes design and content work well together, and that’s what makes a house a home.
