In product development, sketching is not merely drawing. The sketching phase that some people think of when discussing product design is the most creative part of the process. You’re taking intangible ideas that you discovered in your mind and trying to manifest them somehow into something that’s tangible.

The Importance of Sketching

It’s great when you have an idea while resting, but then, when you try to sketch it or produce it in real life, you might realize that it really can’t work. It’s like a chair that has only one leg and can’t stand up on its own or anything else that just doesn’t work as expected in reality. You only start to see product design problems when you sketch ideas.

Online Product Design Education

You also start to reveal your ideas, which means that you can share them with other people. Another one of the powerful tools of industrial design is that you start to share ideas in ways that help other people to see them and work on them too. With a product design education, you receive opportunities to share your ideas with mentors and peers who can help you to better realize them.

If you’re pursuing an online UX design education, it’s important to understand the different terminology. You’ll hear the terms UI, UX, UI design, and CX thrown around a lot. There are really two types of user flows. We’ll take a zoomed-out perspective for the first one, which is most aligned with CX, or customer experience design, where you look at a broader context: from initial consideration (or even before the user considers using or purchasing a product) all the way to post-usage, including users referring people to a product. We want to understand all the interactions that are taking place within that space.

Zooming in a bit more is where our user experience design, or UX design, lives. This really focuses more on the usage of individual products. When are people engaging with products? At what time during the day? How are people using them? Are other people using the products with them? What does that look like?

A lot of what we can gain from user experience research is that narrative of how people are using products throughout the day. We can understand this through a process known as journey mapping. Journey mapping is basically what it sounds like, a map of the interactions a person has with your products: how they engage with them on a daily basis, what actions they’re taking throughout an app, and how that impacts other actions that they may take or impacts future behaviors.

That’s basically the difference between a CX and UX.

“So when I’m sketching and moving out of brainstorm into a physical model or drawings, like the best advice I can give is do what comes natural,” says Steph Mantis. You don’t have to learn a technical drawings in order to start designing. You can grab an empty cereal box, a glue gun, and some straws, and make something that will get your mind going, get your hands going. You’ll pull up and this tacit knowledge that comes from making.”

My models are mostly made out of cardboard and tape. I worked on a very high-end glass and paint project, as well as pan-blown glass and custom milled wood. Cardboard tape was used in the model. The entire item was made entirely of cardboard and tape. Don’t be a snob, okay? Don’t be too particular while transitioning from brainstorming to drawing. At this point, it doesn’t important if it looks like what you wanted. We are attempting to transport you from point A to point B to point C; we do not transport you from point A to point Z. You miss the entire alphabet if you travel from A to Z. You’ll never come across anything that may have resulted from your exploration.

So, you must just get started and overcome your fear of failure. Getting out the door, like anything else, is the most difficult part. And getting a product out the door is becoming more tactile. If you don’t produce anything, you don’t have a product. The rendering, or drawing, has no interaction with people’s lives. So overcome your fear, don’t be concerned with perfection, and get something out of your thoughts and into your hands.

And it doesn’t matter how old you are. You may use ready-mades or yesterday’s garbage; in fact, I believe utilizing trash is an exceptional method of Product Design and Product Development since you’re not going to be precious with it in the first place.

“I always start formulating my ideas, by identifying whatever is fixed in the equation. Whether it’s architecture, or technology, or production method, or sometimes its budgets. But whatever is absolutely fixed, I identify what those are first and they become those would be the guardrails for me. In terms of how to structure a project, so that it’s a suitable scale.” Kate Hixon

And, rather than a blank sheet of paper, which may be scary, I typically find the most inspiration inside the constraints of a brief. Whatever I do, I start producing small little sketches. Out of three in three dimensions, I begin bending cardboard and discovering stuff about my desk. Even if it’s a graphic design challenge, I usually start with three-dimensional drawing these skills can be acquired through Product Design Education via Online Product Design Education.

“If we were to describe it in a way that makes it very easy for you to understand in a physical plane, UX will be the foundation of a house,” says Tiago Valente.

He contrasts it with UI, or user interface, which refers to the complement, look, feel, and interactivity with the product you’re designing — the visual components of your experience and how those visual components are going to make the user’s journey as intuitive as possible.

Continuing the analogy of a house, Valente explains, “The difference between UX and UI is that UI refers to the wallpaper, the furniture, and all those elements that make this environment more pleasant and overall more intuitive to navigate — buttons, iconography, colors, and all aesthetics that involve the interface or that adorn the interface. But we’re not always talking about adorning or embellishing the interface or making it aesthetically pleasing. We’re talking about usability. We’re talking about accessibility.”

Daniel Holtzman relates UI design to a different type of structure, saying, “Many times in public buildings, when you approach a door there will be, instead of a handle, simply a metal plate. Almost without thinking, we know that that means that’s a door that we push in. Similarly, when we see handles that are vertical, we tend to think of those as handles that we pull. Handles that are horizontal, we think of those as handles that we push.

“As we’ve transitioned from physical to digital interfaces,” Holtzman notes, “we’ve also created a bunch of conventions. We use things like iconography. And that can be quite tricky when you actually are designing, to get the icon that feels right and looks right.” For some of them, the meaning is undeniable. “If you see something that looks like a video camera, you’re going to assume that that means video,” he says. “If you see that next to something that looks like an oval with a little stand on it, you might easily interpret that to mean sound. So now you have video and sound next to each other.

“UI is really about creating these affordances that let the users know, through subtle cues, what it is that they can do or what it is that they should be doing to move forward with the flow at hand, with the task at hand, that they want to accomplish. So it’s really about letting people do the things that they want to do in the simplest, most straightforward way possible,” Holtzman concludes.

These concepts are important ones to keep in mind as you pursue your online UX design education and strive to deliver the best possible user experience.

One thing that’s tricky for designers is that we often think of ourselves as typical users. We use an iPhone or a toothbrush or a vacuum cleaner, so we think we’re typical users.

We’re not.

In order to understand users, you have to use methods that help you gain access to their experience and ideas. Those are methods like interviewing and ethnographic research.

Reality vs. Assumption in Product Design

It’s really interesting to see the difference between what people say and what they do. I always joke with students that if you ask somebody how many times a day they go to the bathroom, they might say four.

If you actually sit there during the day and count up the number of times they go to the bathroom, you may find that they go many more times or many fewer times than they thought.

We are not always great witnesses to our own behavior, habits and patterns.

Ethnographic Research in Product Development

Ethnographic research is so important on many, many levels. It’s important not only for the conversations, where you can start to understand how people think about a certain product or how they use it but also for the keen observation of what people really do.

You need to be there patiently observing the ways in which people use things because how they use things and how they talk about using things are two very, very different things.

If you just accept people at their word, you often miss out on the fact that they don’t always have a good idea of what they’re doing when they use something.

For instance, you may ask people, “How do you sit when you’re working at the computer?” They’ll show you, and they’ll sit upright to type, and they’ll say, “This is how I sit.”

But if you watch them during the day, you’ll notice they lean over, and they’re hunched over all day long. Their posture is terrible.

An important part of product design education is teaching you that what people do and what people say they do are two radically different things.

Ethnographic research is important in product development, not only for the conversations that you’ll have with people about their experiences but your observations.

You can’t take people at their word, not because they’re lying, but because all of us make generalizations about our behavior that are often not based on fact. Patient observation is vital to discover what’s really happening.

Video Research in Product Design

Online product design education and any product development classes will drive home to you that ethnographic videography is an important part of product design. Video can help in situations where it’s otherwise hard to observe and take detailed notes about what you see.

Being able to take a video of someone in the act of doing something preserves what happens so you can analyze it later. It also allows you to slow down and speed up. You can rewind, play it in slow-motion or speed past things.

The ability to play something back multiple times at various speeds can reveal things you might otherwise miss.

Observation, conversation and video are tools that will help you to understand the user much more effectively than pretending that you, as the designer, are the typical user. Generalizing your own experience almost never works to provide real user information.

Contrast is something that you should use very thoughtfully and sparingly in UI design. If you design an item with high contrast, it will draw a lot of attention to itself. That’s why I typically reserve high contrast for my action buttons on a user interface, or UI.

There are actually some interesting related design principles in online UX design education, I think from interior design. You can choose three colors for your UI, but make sure that your base color is 60% to 80% of the page. That base color should be something neutral and calm that doesn’t have high contrast.

Then you can pick two other colors to sort of help you draw attention to the things that matter to the UX. So, I would say use contrast sparingly in UX design and use it for the things that you really want people to act on and/or potentially look at.

As a young designer, I remember working on traditional print media with the founder of our company, and it was the fashion to use small types and colors of similar value. It was just a design move, and it was something that we fell into with as a stylistic choice.

I remember the founder of our company going, “What does that say? I cannot read that.”

I had to step back and really think about understanding the audience’s visual acuity and the differences in people’s ability to see in contrast.

At that age, I didn’t need glasses, but now I have to wear glasses to read. I take my glasses off often when I’m looking at a screen just to see if I can see how easy it is to read or not. I think that that’s been a test for me because contrast is everything. It’s the component or ingredient that needs to be scaled and balanced with all of the other elements in UX design.

I think it’s a learning experience for a lot of young people in UI design because they have a tendency to kind of get into subtleties of things that don’t necessarily support the content and the message, and the purpose piece.

Now that I wear glasses, I can see most everything. Now I also think about how the brightness of a screen really has an impact on how we see. As one gets older, the contrast becomes more important. Consequently, user interface needs to think about that range.

You’re not just designing UX for 25-year-olds. You need to think about the 65-year-old in terms of their UI needs as well. Keep that in mind throughout your online UX design education experience.

“The way that we start UX Design projects-or how we build products-in all of the UX roles that I’ve worked on is typically focusing on people and determining what are those people’s needs,” says Pilar Serna. “Like sometimes, people have a need to do something better. Or perhaps, they have a current pain point. So we try to do lots of research at the beginning of every project to really understand what are those UI needs, and what are the pain points and opportunities in order to start elaborating a solution for people.”

“So the UI Design process is very human-centric, as we say,” continues Serna. “And there is always a moment where the team gets together, and we do a kick-off and alignment. That’s when we try to really understand what the problems are that we are going to solve. And a big part of this is continuing to do this research and talking to people so that we can better understand what their needs are. What are the opportunities that we can tackle? Every project is different. The process is very diverse depending on the kind of solutions that we’re bringing.”

“So, usually, when a client comes to me, they have a particular problem that they want to solve. They don’t always know what it is, but they definitely have a need,” adds AJ Camara. “And the whole idea is that I need to help them solve that problem and ultimately help them reach their goals. The process starts off with a discussion, just getting to know the client and getting to know some of their day-to-day business, the ups and downs, what’s working for them, and what’s not working. And then from there, I look into how we can dig deeper. And then we go down a path of trying different things that, ultimately, help them achieve that goal.”

“Since the problem is not always what they think it is, there’s a lot of iteration involved,” Camara continues. “Someone might think that, for example, their website needs a redesign of their homepage, but the real problem might be that their product page has a button that doesn’t work. So some of these different things are what we dig into, as we go down this path of exploration, and figuring out what the true solution is for their problem. And, throughout that process, the conversation, essentially, continues, and it goes down different paths.”

“How projects come in is incredibly varied,” says Kate Hixon. “Oftentimes you’ll get a call with someone who thinks they want one thing. As you speak to them about what their needs actually are and what their problem is that needs to be solved, the result or the solution becomes something quite different.” There are other times where it is really specific and you’re just fulfilling a brief for that particular product design. Hixon continues, “I’d like the client to be involved in the product development discussion about crafting what the issue is so that the solution is something that really resonates with them. In terms of how to start once we have a brief, is we try to just frame it in the broadest context possible.”

“You receive a design brief,” explains Jean-Jacques L’henaff. “You receive a timeline and you work with different departments and coordinate with them. When I was working at Dreyfuss, we had an exceptional situation where we were so early in the projects that we were actually able to define the interior of the plane and dictate the fuselage, which is very unique in the industry.” He goes on to say, “In comparison, when we work, for example, in my current occupation at LIXIL, we can work that way when we receive a design brief because it is part of an initiative that is company-wide and has been led by, defined by, the marketing team. Sometimes we also initiate our own research and discover opportunities for new products and new technologies in our industry. That last type of project is very interesting because that’s when you really have projects that are truly user-centric and insight-led. Usually, the outcome is much, much more innovative and much more interesting.”

These are the two main differences that you have, as explained in online product design education. “I would say,” L’henaff demonstrates, “we get a strategy or marketing-led initiatives and we get a brief. Sometimes we actually gather insights and from there go and suggest a type of product and work with the other department to develop it.”

An online UX design education course teaches students how to shape the digital world for users. Talented designers know that user experience can make or break a program or platform.

Creating an Immersive Experience

What is user experience? In terms of software, it is the entirety of what an application feels like for the end-user. UX involves the story that is being put forward and everything that adds to the complete experience. It could be the way the sound is created, the way the choreography of this space is designed, as well as less obvious backend UI design decisions.

“Ultimately, what’s the story that’s being told? How does the user feel towards that?” asks Amir Bardaran. The designers give full recognition to the feelings that the end-user will have as they process and absorb the experience itself.

UX design professionals have a wider range than traditional 2D or 3D immersive platforms. New technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality provide environments that could incorporate a lot more than just a visual component. UX would include the feel, sound effects and atmospheric sounds. Possibly, you could even have a sense of smell added to that environment through the haptics.

So, what are the ways in which people can feel, touch and experience the pressure of things that are around them? That is ultimately what is meant by user experience. It is the overall engagement with the choreography of this space in the entirety of its composition.

Developing a Natural Experience in the Digital World

The book, “The Design of Everyday Things,” by Don Norman, is one of the first to use the phrase, “user experience.” In the book, Norman breaks down all kinds of things that people take for granted. He considers objects as simple as light switches and the history of their design.

“What are these conventions that we’ve now just come to realize are part of our lives? They feel intuitive to us. And what happens when you break some of those conventions and make it actually very difficult for people to use?” asks Daniel Holtzman.

A lot of what designers handle are UI and UX issues. They thoughtfully consider how to make things simple and clear, how to create analogies from the physical world to the digital world. The goal is to create connections between what people are seeing, what they are doing and what their desired outcome will be. These considerations make up the ultimate user experience.

Focusing UI Design on End Users

User experience was developed as a practice to create tools that centered around people. “Without user experience, we would just be creating tools for ourselves instead of for other people. In general, I think it has given companies a competitive edge because the more you care about the people who use your products, the more successful your products are going to be,” says Daphne Lin.