Summary: Interface Design as Visual Conversation

Throughout this book, we’ve discussed application design in terms of creating a visual language: developing grammar through consistency and hierarchy, then vocabulary through personality and the tools used to express all three meta-principles. Designing this language involves an iterative question-and-answer process, as designers and developers ask questions, explore possibilities, raise new questions, and work together to resolve them. Having a rationale for decisions is crucial for realizing the purpose of the interface and keeping the design and everyone involved on track.

The meta-principles help you know what questions to ask and put you on the right path to answer them. The tools help you know what you can do and how to do it. What does placement of an element in relation to other ones imply? What if its size or position changes? Would these changes match treatments for similar situations and elements, and do the changes affect the hierarchy? Rather than making abstract or theoretical decisions about your interface design approach, let your rationale guide you and evolve as you try different possibilities to evaluate what’s working and what isn’t.

The SuperTracker case study demonstrates our internal conversations, and the rationale that grew and changed as we incorporated requirements, assessed our designs against our frameworks, and determined which visual choices were successful. At each step, we began with a direction that evolved as we put it into action. The process of manipulating elements and their characteristics is core to the act of designing. Asked by students if he thought a solution or approach was a good idea, renowned Swiss designer Armin Hofmann would shrug and say, “Try it.”

Designing based on internal conversations alone will only take you so far. A true conversation includes the user, whose frame of reference and patterns of behavior must also inform the design. The ultimate goal of your conversations is not just to develop your visual language, but to ensure your users understand the messages you’re communicating in that language, and that they hear the messages they expect.

We hope this book has helped you start design conversations of your own, avoid common mistakes, make informed decisions, and elevate the ordinary. Anyone can design and develop a functional application. But with a little effort, knowledge, and a lot of experimentation, anyone can design an application that’s also helpful and satisfying—visually usable.