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Understanding Design and Visualization: Will You Be the Designer or the Designed?

In the end, the question “Will you be the designer or the designed?” is a call to embrace your agency. It challenges you to actively shape the world rather than passively accept it. The true designer values the integration of sensory experience and rational thought, champions originality over mere replication, and continuously refines their work based on real-world feedback. This holistic approach not only creates beautiful and functional objects but also reaffirms our essential humanity in a rapidly evolving world.

Design is not merely a technical process—it’s a deeply human, creative dialogue between our inner worlds and the external reality. At its core, design involves managing the myriad variables of user needs, context, and the product itself. This challenge—whether to actively shape our world as designers or passively allow ourselves to be shaped by it—echoes through history, from Descartes’…

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UX/UI Design for the Elderly

Designing for the elderly means creating interfaces that are visually clear, easy to navigate, and forgiving of errors. By using larger fonts, sufficient spacing, simple gestures, and contextual support, designers can create products that empower older users and bridge the gap between technology and their everyday needs.

OverviewDesigning for seniors requires addressing age-related declines in vision, motor skills, and cognitive flexibility. A senior-friendly interface not only enhances usability but also ensures that older users feel confident and in control. The following guidelines provide a roadmap to create digital products that are accessible, intuitive, and accommodating for elderly users. Visual…

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Usability for Seniors – Challenges and Changes

Accessible, user-centered design for seniors involves addressing sensory and motor declines, offering flexible input options, and ensuring that error messages are clear and actionable. By designing with the needs of older adults in mind, digital products can be made more inclusive, ultimately benefiting both the user and the business.

As our population ages, ensuring that websites and apps are accessible for users aged 65 and older has become increasingly important. Although overall digital literacy is rising, older adults still face unique challenges when navigating digital interfaces. Key Challenges for Seniors: Decreased Sensory and Motor Abilities:As people age, there is a natural decline in vision, hearing, and fine…

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Design and Human Psychology – The Challenge of Design

Ultimately, the challenge of design lies in anticipating errors, reducing complexity, and ensuring that every interaction is guided by clear constraints, natural mappings, and immediate feedback. By doing so, designers can create products that not only look good but also work effortlessly in the hands of real users.

Design is the art of harmonizing the complex interplay between the user, the situation, and the product. It’s a process that constantly evolves through use, feedback, and iterative refinement—a process often described as “hill-climbing.” Just as one might laboriously ascend a hill in the dark, each step in design corrects minor flaws and builds upon successes over time, eventually leading to…

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Errors Are Human – Designing to Prevent Mistakes

By harnessing physical, semantic, cultural, and logical constraints along with clear visibility, immediate feedback, and forcing functions, designers can significantly reduce errors and create systems that empower users—even when mistakes are human.

OverviewHuman error is inevitable. Our actions are driven by a combination of our internal goals and the external information available to us. However, when design fails to guide these actions, mistakes occur. By understanding different types of errors and using constraints, visibility, and feedback effectively, designers can create systems that support and protect users. Types of…

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Design and Human Psychology – How Should We Do It?

By using a combination of physical, semantic, cultural, and logical constraints along with robust visibility and feedback mechanisms, designers can create products that are not only easy to use but also intuitively guide users toward the correct actions.

Design can profoundly enhance user experience by leveraging constraints and ensuring clear visibility and feedback. Here’s how: Physical ConstraintsPhysical constraints limit possible actions through the inherent properties of an object. When well-applied, they reduce the number of options a user must consider, making the correct action evident. For instance, a door designed to be pushed might…

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Design and Human Psychology – Knowledge in the Mind vs. Knowledge in the World

Design excellence arises from aligning what users know in their minds with what is clearly provided in the world—ensuring that visible cues, natural constraints, and timely feedback all work together to support intuitive and error-free interactions.

Overview“Out of Sight, Out of Mind” encapsulates a fundamental principle in design and psychology: much of what we know is either stored internally in our memory or exists externally in our environment. Designers must carefully balance these two realms of knowledge to create products that are both intuitive and effective. Internal (Mental) KnowledgeOur mental models—formed by personal…

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Design and Human Psychology – The Psychology of Everyday Actions

Good design empowers users by aligning the visible, physical cues of a product with intuitive, reliable outcomes—transforming everyday interactions into effortless experiences.

OverviewHumans are wired to search for reasons behind every outcome. When users make errors with everyday objects, they often blame themselves—feeling guilty, frustrated, and convinced that their own clumsiness or inattentiveness is at fault. This phenomenon underscores the critical responsibility of designers: to eliminate even the slightest chance for error through clear, intuitive…

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Design and Human Psychology – The Psychopathology of Everyday Objects

Good design bridges the gap between technology and human psychology by creating products that are both intuitive and satisfying to use.

OverviewEvery day, we interact with countless consumer products. Some are thoughtfully designed with the user in mind, while many exist solely to maximize profit. To create truly good design, designers must ensure that users can see and understand how to interact with a product. Visibility and feedback are crucial—they guide behavior and help users understand what actions are available and what…

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Service Design Textbook – Part 4: What Tools Do Service Designers Use?

A wide array of tools—from stakeholder maps to agile development—empowers service designers to deeply understand, prototype, and refine every element of the customer experience.

Service design is built on a variety of tools—each one essential for crafting comprehensive, intentional experiences. Here, we explore a range of techniques that help visualize, analyze, and innovate services. Stakeholder Maps What It Is:A visual representation of all collaborators related to a service. How to Use It:Start by listing all stakeholders and mapping how they interact. This process…

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Service Design Textbook – Part 3: How Service Design Unfolds

Service design is a dynamic, iterative process that fuses exploration, creativity, reflection, and execution to deliver engaging and value-driven customer experiences.

Service design is the creation of a planned, cohesive experience—one that integrates every touchpoint into a complete journey. The Process of Service Design Tools for Service Design ThinkingService design thinking isn’t about following a rigid manual; it’s a toolbox of creative instruments. Although the real design process is nonlinear, its overall structure can be described as an iterative…

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Service Design Textbook – Part 2: The Service Experience Designer

Service experience design is the dynamic fusion of user-centric product innovation, strategic management, and operational efficiency that transforms everyday interactions into meaningful, value-driven experiences.

Who Is a Service Designer?Service designers are at the forefront of developing products that integrate seamless service experiences. They oversee iterative design processes—where repeated cycles of designing, testing, measuring, and refining help uncover and solve user issues. In today’s landscape, a designer’s role extends beyond aesthetics to include process management and consumer research.…

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Service Design Textbook – Part 1: Service and Experience Design

Service design transforms every interaction into a seamless, memorable journey that delights both customers and providers.

Introduction: The Essence of Service DesignService design is the art of creating planned, cohesive experiences. It’s more than just crafting products or interactions—it’s about designing an entire journey that culminates in meaningful engagement. Defining Service DesignService design isn’t merely a body of knowledge; it’s a way of thinking that combines a variety of methods and tools from…

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Mindful Engagement and the Art of Experience

Ultimately, true experience emerges when our engaged mind and body unite, revealing that nothing exists apart from our attentive perception.

Our minds don’t exist in isolation—they respond to others, and our experiences are always embodied, never pristine or detached. Opening ReflectionsIn the great Confucian classics, such as the “Great Learning,” we encounter the wisdom: “If your mind is not present, even eyes cannot see.” This simple truth tells us that genuine experience demands an engaged heart. Similarly, consider a well-known…

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Art as Experience – John Dewey: A Reimagined Reflection

In essence, art transforms everyday experiences into a dynamic, unifying process that deepens our connection to life and the world around us.

Introduction & OverviewIn modern times, the artistic qualities born from the experiences of life have often been separated from the very life that creates them. Dewey challenges this division by arguing that art is not an isolated, static object confined to museums and galleries—it is an ever-evolving experience that emerges directly from our interactions with the world. Chapter 1: Living…

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Designing with Heart: Foundations of Digital Media – Part 3

By incorporating robust feedback, consistent design, clear action differentiation, and user-centered testing, digital media interfaces can be crafted to support user tasks effectively, reduce errors, and foster a natural, intuitive interaction experience.

Insights from Norman (1983a) Norman’s research has led to several key conclusions: Mode Errors:The existence of mode errors indicates a need for clearer feedback. When users accidentally perform actions in the wrong mode, it shows that the system must better communicate its current state. Explanation Errors:These point to the necessity for improved system configuration and clearer explanations…

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Design with Heart: Foundations of Digital Media – Part 2

By understanding the limitations of our visual perception, attention, memory, and processing speeds, designers can create interfaces that are intuitive, responsive, and truly user-centered.

5. Our Color Perception is Limited Human color perception isn’t about absolute brightness—it excels at detecting contrasts. How we distinguish colors depends largely on their presentation. Some individuals are colorblind, and even the settings on a user’s monitor or ambient lighting conditions can significantly affect how colors are perceived. How Our Color Vision Works Rods:These cells detect…