The Laws of Design: From Principle to Practice

Given at the DC Design Talks in February of 2008 in Washington DC.

Transcript

1. The Laws of Design: From
   Principle to Practice
   Patrick Haney
   

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2. http://www.flickr.com/photos/cc_chapman/1361197165
   

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3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/extraketchup/749317332
   

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4. Design principles are
   universal
   

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5. “Like all man-made
   ‘laws’ they do not exist
   in the absolute sense - to
   break them is no sin.”
   John Maeda,
   on his Laws of Simplicity
   

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6. Fitt’s Law
   The time required to move to a target is a
   function of the target size and distance to
   target
   

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9. Make clickable areas
   BIGGER
   

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12. Hick’s Law
    The time it takes to make a decision
    increases as the number of alternatives
    increase
    

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13. http://www.flickr.com/photos/oobrien/7597395/
    

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16. Design for error.
    Donald Norman,
    Seven Principles for Transforming
    Difficult Tasks into Simple Ones
    

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17. Affordance
    A property in which the physical
    characteristics of an object or
    environment influence its function
    

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22. Chunking
    or The Magic Number 7
    

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23. Organization makes a system
    of many appear fewer.
    #2: Laws of Simplicity,
    John Maeda
    

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25. (703) 555-9682
    

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32. Closure
    No, we’re not finished yet.
    

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37. “Suggest” the box.
    Dan Cederholm
    

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42. Signal-to-Noise Ratio
    The ratio of relevant to irrelevant
    information in a display
    

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43. “There is no such thing as
    information overload, only
    bad design.”
    Edward Tufte
    

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46. Color
    More than just a way to make your design
    “pretty”
    

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49. Legibility
    The visual clarity of text, generally based
    on the size, typeface, contrast, text block,
    and spacing of the characters used
    

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51. Accessibility
    Objects and environments should be
    designed to be usable, without
    modification, by as many people as
    possible
    

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52. http://www.flickr.com/photos/oobrien/7597395/
    

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57. Iteration
    A process of repeating a set of operations
    until a specific result is achieved
    

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58. “Good Designers Redesign,
    Great Designers Realign”
    Cameron Moll
    

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61. Questions?
    

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62. Thank You.
    http://patrickhaney.com
    

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