Programming

17669 readers

230 users here now

Welcome to the main community in programming.dev! Feel free to post anything relating to programming here!

Cross posting is strongly encouraged in the instance. If you feel your post or another person's post makes sense in another community cross post into it.

Hope you enjoy the instance!

Rules

Follow the programming.dev instance rules
Keep content related to programming in some way
If you're posting long videos try to add in some form of tldr for those who don't want to watch videos

Wormhole

Follow the wormhole through a path of communities [email protected]

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

snowe

Ategon

[email protected]

How do you handle UX Design? (self.programming)

submitted 8 months ago by W3dd1e to c/programming

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

How do you handle design when working a project that doesn’t have explicit design guidelines?

I’ve been working on some personal projects, but I am continually getting held up on design. I hate looking at a blank page, not knowing where to start. I’m not a particularly creative person in art and design and I really struggle to come up with new ideas on my own. I don’t enjoy it.

I’m the kind of person who buy 10 plain black t-shirts and 5 pairs of plain jeans so I never have to think about style.

I’m sure there are a lot of us out there; you can make the thing but, not design it. How do you work that part of the process?

I don’t want my projects to get skipped over because they’re ugly and I don’t want to copy other designs pixel for pixel.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] monomon 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

One suggestion - if you get 10 plain black t-shirts, then implement your style!

I am a dev who was focused on design and ux early on (this has changed as the needs of my work changed).

@abhideckert's suggestion on how to analyze the needs is great. Now on to the implementation.

Similarly to development, you start out with some requirements - you need to show an input box, a history of inputs, and a sidebar with categories. You work out the layout (with wireframes, pencil drawings, etc.). Then comes visual style, which I guess is the thing you struggle with?

In both layout and visual style, you need to apply design principles, but ultimately the goal is to guide the visitor's eye to the right places. This is where rhythm, repetition and contrast play a role. Basically highlight important elements, make the order of elements logical and not boring, avoid large empty areas but leave sufficient "breathing room" between elements, etc.

For visual style, you should make your own "style guide" that you apply to all personal projects. You can vary it a bit for each, if you are worried about them looking the same. Make that into a css file with a dummy html page to test. Add an input box, a textarea, select, unordered lists, etc. and style all of them to your liking. This guide will capture a lot of visual ideas, colors, spacing, which you can paste straight into your project. Do not sweat too much about stealing other people's ideas - it's an intrinsic property of art, and anyway it will probably not look 100% the same even if you copy it.

Edit: PS: spend some time just looking at the design and thinking.