Use design tools to become a personal design team

As designers, we often encounter isolated and helpless situations. Whether we work alone or at home, there are times when we have to take on a lot of job roles individually and these roles could have been borne by the entire design team.

Recently, that is, in my previous work, I personally experienced this situation. At that time, I was the only user experience designer in a company where I employed thousands of people. I had to study myself, wireframes, prototyping, functional specs, visual effects design and more. There are no teams to help me with these tasks, but I still have deadlines, and the deadline is the same as when I had a team.

On the one hand, it can be a good experience for a person to assume all the different roles to do a job. On the other hand, I seldom have the opportunity to focus on one of these roles and to do the level of work I hope for.

This is me, I'm under a lot of pressure

The above is not also like you? You are also such an isolated helpless designer who works in a company whose goal is to get you alone to accomplish many of the tasks that normally require a team to cope with. Maybe you are a freelancer and some projects need many roles to produce good results in the end.

How we deal with multiple roles

I suggest that we should build our own team. This team consists of you and your various design tools. In order to help me cope with these different roles, and ultimately get better results than just myself, I use a lot of valuable tools and resources (and relatively affordable), and I'll talk to everyone Share these tools and resources together.

I use four tools and resources to help me work hard to create a good scenario to get the job done within the deadline.

These four tools and resources are: ClickTale, a prototype gallery / library, a wireframe / prototype design, and design resource sites such as Designmoo and 365psd.

You can use your favorite tools and resources to replace the specific tools I will mention below. But I want to provide some reference by sharing my tools with you.

Tools can not replace people

Before going further, let me first state that results achieved by one team are almost always much more plentiful than those obtained by assuming one person alone. But when you work for a company that does not have enough budget to form a design team or as a freelancer, you should do what you can on hand and do your best to ensure that you get the best result.

As mentioned above, let's take a look at these four types of tools.

Data collection tools

Let's start with ClickTale. It is a great research / analysis tool that shows you how users interact with your web pages. It allows you to track web browsing behavior and get some basic analysis. You can also get free such analysis report through Google Analytics. Its strength lies in its heat map, click tracking, scrolling distance (where users scrolled to your web page) and how users interact with your website / product. With this, you can see how users navigate your site and get analytics data from well-designed websites.

In the research phase of my website project, I will use this tool. Those detailed reports helped me find ways to improve my web layout and web interface. In fact, I did not do related research. I just need to filter it from the good data set it prepares for me.

With tools like ClickTale, I can get more information. We can use the reliable information we get from the user base to help us to modify our work or create new designs. And we know how user groups interact with our products.

Other tools like ClickTale are:

Google Analytics (which also has heat map features) Crazy EggClickHeatclickdensity Design Patterns Library

Once I have collected user experience data about our existing work, I will modify many parts of the site, such as site navigation, page layout structure, web page design and so on. All of these are based on our existing knowledge to work hard to improve the interactive experience.

Often I have to work under pressure and a certain deadline - in a hastily mode - and find it helpful to be guided by the Design Patterns Library. So I can know how other designers deal with the same issues as I encountered.

I can also look at the related anti-patterns (these patterns can be found on the dark patterns site) to see if the user is very interested in the interface you are building.

Here are some design pattern libraries that I found helpful:

UI-Patterns.comPattern TapPatternryElements of Design: A Web Design Showcase Yahoo! Design Pattern LibraryInteraction Design Pattern Library (Welie.com)

However, it is important to note that these design patterns do not supersede some design principles. The principles are: Create a user experience based on project goals and needs. But when you need to start projects soon, they can serve as a good reference.

In addition, if you are interested in learning more design patterns, you can check out the following articles:

Site Navigation Design Patterns Guide (Rockux Article) Popular Content Presentation Design PatternsUser Interface Patterns for Dealing with Interactive Content Wireframes and Prototypes

When it comes to wireframes and prototyping, I use the Axure tool. It is a wireframe / prototyping tool that allows you to create HTML-ready prototypes in wireframes and builds upon them based on the ability to output word format files. If you can create your wireframes and documents at the same time, then you can achieve double-edged sword!

This tool saves me a lot of time, and it's helpful, not dead-end, prototypes, and static wireframes from graphical design tools that give customers a better understanding of the application / site's Dynamic.

Functional prototypes are also helpful in rapid iteration and usability testing. It allows you to test the functionality and dynamics of many things before entering the visual effects design phase.

Among all the tools and resources, this tool is of the greatest help to me.

To find out more wireframe tools, you can read the following article:

10 completely free web prototyping (wireframe) tools (rockux site article)

If you do not believe this phase of a design project is important, you can read this article too:

The Benefits of Wireframing a Design

Design Resources Website

Just as with design pattern libraries, I found it important to visualize design resources sites in order to complete projects on time and within budget. I was a visual effects designer, but for those UX designers or web developers, they would be very beneficial for them due to their lack of experience in visual effects design.

To be honest, even though I am a visual designer, I have the expertise I need in this area. When the time is tight, I also need inspiration and find a good breakthrough. Many times, I do not have much time and resources to create user-specified design elements, so these sites will undoubtedly become a savior at this time.

Designmoo and 365psd are two very helpful sites I've found. Not only can you find some great design files on these sites, but each site also gives you the opportunity to give back to the design community, which allows you to upload your own designs. These designs can also be downloaded by others.

End of the gift

I hope you find these resources as useful as me. Let me once again emphasize the previous statement that these tools and resources can help you build a series of websites and applications, but there is no tool that can replace people with real skills in reality.

Do not be discouraged when you feel outnumbered or overwhelmed by your immediate job. Look through some resources, even if the situation is not good for you, but you also have to take the opportunity to complete those daunting tasks.

Do you already have design tools and resources that are very helpful to you? Welcome to discuss them in the comments below. [English]

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