The 4 Eff- Words of Design

ARTICLE BY James Costa | POSTED ON December 22nd, 2009 | Design and Usability | 14 Comments

Design is a language of its own. In learning its vocabulary through your daily feeds, classes, or discussion with others, we know this is true. Words like usability, focus, palettes, accessibility, and balance plague our day-to-day conversations with others. I mean, how many times have you been explaining design decisions to your clients when they’ve shot back confused looks your way?

After reading this article, and having many similar conversations with fellow fathers, I came to wondering what, if any, swear words the field of design would have.

Oftentimes we overlook certain aspects of design in our websites, print pieces, and other forms of media. Sometimes we get so wrapped up in our creativity that we don’t take a step back and analyze the piece from another point of view– We get to the end of the design to realize that it doesn’t emphasize the purpose of the website properly, and find ourselves having to go back to the drawing board. Really, these words should turn into questions for yourself after your design process as a reflection, more than anything.

So here they are, the 4 eff- words of design!

Efficiency

efficiency |iˈfi sh ənsē|
noun ( pl. -cies)
the state or quality of being efficient : greater energy efficiency.

• an action designed to achieve this : to increase efficiencies and improve earnings.

I find myself talking a lot about being efficient in your life through being productive. We as designers can be more efficient in our work by using actions in Photoshop and organizing our files so that they’re easy to come back to later. It is important for us to be efficient in our processes, as it will save us many a hour later.

How well your design answers the question or reason that the user is interested in is the core of efficiency in design.

Aza Raskin said in an article about design efficiency that “Efficiency lets you know when you can stop looking for a better design.” As I spoke about in my article with SixRevisions, we need to take a look at analytic facts like bounce rates, and figure out (through testing) what you can be doing better to bring that rate down.

New Years is coming up, and it’s time to take a step back from our work, analyze, and improve ourselves. What are you going to change? As professionals, let’s take a look at our marketing plans, processes, and (of course) designs to ensure that they’re giving us and our clients a good return on investment.

Effectiveness

effective |iˈfektiv|
adjective
1 successful in producing a desired or intended result : effective solutions to environmental problems.

• (esp. of a law or policy) operative : the agreements will be effective from November.
• impressive; striking : an effective finale.

After creating a design, sit back and take a good look at it. Does it reflect the website’s purpose? After staring at the piece for little more than ten seconds, do you know its purpose? Is it effective in getting the client’s clients from point A to point B in a quick and easy way?

Effectiveness in design can be done through simplifying elements and processes, designing with the demographics in mind, utilizing different styles of typography (e.g. bold, italics) to create visually-appealing content, or even (during development) by slimming down your code and optimizing your images for the web.

Effort

effort |ˈefərt|
noun
a vigorous or determined attempt : hammer birdhouses to country fenceposts in an effort to bring back the eastern bluebird.

• [with adj. ] the activities of a group of people with a common purpose : the war effort.

Designing takes a certain amount of effort. We need to research and collect data on our clients’ competitors and figure out how they are doing things properly, and how we can take those things to the next level with our designs. As well, we need to look at how our clients’ sites are failing and how we can improve on those elements (if not by eliminating them completely).

As well, as designers we (usually) work with a team. We have project managers, developers, and of course the client to interact with. All in all, the project is a team effort beyond anything and should be respected as such. You yourself need to put effort into the product through your work, but it is also a team effort to pull everything together.

Effect

effect |iˈfekt|
noun

• the extent to which something succeeds or is operative : wind power can be used to great effect.
• an impression produced in the mind of a person : gentle music can have a soothing effect.

Ah, the effect. That’s what it really is about for us designers, isn’t it? I mean, we design for users to feel a certain way when they come across our pieces. For some projects it’s excitement, for some it’s the “wow” factor. Regardless, we use effects to leave an effect on our visitors.

Oh, and yeah, you can make some cool effects in Photoshop and Illustrator and stuff too. But really, it’s all about the emotions we conjure in others through our effects.

Pardon My French

To conclude, I do apologize if this article was too vulgar and offended any. Do you have anything to add?

(Definitions from the New Oxford American Dictionary.)

---