Why You Must Always Defend Your Design Decisions
When working within the field of user experience design you will be asked to make many important aesthetical decisions. These decisions hold a lot of weight since they will be regarding the visual aspect of the product/brand as a whole. Sometimes while working under one of these roles you will be asked to write up a report detailing these decisions and why they were made. Don’t get intimidated by a request of this nature, as this documentation will only help you. The reason your employer wants these on paper is so if the client decides to change their mind, there is evidence of why exactly the current decisions were made.
When working as a designer you will get asked a lot of subjective questions, but don’t be afraid to answer. People are asking for your opinion because they don’t know the standard style for the design aspect they are questioning you about. Do not be afraid of being wrong, however, do be careful of expressing doubt in yourself. When the main function of your job is to be the creative authority, you need to play that part. Any uncertainty will cause people to question your reasoning in regards to any future projects. Being confident in your decisions will keep people from questioning the foundations of your design.
After converting a low fidelity design (i.e wireframes) to a high fidelity design it is not uncommon to provide a written report to bolster the decisions you made. The main purpose of your explanation will be to answer why you chose the colors you did, as well as the typography. The following is an acceptable response to any inquisition regarding your design.
“When choosing the colors for this design, I decided a monochromatic color scheme would work best. I chose to compose the web page’s color palette with different blues to convey trust, as well as security. When the user visits the site you want them to see colors that are calm, and reassuring. Our subconscious is wired to perceive light blue shades positively. It is the color of survival and life support, as reflected naturally in the sky and water.
I chose white as the background for the webpage due to its ability to instill a sense of clarity and cleanliness to the design. White also has a positive effect on our brains, and it is a must when crafting a medical page. For this design, the background needed to be as light as possible so that the competing colors could be seen, without having to be too saturated. Darker backgrounds also tend to hinder accessibility for some users, making white the obvious choice.”
Also included in a document of this nature are your typography choices, frequently delivered like the following.
“When selecting a typeface, I went with a sans-serif font to improve the readability of the webpage. Serif fonts can tend to blend together when read at the wrong size, or if the user has limited eyesight. “Lato” is the second most popular font for medical websites worldwide, as well as a font I tend to use regularly. Due to my familiarity with the typeface, I initially applied it to this design. However, it still seemed as though readability could be improved. Through research, I learned that “Source Sans Pro” is the sixth most used font for medical websites, and has the most resemblance to the number one most used medical font, “Open Sans”. This font presented content clearly and legibly while also providing many font family variants.”