Good design is challenging to define. Bad design is impossible to ignore. Good design is often invisible. Bad design often stands out.

As renowned designer, Dieter Rams said: “Good design is as little design as possible. Less, but better.” I personally believe this is very well said and applies to all disciplines of design including multimedia and website design. As a designer you need to consider who you are designing for and design your products in a way that requires minimal input, and delivers maximum output.

Good design is often invisible.

Beautifully designed things are often subtle, minimal, working in the background. It is bad design that usually hits you in the face, that stands out and can be uncomfortable to look at or noisy creating a negative user experience.

Here at Uptown Studios we adhere to a strong set of design principals that include clean lines, balance, composition, minimalistic elements, innovation, unobtrusiveness and environmental harmony. Our expert design team creates the most beautiful and well-designed products for our clients by truly understanding who we are designing for and applying our design principals to produce high quality, excellent products.

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Uptown Studios Design Thinkers

Designing for Behavior Change

Uptown Studios Design Thinkers is a weekly addition to our blogs written by Christine Folck, our resident Innovation Director.

Have you ever played “meeting bingo” or “conference call bingo”? The game is designed to help keep people focused on the meeting or the conversation that is occurring. You complete a bingo card with meeting buzzwords; as the words are said by the presenters you cross them off. Once you have five across/vertical/diagonal you win. The game is fairly simple and fun.

Many times the buzzwords people put on their bingo cards have to do with project implementation, like: hardwired, baked, sustained, training, audit, etc. BJ Fogg, from Stanford University’s Behavior Change Lab, has been studying behavior change and how to design for behavior change for a decade now. He has discovered there are three things needed for a behavior to occur; 1. Motivation, 2. Ability, 3. Trigger. Here he is describing his findings; utilizing Facebook as an example:

How can knowing this help me? When you are designing your project implementation plans (if they require a behavior change) or working with your colleagues to change workflows/tasks/etc., make sure you design a trigger. Training will introduce the new workflow or process and the trigger will remind individuals to do it. Motivation will create a desire to do it; only the trigger will remind them to do it. Make it as easy as possible to do, to increase individuals ability to do it but don’t forget the trigger.

I challenge you to look at your own behaviors. What are your triggers? What triggers you to brush your teeth? What triggers you to answer email or check facebook?
Have fun with your project implementation plans, workflow redesigns, and new behaviors….. and please don’t forget the triggers.