Was chatting with @dshaw about teaching design to engineers. He asked me if I wanted to give that talk or workshop. I said no, but then of course was thinking about it after...

talk.md

Design 101 for Engineers

• design (and everything) is teachable

  • if you hear an engineer say, "I'm really bad at design," it's the same as hearing someone say, "I'm really bad at math"

• focus on simplicity

  • should make your life implementing simpler too

• people's brains are bad at doing many things; don't overly burden them

  • eg, interface with so many calls to action that no one knows which to use

• counterpoint: people are smart; don't coddle them

  • using a select instead of showing all options
  • hero graphic

• layer on discoverability

• think about intention and how you would structure your code so someone else can read it

• good design is good communication

typography

• first goal is legibility: make reading easy
• second is diversity and interestingness
• there's a name for everything in typography; don't get scared
• example
• columns
• headlines
• line spacing (leading)
• letter spacing (tracking)
• the nerdy stuff: kerning, ligatures
• picking a font
  • serifs

color

• start sparingly
  • like, black and white sparingly
  • add an accent color

constraints

• grid

more

• don't stop here. stay interested in this and try to educate yourself
• lots of time for questions at the end?

Resources

• http://goodui.org