UIEtips: Hunkering — Putting Disorientation into the Design Process

Today’s projects can be big and they can be fast. It’s easy to push forward, creating design documents, wireframes, prototypes, and screens, just to get through it on schedule.

But, at some point, we need to check to see if we’re going in the right direction. Are we creating what we are striving for? Is what we want actually buildable?

Our research shows that teams that don’t take time to ask and answer these questions get themselves into trouble downstream. They come to the end of the project with something that isn’t fitting together and not meeting the users or businesses’ needs.

In today’s UIEtips, I talk about a simple trick we discovered when we were out researching in the field. It’s called hunkering and it provides designers a check-and-balance system for ensuring the design they’re creating turns out great. I think you’ll find the article, Hunkering: Putting Disorientation into the Design Process, interesting.

In just a few weeks, the UIE Web App Summit will start, showcasing some of today’s most effective techniques for designing web-based applications. You’ll want to catch great full-day workshops, such as Dan Brown’s Communicating Design: Essential Deliverables for Highly Effective Design Teams or James Box and Richard Rutter’s Wireframing and Prototyping for Highly Interactive Web Apps. Read about all the amazing sessions.

Do you have your own hunkering tricks? Do you have other techniques for staying in touch with your design ideas? Share your methods below.