"It’s never been so easy to create incredibly polished mockups" says Erica Heinz, but it's problematic. For one, "people perceive more aesthetically pleasing interfaces as more intuitive or usable (whether they are or not)."
Give it the Craigslist Test! https://ericaheinz.com/notes/give-it-the-craigslist-test/
@chriscoyier "Love it even if it looked like Craigslist"?? 🤔 🤦
No, more like "love it **because** it looks like Craigslist".
May 5, 2023, 3:27 AM@chriscoyier Even when our designers are working in higher fidelity, they've started converting mockups to grayscale with handwritten fonts before they'll show a client. It helped a lot.
We found that also changed feedback from being about the aesthetics to being about the interface.
@mia @chriscoyier I worked with a packaging designer once who would do all of his ideation in illustrator/photoshop but before presenting ideas to clients would redraw them by hand with pencil and paper. Then they were “just sketches”.
@mia @chriscoyier i believe this is what makes Balsamiq still a great tool. The raw/ primitive look of mockups lets viewers truly focus on content and project goals, and not get distracted or misled by other visual elements.
@airfive @mia @chriscoyier I've used both Balsamiq and Moqups for many projects! Even if not showing them to anyone else, it's really helped me figure out what I'm trying to accomplish. As a CSS dev, I can often get caught up and my git commits then say stuff like "change colors", "update colors", "fix typography (again)"... and there's still no content structure or page layout 🙃
@mia @chriscoyier @dahukanna I did this for years when I was doing IxD … absolutely made a huge difference