Using UX Principles to Communicate and Work Better

Summary

This blog post will adapt basic UX principles to a common workaday tasks – writing good notes and recaps.

Here are those basic UX principles:

1. Understand the needs of the user
2. Meet the user’s needs, quickly & directly
3. Intuitive design is best
4. Be consistent

(Adapted from here: https://www.mockplus.com/blog/post/interaction-design-principles)

If you take one thing away, let it be this:

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Detail

1) Understanding the needs of your readers and users

Notes and recaps typically have a couple of goals:

1. Identifying Things to Do (“Action Items”)
2. Providing information or background for future work

Spreadsheets and reports typically are there to provide a quick perspective on some sort of dataset.

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2) Meet the user’s needs, quickly & directly

For notes and meeting recaps, I always have a clear structure:

1. What was the Purpose / Who was there / Where were we
2. Summary / Highlights
3. Action Items
4. Detailed notes / background

The order there is key, as it should anticipate and answer the reader’s questions:

1. Are these the notes I’m looking for?
2. What happened? (set context)
3. What needs to happen next (action items)
4. I need more background (raw notes / background)

3) Intuitive design is best

Intuitive design sounds hard, but it really isn’t. As we’ve already set up a clear priority of information in the structure of the “notes” content, we now need to apply some design in the form of a visual hierarchy.

This visual hierarchy for notes is usually text-based, using headers and text styles, which can be achieved in almost any text editor, no matter how simple or fancy:

MEETING RECAP: V

IA Studio Holiday Planning 2018.11.12

JoBeth, Morgan, Ann, Ben, Jason, Christal @ VIA Studio

AGENDA

- What are we doing for the holidays
- When are we doing it
- What's it going to cost
- Tasking

SUMMARY/HIGHLIGHTS
- White elephant / cookie jam
- Friday two week before Christmas
- $15 spending limit

ACTION ITEMS
[] Ann to design invite
[] Christal to manage calendar
[] Morgan to shoot photos

DETAILED NOTES

Cookie Jam
- We need gluten-free cookie recipes
Present Swap
- Different between white elephant and yankee swap is... Etc.
- Don't forget it's John's VIA-versary as well

4) Be consistent

If you are consistent in the timing, structure, visual hierarchy and style of your notes and recaps, they will become intuitive to your readers. Intuitive is easy and easy is understood!