User Experience Foundations

9 VISUAL DESIGN

What a thing is and what it means are not separate … The perception of what a thing is and the perception of what it means are not separate, either.

James J. Gibson (1982)

INTRODUCTION

In previous chapters, we have stressed the importance of avoiding premature commitment to visual details when sketching and prototyping interfaces. Yet there comes a point in the development of any interface where visual design inevitably becomes the focus of attention.

Visual design is a specialist skill, which takes years of training and practice to acquire to a professional level. A thorough mastery of it is a very long way beyond the scope of this book. However, we can at least introduce some of the basic concepts that underpin visual designers’ ...