Resident Mentor and UI expert Thomas Gorissen stopped by Wednesday to give the frogs some guidance on the design process.
What was his advice to the startups?
Have a plan
“Have a map for every use case scenario. Think about: frequency, accessibility, speed, complexity….once you’ve created a map so you know how your product works, you should have a functional UI. You should have a flow to the UI”
Make it obvious
“Guide the user and give the product flow. Make Action items look actionable. Use existing paradigms like Yammer did by modeling their interface off of Facebook.”
Make it responsive
“Give immediate feedback. Also respect the conditions in which your UI is used in. For example, if you are making an app to be used in a car at night, a white background isn’t ideal.”
Don’t clutter
“Whitespace is your friend, alignment is key, symmetry is sexy. The golden ratio is beautiful.”
Thomas recommended the startups check out this site: www.html5rocks.com/webappfieldguide
Thomas has founded, supported and lived startups on 4 different continents as a web UI expert, developer and entrepreneur – mostly wearing a hat and flip-flops. A UI Geek, Thomas likes to say “UI design is the second most important feature of every product – right after solving a problem.”
Thomas moved to Singapore to join online-advertisement startup ADZ in 2010 as its first employee to build Asia’s first real-time audience marketplace. He believes that great entrepreneurs are born, then made and then fed good wine and cheese. He therefore is a strong supporter of the JFDI idea to encourage and educate the use of innovative, entrepreneurial ways to introduce sustainable change.