Seeking for a design inspiration? We’ve rounded up 20 of our favorite user experience TED talks that every UX designer must watch.
1. 3 ways good design makes you happy / Don Norman
In this talk from 2003, design critic Don Norman turns his incisive eye toward beauty, fun, pleasure and emotion, as he looks at design that makes people happy. He names the three emotional cues that a well-designed product must hit to succeed.
2. The Beauty of Data Visualization / David McCandless
David McCandless turns complex data sets (like worldwide military spending, media buzz, Facebook status updates) into beautiful, simple diagrams that tease out unseen patterns and connections. Good design, he suggests, is the best way to navigate information glut — and it may just change the way we see the world.
3. The complex relationship between data and design in UX / Rochelle King
Engineering a website is equal parts vision and adaptation … responding both to how users navigate the site and what new goals of the organization have emerged. Rochelle King, the senior designer at Spotify, was recently challenged to combine the many mismatched interfaces of Spotify into a single harmonious layout. She walks us through the process of redesigning a major website, revealing best practices for navigating the relationship between designers, data and the people for whom it is built.
4. How to make choosing easier / Sheena Iyengar
We all want customized experiences and products — but when faced with 700 options, consumers freeze up. With fascinating new research, Sheena Iyengar demonstrates how businesses (and others) can improve the experience of choosing.
5. The first secret of great design / Tony Fadell
As human beings, we get used to “the way things are” really fast. But for designers, the way things are is an opportunity … Could things be better? How? In this funny, breezy talk, the man behind the iPod and the Nest thermostat shares some of his tips for noticing — and driving — change.
6. Simplicity sells / David Pogue
New York Times columnist David Pogue takes aim at technology’s worst interface-design offenders, and provides encouraging examples of products that get it right. To funny things up, he bursts into song.
7. Got a wicked problem? Tell me how you make toast / Tom Wujec
Making toast doesn’t sound very complicated — until someone asks you to draw the process, step by step. Tom Wujec loves asking people and teams to draw how they make toast, because the process reveals unexpected truths about how we can solve our biggest, most complicated problems at work. Learn how to run this exercise yourself, and hear Wujec’s surprising insights from watching thousands of people draw toast.
8. What makes technology so habit-forming? / Nir Eyal
About 40% of what you do, day in and day out, is done purely out of habit. Nir Eyal decodes how technology companies — the masters of “habit-forming” products — design the tech products we can’t put down. But it isn’t all negative manipulation, he says. It can and should be used for good.
9. How giant websites design for you (and a billion others, too) / Margaret Gould Stewart
Facebook’s “like” and “share” buttons are seen 22 billion times a day, making them some of the most-viewed design elements ever created. Margaret Gould Stewart, Facebook’s director of product design, outlines three rules for design at such a massive scale—one so big that the tiniest of tweaks can cause global outrage, but also so large that the subtlest of improvements can positively impact the lives of many.
10. 404, the story of a page not found / Renny Gleeson
Oops! Nobody wants to see the 404: Page Not Found. But as Renny Gleeson shows us, while he runs through a slideshow of creative and funny 404 pages, every error is really a chance to build a better relationship.