Adobe Engage: Experience Design

Mike Sundermeyer is up talking about design. He made a good point that design is not about making things flashy, but should be a rigorous problem solving exercise. He says there a series of myths about design.

Myth 1 : More Features = More Value / New Thinking: Value = Simplicity and Quality
Design for the 80% and make sure it is simple and usable.

Myth 2: Chrome is Cool / New Thinking: Content is King
Design around content, not chrome. Express visually and let users interact with content.

Myth 3: Animation is gratuitous / New Thinking : Flow Orients and Guides
The human eye is meant to track motion, so animation can make the app more usable and natural

Myth 4: App is the Sum of the Parts / New Thinking: Design is a whole
Like a house, design should be done for the whole, don't make it disjointed. He showed the Amgen Biking app which if you haven't seen, is cool.

Myth 5: One size fits all / New Thinking: Personality and community rule

Mike is announcing a community feature, Better By You, that allows users to share design tips and assets. I don't think the link is live, but it looks like an interesting way to help the design community move forward and learn from each other. It also sounds like they're going to really help the community design better applications. Microsoft has a lot of User Experience evangelists and Adobe makes it sound like they're going to be following that.