Visual Design

Visual Design focuses largely on the look and feel of an application, as an end user would experience it, visually or otherwise. This includes specifying original design of interface elements and layout, choosing fonts and colors, and more. While UX design is focused on how something works, visual design is focused on how it looks and feels.

Visual Design Checkpoints: Starter List

Here is a list of checkpoints for Visual designers to get started. If these design checkpoints aren't met, your design can cause significant barriers to users.

This list is taken from the full list of Visual Design checkpoints.

For all role checkpoints, see the [Checkpoint Full List].

Case Study: How to use the Starter List

A good way to get familiar with the checkpoints is to do a short case study. Think about how you might tackle the checkpoint in your role.

Then, think of how meeting this checkpoint impacts an end user.

Checkpoint:

IMG-018: Charts, graphs, infographics and other visual representations of information don't rely on color alone to convey information.

Primary Role: Visual Designer

"As the primary owner of this checkpoint, I will ensure I don't use color alone when I'm creating a highly visual graphical representation of data (numbers, relationships between items, etc.) - for example a pie chart, line graph, bar graph or any other infographic that relies heavily on symbols or color.

I will work with the content author or stakeholder to ensure there's an alternative way of perceiving the data and relationships between the data sets. This could be a matrix/ table, or bullet list, or simple text format.

The secondary owner here is the UX designer, who will assist me in ensuring there is space for both the visual representation (also known as "complex images") on the page along with the text alternative, which should be adjacent to the visual design so it's accessed easily.

At the same time, the visual representation is ideally not navigable by keyboard and screen reader, as it is likely not linear. A good practice is to make the visual - a pie chart, bar graph, line graph, etc. an image and add a short description to it to summarize it. Example: "Graph showing the most downloaded songs between January and December 2022".

Then the text alternative for the data will provide full details."

Secondary Role: UX Designer

The secondary owner of the checkpoint is the UX Designer. They design the page layout, functionality and interactions with the content on the web page or screen.

The UX designer should support the Visual Designer when they create both the visual representation of data and the text alternative. They ensure that all users can access both through navigation.

End user persona: Lee, an online shopper who is colorblind

Lee is colorblind and encounters barriers when shopping online. He has one of the most common visual disabilities that affect men: red and green color blindness. Lee frequently shops online and sometimes encounters problems on websites and with apps where the color contrast of text and images is not adequate and where color alone is used to indicate required fields and sale prices.

When red and green color combinations are used, Lee cannot distinguish between the two, since both look brown to him. It is also very difficult for him to make product choices when color swatches are not labeled with the name of the color.

Read Lees's full story and learn about other design checkpoints that benefit users like him.

Resources

• Use the Tips for Designing to get started.
• Use the Resources for Designers.

Exercise: Role-based Decision Tree Example

Who is the primary owner of checkpoint IMG-018?

Let's get started on IMG-018: Charts, graphs, infographics and other visual representations of information don't rely on color alone to convey information.

Using the Role-based Decision Tree, let's see how we might assign ownership.

Try it for yourself!

Try the exercise with another checkpoint from the Starter List above.