Curation for Tech Bros
An introductory crash course on product design
Experience designer, product designer, information architect, interaction designer, and user interface architect are three too many names all defining the role of a product designer.
Ideating and executing a digital product takes an army. From the UI UX designer, the back-end engineer, the product marketer and other roles, The product designer is the symphony conductor, the curator of the entire experience, and the vibes, for both the user and the product team.
The product designer variant of “tech bro” (used as a gender-neutral term) employs knowledge of user needs and business goals to build products that succeed in the market. They define the goals of the product, create the product road map, monitor the product position in the market, and the impact of design decisions while maintaining an eye for factors like product desirability and value.
A curator is captivated by art and looks to define how it is experienced by the audience. they curate exhibitions, find pieces for collections, research the subject matter and share insights. They work to define and elevate how we view understand and appreciate art. Sotheby’s Institute of Art
In tech terms, a product designer. They are generalist-oriented User experience designers. The product designer also monitors how visual elements, the look and feel of the product, work together to create the user experience. This purview is the user interface. It is the touch point for the user's interaction with the product. Interface can be Graphical (Graphical User interface), Voice (Voice Controlled Interface) GBI (Gesture Based Interface).
Product design is explored on three levels: systems design which explores systematic solutions to problems by designing the elements of a system such as the architecture and the interfaces of the elements; process design which is the method a company can use to understand the systems process and how it can be improved and interface design, the look and style of the design. These tech curators, and product designers, make use of a web of tools which they call artifacts to log and organize their work some of these are:
- Journey Maps: A journey map is a visualization of the process that the user encounters in order to accomplish the goal of using the product. It starts with logging user actions into a timeline, then fleshing it out with the user's thoughts and emotions in mind to create a narrative which will then be condensed and polished into a visualization.
- Wireframes: Wireframes are low-fidelity mock-ups, a two-dimensional skeletal outline of a webpage or app, to draft solutions for testing. They are blueprints for more high-fidelity designs. They provide a clear overview of the page structure, layout, information architecture, user flow, functionality, and intended behaviours.
- Prototype: Prototypes are an early sample, model, or release of a product built to test a concept or process. They are the high-fidelity mock-ups of the wireframe.
- Userflows: also called flowcharts are diagrams that display the complete path a user takes when using a product.
- Affinity maps: An affinity diagram, sometimes also known as a cluster map, is used to organize information and is the output of affinity mapping. Affinity diagrams help organize information into groups of similar items — particularly useful when analyzing qualitative data or observations.
Principles of Design
The 12 principles of art and design help determine if a painting is successful, and for the product designer, if the product is up to standard. The curator, the product designer decides which of the principles they would make use of or monitor in the product. There are 12 principles of design:
Another set of principles that would be good for the product designer to note are the principles of effective UI design. Effective UI design should be clear to the user, and consistent, to help build trust in the product and the user as they navigate. The product designer should pay attention to user control. People like to feel in control of their actions. It is important to minimize confusion and empower users to take specific action. You can create user control with navigation bars, feedback messages once an action is completed, buttons, tabs/ other interactive elements, and custom error messages. Monitor ease of access and accessibility of the product. use comfortable language, design with inclusivity in mind, and create responsive websites and mobile apps.
Gestalt Principles
Lastly, the Gestalt principles are another framework that would help elevate your product design game.
Gestalt psychology was developed in 1910 in Germany by Max Wertheimer. Simply put, it describes that the whole is the sum of the parts. When we look at a complex design of many elements, our brain will try to create a pattern/ structure with common unconscious shortcuts to make meaning or order out of chaos. The key to design is to create intuitive designs that are deliberate.
Understanding these principles, and their place in implementing a product or experience, one can come to understand that good product design; good curation, require a balanced mix of execution, strategy and leadership. To execute, one would need to hone their visual design skills, and understanding of layout, patterns, typography, and colours. The user interface principles, design and prototyping with tools such as Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch. ( I personally prefer Figma due to its ability to allow real-time collaboration and prototype design systems. Read more)
To strategize, understanding design thinking, and how to facilitate design thinking workshops is beneficial to both the product designer and the curator. It is pertinent to understand the audience you are curating the experience for, and what, and how you would like them to feel and take away from the experience. Project management skills help to efficiently plan and execute the product and show, and the ability to perform both qualitative and quantitative research to obtain market research on users and the viability of the product would help the product designer strategize efficiently.
At the tip of this skill map is leadership where the product designer needs to understand and be able to facilitate co-design activities, foster teamwork and enable creative problem-solving.
Product design is basically a continuous loop of analyzing, designing, testing; launching, monitoring and evolving. It is a system of intricate problem-solving solving; curation for tech bros.
Read also Principles of Heuristic Design
