An evening of inspiring product design
At Cookpad we really understand the importance of great design in building a successful products. So to share our passion, collective learnings and design ideas with the community we hosted our inaugural product design event at Cookpad Global HQ in Bristol. The product team [literally] flew in three product designers at the top of their game, from companies such as Intercom and Google Deepmind, to speak at An evening of inspiring talks on product design.
Designers, product managers and UXs were welcomed into the vibrant atmosphere of the Cookpad kitchen for drinks and of course delicious food — it wouldn’t be a Cookpad event without it! This was a brilliant opportunity to get some talented minds in the same room, to share stories and get to know each other in a relaxed and creative environment.
Kicking off the evening Anthony Sullivan (Cookpad, Global Product Director) set the tone by highlighting the importance of design to the Cookpad mission of changing the way the world eats by making everyday cooking fun! Cookpad serves a global audience and this is not without its challenges, but throughout the evening the speakers shared their playbooks on how to make an impact. They inspired us and everyone in the room.
Cindy Chang (senior product designer at Intercom) was first to take the stage to talk through her approach in designing and building products at Intercom. Including some of her own illustrations into a fun and engaging talk, Cindy showed us how involving the whole team in the design process can lead to innovative ideas that win over the user. Cindy’s five steps to approaching the problem were a key takeaway of the evening:
1. Design from first principles
2. Think big start small
3. Ship to learn
4. Build the team on open and over communication
5. Design for emotions to win hearts and minds
Next up James King (Director of the CTRL group) presented the challenges of bringing technology to healthcare in the treatment of conditions such as dementia. James presented his company’s innovative design solutions to meet these challenges, by focusing on the context of treatment in the real world environment, coupled with continuous testing and iteration. One example of this was the use of personal connected devices such as smartphones and watches to receive diagnostic data far more frequently than would be possible using traditional in-person studies. In an industry hampered by traditional approaches it was very refreshing to see the scientific method being accelerated to gain deeper insight and make a bigger impact on patients.
A developing theme of the evening was navigating the complex journey to designing products that are elegant, simple and useful. So wrapping up the talks Nuno Coelho Santos (Designer at Google Deepmind’s health team) took us through a structured approach to developing design systems and the benefits this investment can bring in being able to move fast with growing, distributed or multi platform teams. Using an adapted design sprint structure Nuno detailed 5 steps developing an effective design system:
1. Align and set a focus
2. Curate an inventory
3. Mockup key moments
4. Prototype a user journey
5. Test and iterate
Nuno taught us that investment upfront in tasks such as articulating your design principles, collating key assets and mapping out core user journeys can lead to a more robust design system. Communication is also key, so make sure the whole team understands why design decisions are made.
Following the presentations the discussion continued into the night as attendees were inspired by three different, but complementary approaches to product design. As one visitor described we were privileged by
‘Great talks that set a high bar for Meetups in Bristol’
Now the bar is set, expect a host of Cookpad product and design events in the future. Please get in touch if you would like to be a part of the next one!
