Design Brief #130: Time for changes
Welcome to the 130th edition of Design Brief. We’ve been sharing news and tips from the design world for a while now, but today we decided to change the format and move it to a new channel — medium.com.
- What stays the same? We will continue sharing top news from the design world, inspiring you with beautiful designs, and showing you how to get your design work done.
- What’s new? We want to engage more with the design community, so each issue will include our perspective on design-related problems, opinions, and thoughts on the work of other professionals. We’ll also share what and who inspires us on a daily basis.
Let us what you think about the new shape of Design Brief in the comments.
And check out the archive issues.
On the news
- Gmail app‘s new design is rolling out after Gmail’s web interface redesign. Read more
- Zack Onisko, the CEO of Dribbble, shares great insights about culture building in remote teams. Read more
Case study of our choice
The Economist’s lessons learned from data visualisation
One of the most popular weekly magazine-like newspapers, The Economist publishes around 40 charts across print, the website, and their apps every week. The team tries their best to visualise the numbers accurately, but sometimes it doesn’t go the way they intend to. In this article, they look back and analyse the data visualisations they have used to build new patterns that will better support their stories. Read more
Netguru’s concept for a family app designed for children
Our product design team started 2019 with a research project inspired by Dan Makoski, Chief Design Officer at Lloyds Banking Group. As public education about money is insufficient, and parents find it hard to teach their children how to use money wisely, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the market. The results? A family-friendly payment app concept that educates through fun interactions and the “State of banking for families” report.
Check out the case study about how we built Pockee and download the full report.
Designer of the issue
Hrvoje Grubisic for his playful use of grids mixed with typography and images in his designs for both web and cover projects.
Check out more of his work:
- BE: @hrvojegrubisic
- Twitter: @ihrvoje
- Dribbble: @hrvoje-grubisic
Design of the issue
Redesigning the mobile app that Tesla deserves — a UX case study
Matthew Farmer, Product Designer at UW and a former intern at Facebook, examines one aspect of Tesla that lacks a certain sense of polish — its mobile application.
Tips and tricks
Check out some of our hand-picked tips useful in every designer’s daily work:
Open discussion
Fabricio Teixeira, UX designer, Founder of UX Collective, Design director at Work & Co on a culture of feedback: The feedback you choose not to give is as important as the one you do.
At Netguru, we strongly believe that feedback is an effective growth tool for any designer and we try to create space for personal development. One of the tools we leverage is an open channel on Slack called #trade-design, where designers can share their work in progress and obtain feedback from other workmates with diverse experiences and skill sets. In that way, they can review their work from different perspectives. ~Dawid
Additionally, we have something called a “design buddy”. Every person in the design team has a partner with whom they can always consult their work. We randomly assign a different pair every quarter. Oftentimes, juniors are coupled with seniors and team leads, which accelerates the learning process. There are no stupid questions or remarks in such a relationship — experienced professionals can recall how it was to be a newbie and it teaches them humility. I encourage everyone to preach the culture of feedback and experimenting with different forms and tools to do so. ~Dawid
Number of the week
- 38 million adults (71%) in the UK used online banking in 2017. You can see more stats in our report.
Hope you enjoyed this issue — next one in 2 weeks. To get updates straight to your inbox, sign up here. Meanwhile, hit me up on Twitter, LinkedIn, or leave a comment. I’ll be happy to see what you think.
Until next time,
Dawid Woźniak
