The Importance of Design — An Artist’s Perspective
While I am Co-Founder and CEO of DIALS®, my background is in Entertainment. I’ve been in the music industry for over 10 years. I started out as an artist, playing the guitar and touring in a band. After a few years on the road, I decided to move into artist development, management, and publishing (I have a record company thru Atlantic Records named Kollider). Basically, when I found out I was going to have a little girl, it was important for me to be available to her, so I left life on the road for a desk job.
One thing that was consistent through all of those years, all those changes, was this: scheduling details would get away from me, and there were many times that it had an impact on my professional career. It had an affect on me in many aspects of my life and I was never able to find a solution that worked for me. I tried every time-management application ever created, but they all failed me. I remember once going to the airport with a client for a departing flight, and realizing it was on the wrong day. I thought something was seriously wrong with me as if I had been born without the “attention to detail” chip. Why couldn’t I get it together? Was I always going to have similar problems for the rest of my life? As with all of life’s tough questions, I started doing some heavy research for a solution to the problem and turned to the almighty Internet for answers. During my search, I came across the Myers-Briggs Indicator Test, an assessment test that measures how we perceive the world and make decisions.
According to the Myers-Briggs test, my personality type was (is):
ENFP: Extraversion + Intuition + Feeling + Perceiving
In a nutshell, ENFP types are described as idealistic, creative, outgoing, abstract thinkers; the “free spirit” if you will. We apparently also hate details, reading and routine tasks. As I let this new information sink in, my inability to manage my time started to make sense. I wasn’t broken, I was just me … and there were apparently a lot of others like me. Dante, my friend and DIALS® Co-Founder was one of them. As artists, Dante and I simply could not subscribe to the linear interface featured on every mobile calendaring application we encountered. The black-and-white list view didn’t conspire with who we are. The design interfered with the application effectiveness.
Vinod Kholsa of Kholsa Ventures once said, “Design is a way of making technology useful.”
To help ourselves and others like us, we decided to create a visual replacement to the list calendar. I also wanted to make sure the calendar experience was interactive and easier to engage with. We rethought the mobile calendar from its most basic design upward, and reintroduced a centuries-old visualization of time: the Dial. We applied the same concept that everyone learns to use from childhood.
I wanted an “image in a marble” on the Dial, as an overview to an event, a quick, highly visual interface that didn’t require reading and infinite scrolling. I wanted a more intuitive and simple to use entry system (I swear some of the current calendar systems make me feel like I’m filling out an IRS form..), and in-app notifications and messaging so I didn’t have to bounce back-and-forth between text, email and other apps for notifications or directions.
Details are important. The design of Dials® actually helps me with the quirks of my personality so that I can be more efficient in all areas of my life and manage my time better: so I can spend that time actually running Dials (the business dealings of start-ups are obviously insanely hectic and complicated) and spending enough time with my daughter to know that her top three Disney princesses are Merida, Elsa, & Belle.
