Learning the Hard Way: Interview with Martin Andrle
Where we talk about his design experience and interesting future horizons
🐣 Status Quack, our design a and prototyping studio, has a problem. Unlike a run-of-the-mill design agency, we focus on trends and emerging fields. We are able to convey this well to clients face-to-face but want to improve this part of our online message.
We feel that interviews with our designers will provide an understanding of their personalities’ and that of our studio. Starting with Martin, co-founder, and director. Let us know how it went.
Hello Martin! Are you ready?
I am not saying anything until I have my coffee ☕️ 😴
Let’s start with an easy question: How did you become a designer, start a studio and start working for your most interesting Czech projects?
Easy? Ok. It started with me working in online marketing for a startup that had raised a lot of money, burned it and was facing an imminent closure. Bad product management was one of the causes. I was convinced that this could be improved, which eventually led me to the UX field, still in its infancy at that time.
What were your first steps in UX?
Like all self-learners, I did research and started with books. I’ve read Don’t Make Me Think by Kreug, which was the first book that showed me how to think about UX and the importance of testing. Then I continued picking stuff on the go — courses, books, attending conferences and meetups, and most importantly, trying everything first-hand in my own projects.
It had been a continuous transition over 2 years, between 2013–2014; and a lot of long nights on side projects until I became a full-time designer.
Can you point out a piece of work you are proud of?
While most of my work is digital, I am, paradoxically, the proudest about a physical product. When I was studying in Finland, I attended a student competition: we were given a device capable of measuring a car speed and asked to design something for the visually impaired with it.
It was especially challenging due to a language barrier, me not being able to relate to the experience of the end user, and not knowing the technology well. But in the end, it worked. And a company even purchased a license for it, which is rare.
Ok, I do understand your solo-designer career, but how did you end up with a prototyping studio?
I was living in a wonderful community flat, sharing a living and life experience with others, who had interests in design, tech and how to make the world a better place. One day, as I was ending an agency contract, and being frustrated with the Czech Agency scene, I pondered on bringing those creative and visionary flat-mates together as a team. My thoughts were: “this might just work”.
And does it work?
Well … I’d say it does? It’s definitely not easy, but we are a great team and we are making it work… We were naïve in the beginning, expecting that clients will come without asking. It’s our ego playing a trick on us, because, in reality, we had not really understood and the market and its workings. But we are working on that, we have the first couple of projects done successfully, and the birth pains where want to close everything down seem to be behind us.
What are you learning right now in the studio?
I would like to emphasize, that I see the design studio as a way to transform solitary designer into a multi-faceted professional.
Bellow 10 people you can do anything, above 10 people you start to specialize. Right now we are the former state, where everyone is doing everything. And since I am committing the most time right now, I am doing most of everything around. Which implies I have actually less timed of design than I would want to have.
Now that I see how hard running a company is, I can’t help but respect other company owners even more. The time is ever so scarce a obstacles so many. So I am learning this, the hard way, saying no and running a business, and see how much more I still have to learn.
When you call yourself a designer, what is not likely to be hidden under the label? I assume you spend a lot of time staring at the computer screen, but how do you become a better designer? How do you grow?
There are multiple answers. I coordinate regular design meetups where I learn and share the knowledge. Lately, I got inspired by the Design Jam format and want to bring it to Czechia. It’s mostly for starting designers to get familiar with various methods and processes, but it also serves a role for senior designers, who can improve in team leadership. So, perhaps it’s for everyone.
I try to surround myself with skilled people, so I am regularly consulting my work with them and vice versa. Then there’s the usual reading, watching, and trying things.
Ok, let’s get deeper into your design practice. How would you describe your design process?
Nothing new under the Sun, really. It’s the Double Diamond, which I try to adjust to each project’s constraints.
Can you explain what is the Double Diamond?
Sure, in short, there’s a phase of absorbing info like a sponge from available sources. It depends on the project, but I always try to talk to the project stakeholders and talking to the people facing the customers has proved useful to me. They have plenty of knowledge. And then I try to talk to someone able to stop the project immediately, it’s usually a finance a or a tech manager. After that, I process the secondary data from inside and outside the company.
I also talk to the actual users, but mostly not before I already have something to show them, some hypothesis to test. This means that the users are not coming up with the innovations, it’s me asking them for a feedback on what I think can be useful for them. So, the first phase ends with me being stuffed-full on info. From that point, I try to distill the potential directions forward. And then I try to verify them with users, and only after that comes a visual style. In some projects, we do more loops of the concept testing phase.
So how do you know when you reach the end? How do you evaluate a project success, besides getting paid?
The ideal state means we were able to improve numbers, which always relates to bringing more money to the business. There might be secondary goals such as the product team having a vision or a product achieving some functionality goals. Through the stakeholder interviews, you’ll also gain an immense understanding of that one particular business in a very short time. I find it wasteful not to use this insight in some other way.
You mentioned a knowhow of the companies you learn. Do clients reflect this by coming back? How do you proceed after the work is done?
I think we manage this well, as with the most of the projects, the original assignment was smaller than what we ended up doing or the client came back with something more.
So, where you think the design field should focus next?
I’d say it is general usability. I am now enjoying conversational interfaces and think they will have a great future. I think that both voiceUI and chatbots have unrealized potential, coming from how used we are to talk and convey needs on this front. We just need to adopt this in tech, since we have been controlling by hands until now. I am interested in how will this influence the work of digital designers.
When do you think the tech will mature?
What does it mean mature? It’s there and you can play with it.
I mean complex commands. The complex commands recognition is still clunky, isn’t it?
Let me get my crystal ball … let’s say 5 to 10 years to see where this could lead to. Plus let’s add some more years for the people to adopt it.
Do you use Siri or Alexa?
I sometimes use Siri, I don’t have Alexa at home, but I’m considering in buying it in some form. When I was visiting Jan A. Kolar in Munich, I enjoyed talking to Alexa. Despite it being still early, it’s a natural way to convey the basic requests such as news, weather and so on. It’s more comfortable to ask them to pick up a phone and search for a weather app. There is plenty of use case like that. It’s not being included in cars, where your hands are busy. Let’s see which other environments will bring the most potential.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
In the digital today, I don’t depend on a single channel. I used to have a customized Facebook feed. I have not really used Twitter, so I made Facebook into sort of Twitter by following pages like MIT and Harvard Business Review and some designers. Nowadays, Instagram is becoming my source for UI visual, and even general inspiration, as I enjoy photography and there are plenty of photographers or designers with a strong visual focus.
Besides that, I enjoy going to nature and get inspired by it. When you are able to see things under some angle, nature offers an unlimited amount of shades, colors, and playful combinations. I take a lot of pictures 📷 as I go and often get back to them, enjoying the light in a wood there, a nice floor pattern in café elsewhere, and sometimes bring those inspirations back to the work: Hey those two colors really worked together, let’s use them here. Sometimes, this works.
OK, the last-ish question. If a 5 years young Martin walks by, what shortcut would you advise him to take?
I am not sure there are any shortcuts available. He should instead focus more on computer science. Professionally speaking, I think I learned by doing or by putting out fires. Even now, when I work for myself, it’s still the hard way of learning, like how to get clients fast or risk not eating the next month.
So.. maybe the real advice to the 5 years my younger self would be to travel more and work less? To see more places, enjoy being out there, talk to people from various background and work less. I can say I do design today, but it’s enriching to meet people who can do something different and see how they approach the world.
Thank you for reading!
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