Design kind products
Five things kind products have in common
I recently was interviewed by my friend Thomas Jockin from Type Thursday. Over Blue Hill salads and lemonade, we talked about dabbling in type design, staying curious and vulnerable and doing kind work.
What does kind work look like? And what does it mean to design kind products? I’ve been thinking about those questions ever since, and capturing some preliminary thoughts on common traits that make up kind products.
1. Accessibility
More often than not, the web is optimized for the young, the fast and the able. From font sizes to color contrasts to audio transcriptions, it’s easy to marginalize people who are not like us because “they are not our core users.” We can use tools like this and this to make sure accessibility is a requirement, not an after-thought in the design process.
2. Clarity
How we talk about the products we build defines our culture.
The U.S. Digital Service (USDS) and 18F recently published the U.S. Web Design Standards (the process was a worthwhile read) in an effort to create a shared set of tools to provide consistent and simple user experience on government websites.
The thin gray banner on top reads, “The site is currently in alpha.” I understood what it means, but it might confuse and alienate others who don’t work in the technology industry. To educate, the friendly “Learn more” links to this project stage definition page.
Kind products attempts to break walls of confusion and misunderstanding. They create clarity and level with the people at the receiving end.
3. Altruism
Kind products offer help, especially when the help doesn’t necessarily generate profit.
If you are to search suicide or thigh gaps on the Tumblr, you will be brought to the thoughtfully crafted page that acknowledges what you are trying to do, not only as a digital response to your action, but also as a human.
Kind products go out of their way to care.
4. Sympathy
Kathy Sierra, the badass programming instructor, game developer and writer, lived off the royalties of her first JAVA programming book for the past decade. The approach, as she explained at XOXO Fest this year, was that she asked herself how to design the book so that the readers wouldn’t ever have to flip it backward. (Hint: Repeat yourself, a lot.)
While our lives orbit around the products we make, our users have their own shit going on, and *life* gets in the way of using our product.
Kind products never make people feel dumb. They acknowledge the messiness of life and elevate the experience without changing the behavior.
5. Sustainability
Two years ago, MadPow senior designer James Christie wrote about the carbon footprints of the Internet. He advocated for less data-weight at each stage of design: take advantage of icon fonts, make fewer HTTP requests and move to a green host.
Perhaps we’re conditioned to frame environmentally-friendly choices as sacrifices, but it isn’t so with the web. We can have cleaner, greener websites while also making users happier and improving the bottom line. — James Christie
Being environmental-friendly on the web doesn’t just stop there. We, makers of the web, should be asking ourselves important questions such as “What will the product look like in the next 5, 10, even 50 years?”
Will what we build last?
If we think of our products — t-shirts, websites, buildings— as long-lived, we will make them better. We think about our choices more carefully. We make better, more sustainable decisions. Perhaps our products will be kinder that way.
I will end with a quote from one of my all-time favorite talks by Wilson Miner.
When we’re gone, all that’s left of us is what we made. The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth, but everything we make takes up space, makes noise, competes for attention. — When We Build
It’s time to get the conversation started.
Making kind work is hard. Share your thoughts on Twitter or via email at kuan@etsy.com
