Lloyd Humphreys on doing more and starting earlier

As a product designer, Lloyd is passionate about creating something that people will find easy to understand and want to use.

Why product design?

Product design is what makes the most sense to me. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought of myself as a designer — just a builder of stuff that happens to be (reasonably!) good at design. My overall process definitely suits product design better than any other discipline.

I like to work iteratively, relying 50/50 on gut instinct & research. That works better for me than spending too much time frontloading a project/task with formal research — I get to the heart of the problem much more quickly. Prototyping is so fast/cheap these days that I can jump to showing a prototype to a user sooner in the process, which is always a win in my book.

What design tools could you not live without?

I like to work with as vanilla a setup as possible. I do all my design on my 15” Pro, with a trackpad. Then I can work anywhere and not be out of the zone! As such I also try and keep my toolset small, and anything new that comes into it is 99% of the time a thing to speed me up.

Sketch — What can I say that hasn’t been said a thousand times. It’s a bit crashy, but it’s fast. Plugins extend functionality to do exactly what I need. Handles 99% of what I want to do (though the pathfinder tools confound me, I jump straight to Illustrator if I need to do any remotely complex vector work).

Magnet — Keyboard shortcuts to snap windows around my screen. A little thing that I notice I’m without whenever I use another computer.

Annotate — The best screenshot app for Mac by a mile. It just works! Really easy to draw on top of stuff and drag-drop into a chat in order to quickly explain what I mean.

Pencil/Paper — I do most of my work sketching before ever touching a computer. Roughing layouts, figuring out the flow, throwing around ideas with stakeholders etc. Once I’ve got a design done on screen, I usually print it out and take it to the developer who’s going to build it and draw all over it with them too. Then we’re both on the same page (no pun intended) as to how I’m expecting it to work, and sometimes we catch some conflicts before they’ve started anything. Repeat if necessary as the project progresses, but I think projects that require doing this more than once have too large a scope anyways.

Would really hate to live without: Zeplin, Photoshop, Illustrator, InVision

Zeplin is really great but it often feels like just as much work as going to talk to the person with a piece of paper, and I think paper is better because it creates more of a dialogue. If I hand off assets in Zeplin, I feel a bit more like a dictator than a collaborator. Scribbling all over the work and defacing it alongside people opens them up to criticise a bit more.

How do you keep your ideas fresh?

I have a (big) Trello board where I write all my ideas and then occasionally I’ll go through and see if I want to work on any or shake my head because I was drunk when I wrote it. A group of friends meet up once a week for “hack night” where we’ll bounce ideas off each other and work on new things.

I don’t really have a style beyond “simple”. Simple = fast = easy to change = I’m not too attached to anything, and I can throw it away without feeling bad. Kill more than you create. The design community on twitter is great, so great work in general gets exposed and talked about often. If I’m building something specific that’s likely been done before, I’ll turn to some friends to discuss it and Pinterest/Dribbble to try and find the cleanest example of how to execute it.

What do you find the most challenging part of being a product designer?

Managing scope creep is the most challenging thing for me. When you’re working on one aspect of a design it’s easy to think “oh, we can get this for free!” but that’s never, ever the case. Keeping the task simple and keeping the execution simple prevents stress and last minute rushes to try and hit deadlines.

Especially with a big team in a big company, slowing down seems to be the best way to speed up. Too many rushes to hit deadlines mean a demotivated team, and less quality overall. Small stories can more easily be planned around. Design is often the first thing to be sacrificed — what if you plan well enough that nothing has to be sacrificed?

Do you think it’s important to stay up to date with trends and new technology?

I’m not much of a magpie when it comes to design tools or technology. I have things that work well and established patterns for my work — I only change things up if there’s a big advantage to be gained. Most recently, that’s things like Framer (which I suck at, but everyone starts somewhere) and Zeplin, which has made handing over assets & specs a breeze. For me, speed is the biggest motivator. If I can do something faster, I can do more of it — and every iteration is a step closer to what I’m after.

As for trends, I’ve never been much of a Dribbble-hawk. Designers that I look up to have mocked the practice as being too focused on aesthetics vs just solving a problem and it’s something I’ve taken to heart. I’m not too bothered about making it beautiful, as long as it’s usable. I’ve worked on some beautiful designs that went nowhere, and some stripped down ones that made big impacts on customers. I’d rather make a big impact.

It wouldn’t be right to call “design thinking” a trend, but it’s definitely something more product teams are adopting, and I hope that continues.

Can you share with us any ‘mistakes’ you made as a freelancer and what you learned from them?

I didn’t charge enough and I didn’t do enough for a long time. I was in highschool, it was easy money — I wasn’t concerned about maximising the value or going for bigger projects and that was dumb. I should’ve had my foot to the floor searching for quality projects. I took stuff that was easy, not stuff that challenged me. That’s different now, I’ve got a full time job so I don’t have to worry about cash. I can worry about what’s interesting to me and what’s going to expand the scope of my abilities. I just wish I’d done it when my sole responsibility was “don’t get expelled”.

I didn’t use a contract for a while either. Now I use a modified version of Andy Clarke’s “Contract Killer” template for every client. Having a contract makes it easier to do the things that can be uncomfortable to discuss — this is business, you’re not being an asshole, they signed the contract!

Also — buckling to client requests. A tiny one turns into a huge one. Don’t modify any prices without altering the deliverable. Don’t alter the deliverable without altering prices. Money turns into design work, that should be clear to any client. This also turns into better, more thought out requests in future — because they know they’re going to have to pay for it.

Are you working on any side projects at the moment?

I’m working (with a friend) on an app for taking really fast notes. Main aim: get a thought/idea out of your head as quickly as possible, so you don’t forget it. I find myself doing that often unless I scribble it down somewhere. Open the app and you’re already typing note. Some alfred-style widget so you can type “note <your note>”, hit enter and it’s saved without breaking your flow on whatever else you were doing.

Other than that I’m continuing to work on some icons and I’m thinking about trying to create a typeface. I’m not a great typographer, but I learn best when I dive right in and get completely obsessed for a period of time. I wasn’t a great iconographer (I started making the set as an excuse to learn how to use Illustrator more efficiently) but I think it’s one of my strengths now. I’m hoping to achieve a similar outcome by making a typeface.

I like projects that are short; self-contained, that I have complete control over — such as an icon set, I can see the finish line and I’ll work my fingers to the bone to get there. With a product there’s always something new to do, always something that can be improved which is great, but can be tiring. Once something like an icon or a typeface is done, it’s finished and you can try something new. I’m totally ADD when it comes to projects, so it’s nice to sprint for a period of time, chill out for a bit and then sprint on something new.

If you’re interested in working with Lloyd, you can find him on his portfolio, or blog.