Can Hipsters be Inclined?
Hmmmmmmm.
So, when we encounter that savvy mark of a design god — several startups have them, i won’t say who. The inclination would be to manage a nod and a half in synchronised devotion/ semi-agreeable perfunctory acknowledgment of that now-360-circular-recognised fact.
“This.
Is. What. We. Are. Going. With.”
Are the magical words to design collaborators in the UX/UI — what are the IX fields. They are the elusive touch to every coordinated team — that something that needs only a severely passionate immersion into product and design, to intuit what is missing, and what it needs to give it that push. Literally.
And when you have the magic tech, and the magic colour wheel combined, there is inevitably, loads of magic in the air. Like when people first encountered products like Instagram, or Deezer, or trial accounts of Spotify — sometimes, there are design geniuses that surround this area of visual pleasantry combined with interaction and experience — both which entails experience, and insight into one’s exact sentiment at several points of usage.
Or just genius.
Sometimes, when we think about it, it looks simple and easy, but broken down i think we’d rather down a subway sandwich than deal with the ire of a design team let down, or told to step down because we’ve outsourced it — or having nothing to go by than mere familiarity with the product, we need a breather — in the form of a formal agency swat team.
A Hipster, is the design team.
The Apple to your Ive, the Spotify to your Van Schneider, the Box to your Levie, the Disney to your Lasseter, the Dribbble to your Arbor, the Slack to your Brito (or whoever their Lead Design is nowadays).
You get the inset picture.
There is that 2"x2" box that IDs the guy or gal that designs or leads the team to get the interactions together, page by digital page. They author the script, they master the code, and they let you do the back-end infrastrcuture that will support the uploaded active CIs that their front-end design will interface with all the customers who are going to soon be “users” as soon as they migrate the testing interface to active/ live interfaces that are now seen by everyone on the internet, via the browser pages with that speedy singular (or repeated) depressing of that button, Publish.
So, when the gravy hits the mash, we all know what to expect — because there are testing sites, and everyone is encouraged to keep testing it, until we run out of heads and eyes and all fingers on deck, we can surely QA until the last man before the Product person says, ok, this is a go. (On cc’ed email, routed flyers to desks, paged, white classified, rang, text-messaged, written on sandwich boy’s head, facebook’ed on feed, tweeted, stamped and mailboxed, airplane-papered, bell-boy’ed, stuck on a million and one post-its, and centrally shared white-boarded to our favourite T-minus D-Day, so absolutely no one in the company misses a beat.)
When this sinks in, the company stages a celebration equivalent to that of a frat party, and issues more coffee, and laced with beer and probably some expensive wine and champagne to initiate a mode that celebrates a culmination of what all teams had simply endured: a design fruition that now allows non-code-readers-customer-everyone to interface with (depending on the actual nature of the product), all of their human senses.
Inclined is defined a GO: when Hipster or Lead Designer has these signs of Life, (in one of these formats, at least)..
1/ enthusiasm — showing up for work, and without coffee can interface with all teams, and possibly not an argument before lunch with lead hackers, or those who are working towards cleaning up the UX (without him knowing),
2/ mode of clothing — he usually expresses delight with colourful, coordinated splashes of colour that makes you trust what he’s doing, in an extra-terrestial kind of way, not biblically,
3/ mode of loathing — he is extra nice to you, “can i buy you lunch? im off to get sushi”
4/ seriously not late — he shows up to all meetings, early, and not without his laptop, probably ipad and stylus, and definitely with an extra skip in his usually dragged feet, steps,
5/ no walking out on discords, on even a slightly good day,
6/ he leaves all his sketches pinned up in the trusty soundproofed boards, without batting an eyelash, confident that he is able to replicate and accost anyone who dares steal anything overnight,
7/ he goes to all external meetings that the secretary furtively hands their notices of, twice, and needn’t be reminded, hitches a ride with you of course, but nevertheless has pleasant banter in exchange for scripping on taxi fare,
8/ asks you to be his “model” for all his pre-shoot / pre-agency boarded up images instead of downloading free images he needs to post-format it’s easier to upload from his drive, to his specified size (he designed it that way after all), and commands you to be at the shoot (not tasking you to turn him down, even if you have your deadlines as well — inconsiderate much — ) and proffers it as once-in-a-lifetime ‘folio material’.
it isn’t.
9/ seeks the business people out to clarify status/ or project details when normally he is chitchatted with that which is less tasking to his left brain — colour, sandwich possibilities, sushi again? that shade of salmon is so last year, pingpong anyone?, engageing with the right brain is the way into the design circle, and not “how much was that coat in the last shoot — wasn’t that ghastly?”
10/ he actually drove his car round, to keep him not late to the meeting.
So these are good days.
On bad days, you can just imagine how those very unsightly characters keep showing up when you’ve impounded them from ever showing up on code?! What is the length, size, format, player speed, brash colour on that screen, this mobile pixelised image, collapsing abyss of continuous complaints, that other than an advancement of un-synchronised pieces of technology keep him from getting his design on-boarded as simply as it was sketched a day ago. (Huffff, i think i’ll go and get a pint!!) And isn’t this the real struggle anyway?
But don’t tell him that.
#HIPSTER
