What I Learned at Design Matters
(and Why it Should Matter to You)
When Underbelly sent me to Copenhagen for Design Matters, I did not expect to lose my luggage, suffer terrible jet lag, sleep through my alarm, miss my bus, realize there’s no Uber, run 40 minutes through a foreign city, and arrive just after the first talk ended. This was Day One of my first conference ever; what an experience. Luckily, the remainder of the conference made up for all of that. For two days I got to sit and listen to tons of smart folks, sharing their brilliant and diverse perspectives on all aspects of design, and where they believe it’s headed next. Now, I get the opportunity to share some of my favorite learnings with you lovely folks, without all the travel trouble. Here are some notable lessons to keep you inspired through 2019.
Listen to That Gut Feeling: The Secrets Data Won’t Tell You
Vicki Tan and Christine Cha of Headspace, a meditation app, made a strong case for intuition. But, what do I mean by intuition? Vicki put it best:
…you know the feeling, it’s that thing that you use as an excuse when you can’t exactly explain something, but you know it to be true. Intuition is what makes us special as humans. It helps us fill in gaps, it helps us move faster. As Google puts it, intuition is the ability to understand something instinctively without the need for conscious reasoning.
Data, they say, can help us understand what happened in the past. It can help us identify opportunities for improvement. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. Neither does user research, which, while important, often raises more questions than it answers. Decision making is at the heart of what we do as designers. Intuition can help us make good, quick decisions––to draw smart conclusions based on the data, research, and solid facts. When you’re staring at a bunch of well-grounded, results and aren’t sure what to do next, intuition can be a compass to navigate uncertainty. In the past, I’ve leaned on intuition. But when aiming for data-driven decisions, that felt like I was breaking rules. It was comforting to hear from Tan and Cha that intuition isn’t cheating, it’s a skill, that improves over time. When combined with good data, and proper research, they say it can even be a competitive advantage.
Take That Gut Feeling: Turn It Into a Math Equation
Adobe’s Val Head hosted a workshop all about designing motion for the web. For the purpose of the exercise, we had to pick a brand. After a short introduction, we were ready to workshop! Though, instead of diving in feet first with keyframes, to my surprise, we started with words. We were given an ad lib structure to help us define our brand with three adjectives.
She then introduced us to two scales, “Action Tolerance” and “Type of Energy”. Action Tolerance is a scale for the amount of movement you want in your interface, and Type of Energy is used to plot what that movement should look like. You then take your adjectives and use your gut to pick where it should fall on these graphs. At the end, you can average out your plotted points, and you have a good direction of where to start when you finally crack open your laptop.
As someone new to motion, I’m always excited to just dive in and start pulling handles, but this exercise really helped me box-in and plan; not only how the movement should feel, but to ensure it feels right for the brand in mind. Pairing natural intuition, with this defined process, really saves time up front and allows you to push the creative bounds without ending up way off base. Val had some great notes about animation in general that I thought were handy to keep in mind: great animation has purpose and style, it balances utility and expressiveness.
The Future Is Variable: Mind Your Typography
Bruno Maag asked, “Why are we still thinking about type as we did in the 1980s?” As someone that was born in the mid-90s this is a question that hadn’t really crossed my mind. I handset type for fun. Maag however, being a trained typesetter in the phototype era, referred to the old ways as “evil”. As he stepped through the history of type, I began to understand his perspective. Everything digital followed models from the past. Technology has evolved, but typography has been slow to follow.
Recent developments in the world of type have begun to shift this. Adobe’s variable type is an ideal example. Maag calls out several issues with variable type in its current state, but has big dreams for what it could be. His main focus: accessibility.
…as a 55 year-old, I only have twenty percent of the visual acuity of that of a 20 year-old.
He envisioned a world where these variable typefaces are used to dynamically scale on a device based on various conditions, outlined by the user. If one is old, make the type larger. If one only has peripheral vision, extend the font to increase readability. Often many see accessibility as a kind gesture, and not a necessity. Yet Maag ties this back to business. He referenced Bookerly, a typeface he designed for the Kindle. The typeface improved reading time by 3%, which doesn’t sound very impressive. But the average English reader reads about 280 words per minute. Three percent is 7 words per minute faster. Books are finished hours sooner, and many more books are purchased throughout the year. That’s not just cool for design ethics — it’s great for business.
Maag continued, bringing these concepts into an even newer space: AR. Now we not only have size and spacing to be concerned about as far as readability goes, now we have a whole extra dimension. As type shifts into the distance, he argues, why not dynamically adjust the spacing such that the farther away letters don’t look so cramped? As you move further away from type with high contrast, why not slightly increase the thins in the letters dynamically to maintain legibility at a distance? At the end of his talk, he did mention some severe technical limitations in processing power to support these lofty ideas. As far as solving those blockers? Maag says
That’s not my problem anymore, I’m too old. That’s your problem now, I’m going to enjoy the beach.
Bonus Talk: Every Product Has a Voice
As a product designer, my content strategist is my partner in crime. Her work is invaluable in my day to day, in strategy, planning, and of course words. Medium’s own Benjamin Hersh gave a phenomenal talk on the value of content in design, if you have the time, I highly recommend a listen.
All the talks mentioned here that were recorded are linked throughout. If you’re interested, definitely check them out!
