Nicola Felasquez Felaco
Talking with User Interface & User Experience Designers
My name is Nicola Felaco, product designer and visual artist also known as Felasquez. I’m Head of Design at Musixmatch. I am one of those who have trained themselves, always attracted by the design and technology. As a child I wanted to be like my father, typographer, with those wacky and huge printing machines. I’ve worked for small and big clients like Ferrari, Wired Magazine, Fly Emirates, Killscreen, Ducati, Moleskine, Airbus, Couple App and more. I received great featuring like Mashable and The Creators Project by Intel & Vice.
When your friends or parents ask to you what job do you do, how do you answer?
Every time is always fun but I also find it challenging having to explain it to my friends but not as much as parents and grandparents.
Basically I design things.
What is your background, how did you train?
I had the opportunity to grow a lot working in Triboo that is specialized in e- commerce for major international clients. It ‘was definitely my first and largest professional training in the field of visual and UI / UX. Now i’m at MusiXmatch for a big challenge in music industry experience designing desktop and mobile apps. Meanwhile during these years I have continued my researches on visual arts, visual experimentations and then illustrations.
What the web can do to make this world a better place? How did the web improve your life( if it did)?
Thanks in large part to the web we can create lot of connections, crossing different experiences, faster and faster in a simple ways while seated.
Can you show us three examples of interface that in your opinion improved human life?
Mobile Phones, Television, Search Engines.
On quora.com, time ago there was a long discussion in answer to the question “what is the most intuitive interface ever created?”; according to Felipe Rocha it is the nipple, in your opinion instead? (http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-most-intuitive-interfaces-ever- created)
Good question, let me try to be serious on this. I think nipples are not intuitive as it seems, and whatever are all nipples useful? Simple design but i can not define them intuitive like a mirror. A Mirror can share to you something useful and then you can interact very quickly with fast feedbacks. After all it seems to have no competitors.
How is your work day type?
Generous breakfast and fast check/refresh via feedly, news.layervault.com, sidebar.io, producthunt, twitter…and starting checking daily tasks. Headphones on and the right spotify playlists based on moods are essentials.
What is the most stimulating and challenging project you have accomplished?
I am very critical about my work, the last is always the best, of course. As a designer, one of my biggest challenges was the apple awarded redesign for ios7 of the musixmatch app for iphone and ipad.
As an illustrator recently i have worked with Airbus for the launch of the new aircraft A350XWB.
What is, among the existing digital services, the one you wanted to do?
I think we’re joining a great re-evolution era, focusing on many little improvements of our real life. I love the way that Storylane, Medium, Exposure.co, Storehouse changed the way we “blog” redesigning the experience of writing stories for any topics with beautiful and clean typography and visual power.
Many designers commit the mistake of starting a project directly from Photoshop, is there a perfect design method? What is your approach to the creative process?
Who decides? All I want to know is what tools we have to fulfill our purpose and then build a better (not perfect) design method for myself. I can start with photoshop or illustrator if need, it’s not uncool. Most important thing is to be ready to try, choose or build alternatives to improve any step of design process.
The “design” is an important part of our analogic life. What is the role of the designer in our digital life?
I think you can design everything you want for yourself, for other people and for nothing. Digital or not, better if you try to solve something with your design, a big deal is to design great things to stay human.
Do you believe it is important for a designer to have a deep knowledge of matters as User Experience, Interaction Design, Product Design, and Front-end development?
Constantly share your experience with others is a fundamental value. A complete knowledge will be increasingly crucial to understand all the potential and limitations.
In which way do you make a difference between User Interface and user experience?
I design user interfaces based on researches on best user experience cases to make ux even better.
What is your relationship with the developers? There are people that have a relationship of continuous confrontation and other of deep friendship, where do you collocate with respect to this question?
I love to have continuous confrontation with developers, they have an eye for things that I haven’t. Vice versa I like to be able to visually realize their code.
How do you think that your career and job will evolve in the next 5 years?
I really don’t know, i’m cooking some sideprojects hoping to show them in a few months.
A famous quotation of David Carson (noted American graphic designer) says: “Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does”. Will the User Interface Design save the world, before, at the same time, or after the graphic design?
Respect for David Carson, but i think that to save the world there’s more than User Interface Design.
What do you think about Dribbble? Is it a good way to get a job? What’s the best way to find a job as designer?
Dribbble is one of the big revolution for designers and creatives, it has created much more job oppotunities and it stimulate designers themselves.
What book would you advice to a Junior Designer?
“The shape of design” by Frank Chimero inspired me a lot.
Always as far as advices: what tools for the design? What tools for the projects management ?
I’m in love with Axure http://www.axure.com for web UI/UX prototyping, Marvelapp https://marvelapp.com and/or Flinto https://www.flinto.com for fast app prototyping. Illustrator for icon design.
For Project management Trello https://trello.com.
Dribbble : http://dribbble.com/Felasquez
Behance : https://www.behance.net/nicolafelaco
