Velvet Roundup №4
Welcome to our our probably-not-weekly article where you’ll find interesting articles, links and ideas, and also little updates about what we’ve been up to.
Some history: how was the user interface for Windows 95 designed
Incredible and insightful piece of history on how in the early 90’s approximately twelve designers (and another twelve engineers for implementation) created the iconic Windows 95 user interface in an 18-month period. It’s a story about how in the time in the time of “waterfall” processes they moved fast with iterative design, user testing and prototyping.
“Perhaps the best testament to our belief in iterative design is that literally no detail of the initial UI design for Windows 95 survived unchanged in the final product. At the beginning of the design process, we didn’t envision the scope and volume of changes that we ended up making. Iterative design, using prototypes and the product as the spec, and our constant testing with users allowed us to explore many different solutions to problems quickly.” — Kent Sullivan
Read more on Socket 3 blog who saved the historic story.
Why chasing the competition isn’t always the right choice
Story how JotForms used prototyping and user testing (and not imitating the competition) to create new features on their service that brought them almost a million signups in a year.
Some weekend listening and reading on how to prototype a service
Service design powerhouse IDEO shares some tips on their blog on how to prototype a service.
“Prototyping is so powerful because you’re aligning the needs of the end consumer with the capabilities of the organization.”
–Ilya Prokopoff, Partner and Managing Director IDEO SF
Speak at Refesh 2018
Refresh is the conference for professionals whose daily job is to create product experiences on the web. This year they will have a track dedicated for design topics. They are still open for speaker applications. If you want to be on stage and share your experience with 600+ attendees send yours before 18th of February!
This week at Velvet
Another week for Velvet Run. As you all remember, last Friday the interns showed us a prototype of a new mall visiting experience, this week they did a lot of research on peoples behaviour in shopping malls.
Janno Siimar and Amid Moradganjeh started the next Velvet Academy — ‘Design for non-designers’ course.
In four weeks they will look at how to solve big, small, and wicked problems with design thinking.
Let’s finish this week with a quote from Amid’s book
“Try your ideas fast, very fast.
Building prototypes is an effective way to think. And the faster you make things, the sooner you realise what works and what doesn’t. Prototyping can also help you come up with new ideas that you could have never though otherwise. Use simple and cheap tools to make basic and rough prototypes of your ideas. It’s all about speed. You’re not making samples, you’re just turning your thoughts into something more tangible. So don’t spend too much time on building prototypes, instead use prototyping to work out what to build next.” — Amid Moradganjeh, “Anyone can design even a kitten”
