Some good thought morsels from Robin on product design:
Bad product design is when folks talk more about the UI than what the UI is built on top of.
There’s a lot of talk about how great design is invisible—mostly boring conversations with little substance—but! I think that’s true when it comes to product design.
Bad product design is when your interface looks like your org chart.
From Designing Products with Sound by Amber Case and Aaron Day:
Sound eases cognitive burdens.
Sound is also a powerful brand differentiator.
Sound is emotional.
Finally, sound impacts productivity.
But also:
Not every product needs sound design.
I concur:
Just because a user interface uses 3D-buttons and some shading doesn’t mean that it has to look tacky. In fact, if you have to make the choice between tacky-but-usable and minimalistic-but-hard-to-use, tacky is the way to go. You don’t have to make that choice though: It’s perfectly possible to create something that is both good-looking and easy to use.
Pirijan talks us through the design principles underpinning Kinopio, a tool I like very much:
- Embrace Smallness by Embracing Code as a Living Design System
- Building for Fidget-Ability, hmmm
- Embrace Plain Text
- A Single Interface for Mobile and Desktop
- Refine by Pruning
Here’s the transcript of a great talk by Amy on the realities of working on design systems.
This advice works both ways:
- Collaboration
- Communication
- Respect
A veritable feast of outstanding talks and workshops on design systems and design ops.
An emergent theme at An Event Apart Seattle 2019.
A presentation at An Event Apart Seattle 2019.
The pattern library map is not the design system territory.
A presentation at An Event Apart Seattle 2018.