What is your Favorite Product?
When headed into interviews their is one question almost everyone is going to ask of a product designer:
What is your favorite product? When designing products, we should look to the masters. Dieter Rams set forth 10 principles of good design that provide an excellent framework for evaluating products:
Innovation - A great product feels fresh and clever in how it solves a problem.
Usefulness - It fulfills a clear need for users.
Aesthetics - It is visually pleasing and delightful.
Understanding - The interface is intuitive and transparent. Users know how to use it.
Unobtrusiveness - It stays out of the user's way.
Honesty - It is authentic in its purpose, not deceptive.
Long-lasting - It withstands changes in technology and taste.
Detail - Every aspect is thoughtfully considered.
Environment - It minimizes environmental impact.
Simplicity - It omits unnecessary features.
When I consider my favorite apps through this lens, a few stand out:
Endless ABCs
Endless ABCs teaches toddlers the alphabet in a playful, simple way. Monsters animate through letters, reinforcing their shapes and sounds. The app innovates on tried-and-true methods of early learning. It focuses entirely on its core purpose without distraction.
Overcast, a podcast app, offers customizable controls over episode playback and subscriptions. It anticipates my listening habits and gets out of the way, letting me enjoy podcasts efficiently. Though simple on the surface, it is powerful in subtler ways. Shout out to Marco Arment!
TeuxDeux handles to-do lists thoughtfully. It recognizes that I will revisit my lists often, roll tasks over, and want to track progress. With a minimalist design, it enables my productivity without cluttering my mental space. Designed by Tina Roth Eisenberg, the app would make Dieter proud.
Great products solve real problems through careful attention to user needs. They don't overcomplicate or overdesign. When we keep our users at the heart of the process, we can create simple, empowering experiences.
The Art of the Search
I have searched for the book The Americans by Robert Frank for over a year. Yes, I could have easily bought it online and had it shipped to me, but what is the fun of that?
Every time I stop at a bookshop, I browse. I hunt for the book. The forward is by Jack Kerouac. The work is incredible. I am an amateur and not a great street photographer. Robert Frank captures this world in a way that is so honest. It feels trivial for me to write about this book. Browse your local bookshop. If you don’t buy the book, at least read Kerouac’s introduction.
My search ended at Edgewater Books, a tiny bookshop in the Edgewater Public Market!
Iterate
Where you place iterations within a project determines how much time and money you spend to get it right.
From the outside looking at successful products, businesses or ideas it seems that they went from idea to build to success!
You don’t get to see the iterations and the work that goes into launching a great product.
Everything you interact with in the world has been designed by someone. The person that designed it may not have had the title of designer but someone has put forth some level of effort to figure out how to make everything. That aspect ties to why it can be hard to sell design. It doesn’t take a designer to make something. It doesn’t take a designer to make something great. What it takes is hard work and iterations.
This is a really great example of what the design process looks like. Physical product design is fantastic for showing the process. You get these wonderful artifacts that are clearly not the finished product.
Designing websites is a bit different. Often the artifacts you are iterating on don’t look that different from the end product. That can feel confusing.
When the iterative artifact isn’t that different from the end product the value of the iteration is harder to see.
Viva Streets
Bogota Columbia, Amsterdam, and Paris are all known for their pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Yet, they were not always that way. They all had an addiction to cars just like our cities. Even Amsterdam. Check out this excellent episode of 99% Invisible to hear more about the transition away from cars. One thing they do have in common is Viva Streets. At some point in their history, they all experimented in small ways by closing roads to cars and letting people take over the space.
Bogota Columbia, Amsterdam, and Paris are all known for their pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure. Yet, they were not always that way. They all had an addiction to cars just like our cities. Even Amsterdam. Check out this excellent episode of 99% Invisible to hear more about the transition away from cars. One thing they do have in common is Viva Streets. At some point in their history, they all experimented in small ways by closing roads to cars and letting people take over the space.
It is a very foreign concept for folks in the US. The car is built into our DNA. The baby boomer generation made the car a symbol of our freedom. American Graffiti and all that jazz.
The Downtown Denver Partnership helped make Viva Streets happen. Along with a number of partners and sponsors. Big shout out to all the folks that advocated for this event, volunteered, and helped make it happen. I volunteered for the rainy event and spent hours getting soaked! I am an amateur photographer with a cracked lens. I have been playing with shutter speed to capture the motion and focus attention on the folks riding. In the final of four Viva Streets events the weather was perfect and the streets were packed. I can’t wait for the event to return.
The Art of City Design
A streetscape from 1930 depicts what US policies are just trying to re-establish. A failed bill in Colorado would have made scenes like this much more common. Transit-oriented construction. Dense housing with shops on the first floor. We, in the U.S., had these dense cityscapes too. Our cities looked much the same in the 1930s. After WWII, the federal government began building the interstate system and implemented policies to destroy many sections of our cities. We pushed to move to the suburbs and established the American Dream as having a house, a big yard, and a white picket fence. Everyone needs to have their own plot of land.
It is possible to live as a family in a dense urban setting. I will write more on this topic in the future. For now, enjoy this little picture of urbanism from the 1930s. One of a few paintings by Hanns Kralik. He is better known for his anti-fascist pamphlets. The Nazi party destroyed much of his work. This is at the Chicago Institute of Art.
A streetscape from 1930 depicts what US policies are just trying to re-establish. A failed bill in Colorado would have made scenes like this much more common. Transit-oriented construction. Dense housing with shops on the first floor. We, in the U.S., had these dense cityscapes too. Our cities looked much the same in the 1930s. After WWII, the federal government began building the interstate system and implemented policies to destroy many sections of our cities. We pushed to move to the suburbs and established the American Dream as having a house, a big yard, and a white picket fence. Everyone needs to have their own plot of land.
It is possible to live as a family in a dense urban setting. I will write more on this topic in the future. For now, enjoy this little picture of urbanism from the 1930s. One of a few paintings by Hanns Kralik. He is better known for his anti-fascist pamphlets. The Nazi party destroyed much of his work. This is at the Chicago Institute of Art.
Train Graffiti
An accidental train lover. I recommend everyone travel by train at some point. We, as a nation, have underfunded Amtrak for decades. Amtrak CEO requested $3.88 billion for operating in fiscal year 2022. That sounds like a whole lot of money but compare that to what we as tax payers spent on highways: $131 Billion.
Over the coming years as climate change worsens we will probably see a revival of train travel. It is one of the cleanest ways to travel. We need to build high speed rail and also open up lines we have closed from decades past.
There is magic in train travel. It is such a different experience than flying or driving. If you are going on vacation and choose to get to your destination by train then your vacation starts as soon as you get on the train. It is relaxed. You aren’t in a rush. You aren’t crammed into a small space. You can move around. I highly recommend getting a sleeper. It costs more and is worth every dollar!
Freight owns the tracks that Amtrak travels on. That can mean Amtrak has to pull over to let freight trains go by. It can mean more delays for travel.
Kwame Brathwaite
There are only a couple weeks left to see the Kwame Brathwaite show at the Art Institute in Chicago! Highly recommend if you are in the area. My only critique of the show is it wasn’t big enough. Would love to see more of his work. He photographed some of the biggest musical acts of the time and also documented the civil rights and Black Power movements.
I had not heard of him or his work before this exhibition.
Barns
We traveled via train from Denver to Chicago and back. Our first trip on the train as a family of four. On the way out we had two roomettes. The smallest version of a room on Amtrak. Lovely for a single person. Maybe a bit cramped when you add a new born and a toddler. Over the next few weeks I will be sharing some of the trip here.
I have been playing with shutter speed to capture motion. I am very much an amateur photographer. My lens is cracked and has dust stuck inside. The images come out blurry and full of mistakes. And yet that is the trend of the moment. Showing the imperfections. Film is making a comeback as the digital world becomes less real.
I grew up in a rural area of the country. Barns are magical. They represent hard work and dreams. Often worn and battered by years of neglect.
User Experience Design
We visited Fred Thomas Park in Denver this weekend!
The playground is wonderful! Check out this mini moment of design. A simplified piano that incorporates real elements. Many playgrounds have elements of music built in. Often in the form of a xylophone or some way to bang on something and make noise.
Yet this design is elegant and dynamic. Absolutely love this! Our two-year-old loved it and I loved it. We both were able to play it and have fun.
The top section gives you four songs to choose from! They don’t give the name of the song. An illustration hints at it but if you don’t get the idea from the hint you have to play the song to figure it out. How wonderful.
Side design note. When I was growing up our local park had tractor tires half buried in the ground. It was a wonderful structure. Here is the updated version of that.
More Bicycles, Less Traffic
We sold our car nearly two years ago. We live a car free life in Denver. Two kids and no car.
I began a photography series of folks riding bicycles.
Our family takes RTD, we walk a lot and we ride bikes everywhere! We have options on how to get places. I have never been a cyclist. I don’t own spandex and I don’t want to go fast or ride down mountains. Shout out to those who do. I encroach on those folks territory. We collectively are given very little space in the city. If you have been a weekend warrior and riding your bikes for years to go fast I can understand why when I show up in your path with a bakfiets full of kids and groceries you aren’t exactly excited to see me.
The photography series has transitioned into a series of posters celebrating the joy of bicycles. I went to school or graphic design. Before the world of UX/UI design was fully established. My graphic design skills are not great and out of practice. Yet it is still fun to make random things.
Here is the process for one of those weekend projects!
Original Photos
Black & White Versions
I really love both these images in black & white. Maybe that says the photos weren’t great to start with.
Textures
The trend when I was in college was to layer textures onto photos in photoshop to create a grunge aesthetic. I spent time photographic concrete to create texture packs. I soaked good paper in coffee for varying links of times to create more textures to overlay. We attempted to many affects using scanners and printers. All that to say that aesthetic has come back. Shortly after college the skeuomorphic movement was in full swing. Apps were built to mimic things in real life. We came out of that to a very simplified & flat design world. Thank Material design.
It seems we are headed back towards more of mix. Folks are digging into those past efforts of making something look like it wasn’t just in the digital world. Textures are back. You get bonus points of you make something off the screen. All of my friends have taken a pottery class in the last year. The pandemic seems to have given us time to live fully in the digital world and now we want to run from it.
Illustrator iterations
Exploring in illustrator. Sketch. Figure out what to say. I have been using mostly the same content throughout the poster series.
Final variations
Jump back into photoshop for more layers and textures to wrap up these explorations. Not entirely happy with where we ended up and it was fun to make things. Enjoy your day!
Adobe Photoshop AI
Adobe! Welcome to the War on Cars!
Photoshop has launched its generative AI. Removing cars is now a click away!
Adobe! Welcome to the War on Cars!
Photoshop has launched its generative AI. Removing cars is now a click away!
There have been a lot of fun explorations into what this tool can generate. I started to wonder what it could do with my novice pictures of folks riding bikes around town.
AI is only as good as what you put into it. It seems that Adobe AI hasn’t read through much urbanism yet. Adobe has no idea what a bike lane is! Here are the attempts at “Add a bike lane”.
In ways this makes sense. The U.S. is pretty bad at bike lanes in general.
The AI also has no idea how to handle a raised crosswalk or improved pedestrian safety. Here are the attempts for “raised crosswalk”.
Shall we add a pedestrian to the sidewalk? Except it seems to have removed the sidewalk when adding a pedestrian.
Next up we add a bus! Mostly user error but the bus is on the wrong side of the road.
Ending with a streetcar!
Again mostly user error that I selected a space that was on the grass. I also did not deselect the person on a bike so we get some AI version of a person riding a bicycle.