Design on Afroleft

Using What You’ve Learned

Fri, 01 Jan 2021 17:05:06 +0000

A few years back I heard one of my music hero’s Jono Grant from Above & Beyond talk about their process in the studio.

He made a comment that stuck with me.

It went along the lines of “when we kick off a new project, we recite / talk through some of the hard-earned lessons and insights that we’ve made on previous projects.”

When the lights are on you and you’re under pressure, Jono said it’s all too easy to forget the things that you’ve learned from your previous experience.

Working on Fetch

Sun, 13 Sep 2020 10:39:13 +0000

I wrote a short intro piece for our Software Engineering blog at Ideal Modular Homes.

We’re building real-time, high-dependency software that assists with the design, manufacture and installation of our sustainable modular homes.

We’ll be sharing more about of technology choices, lessons learned and our process in upcoming posts.

Old Tins

Thu, 30 Jul 2020 19:58:07 +0000

We spent today wondering around Penzance in Cornwall, England.

There was a shop called CASH FOR YOUR JUNK. It looked a lot like my old grandfather’s garage.

A jumble sale of odd things. Plates, lamps, tins, statues, an old petrol forecourt spinning Jet logo etc etc. Hoarder’s heaven.

Loved these old tins dating as far back as 1940.

As we all pull together to cut down on plastic use, what’s the bet that we see the return of the refillable tin?

Cushy

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 11:54:59 +0000

This was an identity idea for an eco-friendly home builder.

Cushy never got to see the light of day so sharing it here with your lovely eyes.

Fetch Logo

Wed, 08 Jan 2020 12:34:34 +0000

After a few years away from the graphics editor, I dusted off my old copy of Sketch to make a logo for a thing.

Chuffed I have an excuse to use a doggo in a logo.

Need @andy88jones to help me with kerning. He has a friend called Kern.

Here is the shot on Dribbble.

Stakeholders. What are we optimising for?

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 10:39:27 +0000

One of the things I’m piss poor at is stakeholder engagement—enabling everyone see tradeoffs the way I can. Sadly the problem exacerbates as your company scales.

Helpful to see Chris Thewell speaking at the UX Crunch last night.

On the dial ask

What are we optimising for?

Unpack the tradeoffs.
Involve the right people.
Optimise for the right thing.
Make your informed decision.

Look around: Costs are everywhere

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

It’s easy to rest on the assumption that costs are only monetary. In product design, this misses an important point — costs are everywhere:

Waiting for a webpage to load is a cost.
Typing in your card details is a cost.
Figuring out whether to trust a company you’ve never heard of before is a cost.
Learning how a product works is a cost.
Signing-up is a cost.
Waiting to find something out (yes, uncertainty) is a cost.
Having to print out, sign and post a form is a cost.
Handing over your personal information is a cost.

Identifying costs [and] what they might equate to for your users is an insightful way to inform how you think about the products you make.

We used Intercom to add £100,000s of marketplace investments at Fruitful—here’s how

Fri, 20 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Onboarding customers to your new product is tricky.

Onboarding customers to a new financial product is really tricky.

For a mountain of security and regulatory reasons you’re required to collect and validate a towering number of data points.

Of course, for each additional data point that we had to collect = additional cost to the customer = increased risk that they might drop-off and watch videos of otters eating lettuce instead.

Fruitful’s onboarding steps

In Fruitful 1.0 (more about the pivot here ) these were the steps for onboarding new users:

Keep peddling until you find the right problem

Mon, 16 May 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Back in August 1972, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority introduced the late Massimo Vignelli’s new map of the subway system.

New Yorkers were furious.

Complaints came flooding in:

“Stations seemed to be in the wrong places. The water surrounding the city was coloured beige, not blue. As for Central Park, it appeared to be almost square, rather than an elongated rectangle.”

To Vignelli’s mind, that was the entire point (emphasis added):

This is how you package consumer goods

Sun, 11 Oct 2015 10:52:45 +0000

Yesterday I was in the market for some plughole unblocker. We’ve moved places recently and I forgot to put this useful little thing in our shower.

So I head into Tesco and — eventually — I find the section for bleaches and plughole unblockers.

I know that Mr. Muscle is a popular brand for this product, so I look for the logo.

Bingo. I find the Mr Muscle.

Just as I’m about to pick up a bottle, I notice the bottle next to it. It’s called Buster — a brand I’ve never heard of.

Questions to ask your design work

Tue, 29 Sep 2015 12:47:33 +0000

Last month I spent some time updating my portfolio. As a product / user experience / web designer, it can be quite tricky to present your work to others.

The rock star visual designers of this world can get away with presenting screenshots of their stunning visual work — job done, money due.

But if your day-to-day consists of making user flows, interaction designs, napkin wireframes, trade-offs, A/B tests, and minimum viable products, then you — like me — need to do a bit more groundwork to do the show and tell properly.

An Icon a Day

Mon, 27 Jul 2015 20:25:31 +0000

Keeps the doctor away.

Just found this blog full of wonderful icons.

This was one of my favourites.

Afrolive

Sun, 26 Jul 2015 13:36:57 +0000

I’ve been planning a rebuild of my blog for a while now.

If I’ve learned one thing from product development, it’s know what problem you’re trying to solve.

So I sat down and actually thought about my goal: To write more frequently.

I wanted to worry less about maintaining a server, designing pixel-perfect user interfaces, performing backups and fiddly upgrade paths.

My previous blog was held together by an outdated version of Perch and a whole bunch of duct tape that was wearing thin.

Same Same. But Different.

Fri, 01 May 2015 08:57:00 +0000

It’s Sunday, late morning, and I’m right in the middle of cleaning the bathroom. In the other room I hear a frustrated girlfriend struggling to find accommodation on - lets say - website X, for our trip to the Amalfi Coast.

Complaints flying left, right and centre, vented in a tone that kind of suggests that this is all my fault:

“Why won’t this?”
“It won’t let me!”
“I keep loosing my tab when I go to trip advisor for reviews!”
“I hate this”
“Why can’t it show me what’s available on the dates that we’re going”
“Oh FFS!”

…

Our Duty

Tue, 26 Nov 2013 10:48:00 +0000

Firstly, think about what your pages do, not what they look like. Let your design flow from the services which they will provide to your users, rather than from some overarching idea of what you want pages to look like. Let form follow function, rather than trying to take a particular design and make it “work”.

For us wonderful folk who make websites, it’s our duty to read John Allsopp’s seminal A Dao of Web Design at least once a year. For an article that was written way over a decade ago, many of those points still offer so much significance today.

Lazy Loading Responsive Images

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 08:11:00 +0000

Learn more below or see the Demo →

Most of last week I was rebuilding a website for a longstanding client. Performance (i.e.how fast the thing renders) is not only important to this client, it’s imperative. A good proportion of their customers live out in the sticks, and as a result, many have slow internet connections.

Lazy Load to the Rescue

To speed up page load, we decided to use the popular Lazy Loader plugin which defers the initialisation of images until they were needed. Most importantly though, users on slow connections would have the (essential) page content loaded almost instantly, while (complementary) imagery could download subsequently.

Product Design Process

Mon, 09 Sep 2013 08:05:00 +0000

When we have a new product idea (and are lucky enough to have the skills and tools to execute on it), it’s often more than tempting to jump in with two feet and start building the thing. Before we know it, we’re pitching the hows before whys and problem solving becomes a battlefield of miscommunication. As a result, our product concept becomes more complex and less focused.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been investing a lot of time and energy into a product design process that we’ll be using for an upcoming project.

What’s next?

Sat, 03 Aug 2013 20:30:00 +0000

When we hit the bottom of your web page, what do you want us to do? Where should we go next? What are other people saying about this service? Should we get in touch with your team or look at the tech specs for this ground-breaking new product?

Too many websites fail to answer these simple questions.

Think about it: It’s a bit like visiting a supermarket with aisles that lead to dead ends. You either walk all the way back up the aisle, or you loose interest altogether and are forced to use the fire exit.

The Future of Interaction Design

Thu, 02 May 2013 19:39:00 +0000

Check out this video that sheds some light on what we can expect from the future of interaction design.

Lots of discussion around the ‘internet of things’ and how user experiences will become less intrusive and more natural as this area matures.

I guess this dovetails with my analogy that we’re moving further and further away from abstract computer interfaces. To piggyback on Luke Wroblewski’s paradigm, we can see where we’re heading by acknowledging the big interface developments:

Can Simon Manchipp Help my Start-Up?

Wed, 19 Dec 2012 21:28:00 +0000

A few weeks back I was lucky enough to see Simon Manchipp speak at the Liverpool based design conference Designival. If you haven’t been to one before, I’d recommend you do.

The thing I found most engaging about Simon’s talk was his position on logos and branding. For personal reference, I made a few notes thinking about how the the themes could be applied to my new project, Beanbag.

Typographic Refurb

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 21:20:00 +0000

I’m only halfway through Ellen Lupton’s Thinking With Type, and she’s already inspired me to make some subtle and not so subtle changes around here.

I think one of the biggest things I’ve taken from the book so far is confidence with type pairing. Previously, using a mixture of different sizes, weights and character spacing I’ve generally stuck to employing one typeface. This is sound methodology, but not having the confidence to mix typefaces quickly becomes a creative straightjacket.

Product Design: Extending the Metaphors

Mon, 07 May 2012 19:05:00 +0000

Around 2 years ago this August, Mikey, Sean and I began conceptualising our ideas for outheard.tv.

Our idea was quite simple; to create a website for sharing gig videos. On top of this, we wanted to group videos from events together – meaning you could browse up and down videos from the breathtaking gig you attended last weekend.

Quite quickly we realised that we’d need to ask users to tag the event in their video once they’d finish uploading it. The technology and function behind this decision was solid and worked brilliantly – upload your videos and tag them to the event.