These three designers give you the scoop on the trends their seeing behind the scenes and the screen.
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Tania O’Brien, Senior Web Graphic Designer, Foraker Labs
Why is Foraker Labs is a fit for you as a designer?
Foraker Labs is a small shop full of energetic and passionate employees. Founded by two brothers, the feeling of family is consistently prevalent. We support each other in our learnings, our work, and projects outside of the office. As a designer at Foraker Labs I'm tasked with not only keeping up with trends for web and mobile apps, but working closely with developers, product owners, and project managers too keeps me always on my toes in those fields
Can you point to some work that shows off some helpful design principles for tech companies?
SchoolVault is a web application that we have been working on for over a year now. The most important thing to always keep in mind when building a web application is know your audience. We have done extensive user persona research for three types of users: district admin, teachers and students (grades k-12). With a complex application like this one you want to always make sure that you're not making the experience difficult for any user. This is obviously a challenge with an application that has a wide variety of users. My biggest advice is to make sure to user test as soon and as often as possible.
SchoolVault has a lot of features that are unique to this application so making sure to include useful helper text, consistent design and elements, and most of all not making the user "think" is important. Our users have a lot going on in their day, the last thing they need is another tool that takes up too much time. When designing we constantly keep this desire in mind, and trust me, it's harder than it sounds.
What are you excited about it in the design world right now?
Jared Spool's talk on "disruptive design" is really exciting! He says it's a great time to be a designer because it's time to focus on design. This means no more banner ads, disruptive pop ups, or poorly designed navigation. Companies in general are discovering how much it helps their product to have a well designed website. You'll notice website like Target are trying new tactics with their shopping cart to help users successfully check out easier and faster. It's a win win for both.
As for mobile- iOS7 has opened a world of opportunities for our applications including far more capabilities with customized design, and animations can now be based off the user's movement of the phone, not just their actions with the app. It is wonderful to play around with these abilities for I-70 Traffic app.
What design trend are you glad to see phase out?
A big trend that is confusing for users is the JavaScript forms. A classic form page will include html forms where you save at the bottom and the new submission is now an existing element in the application. The JavaScript approach creates a new element that you then manipulate the form and as you do so it saves. This is very helpful for an application like SquareSpace where a user is trying to build an entire website within a browser, but when you want a user to fill out some simple information, a normal form may still be your best bet.
Blair Culbreth, Web Designer, Viget
What is your work at Viget like?
Work is never stagnant or repetitive. I’ve been able to design for startups and non-profits that are doing real good in the world, which always feels great. Being able to do meaningful work that helps them achieve their mission is a gift. I’ve also worked on really fun projects like the Find Your Inner Animal quiz and one of our internal tools, PowWow, which are just a blast. Over the years, though this range of projects, I’ve been able to work on my skills in branding, illustration, and front-end development. Every project has been a chance to learn or experiment with something new. That constant, supportive push outside my comfort zone makes Viget a great fit for me.
What’s a main design principle that tech startups should pay more attention to?
Empathy is a part of design that I focus on a lot. Designing with empathy can be tough; of course we want to always design the coolest, sexiest thing we can. But empathetic design serves the user, stresses that they come before our own agenda or a designer’s urge to design for themselves.
At Viget, we design empathetically by finding out all we can about users through interviews, user testing, and analytics. This gives us the ability to make more informed, insightful design decisions. As a recent example, when redesigning lansinoh.com, we discovered a large percentage of visitors came from mobile; moms were browsing on their phones while stuck in a seat breastfeeding. This helped us prioritize the screen sizes at which the design worked best.
As far as recent projects I’ve personally worked on, it’s a sillier example, but I go a bit into the thought behind the design of Viget Spots You. Admittedly, it’s easy to work through user scenarios and goals when 100 percent of the users are your co-workers. But it was still a way of approaching the design that created a better, more usable, more intuitive end product.
What tech trends are excited about this year?
Wearable technology! The Internet of Things! I’m so psyched to see the web go from a screen that lives inside a heavy, cube-shaped monitor into something that seamlessly integrates into so many aspects of our lives. Now we design for desktop screens of every resolution and aspect ratio.
We design for tablets, phones, watches, thermostats, and anything else that has an interactive interface these days. The boundary between where the web ends and the real world begins is getting fuzzier every day.
Therefore web design has become more tangible than ever; we can literally hold our work in the palm of our hands on a phone. We are designing experiences that happen when a user is getting directions in their car, working out at the gym, in the grocery store wanting to know the difference between scallions and green onions, the list goes on and on. Our relationship with the web has become much more personal, and design is a big part of what makes that relationship work.
What design trends are you glad to see go?
With the rise in responsive design, designs have suddenly become much more flexible, stretchy, system-based, and buildout-friendly. It’s been fascinating to see the shift away from fixed width, pixel perfect, overworked designs in the past couple years to a design that works more intuitively with the web. It feels like our medium has come into its own, like we’re no longer print designers contorting code to make our designs work. Designing systems, rather than pages, was a big mental adjustment at first, but the flexibility systems give us means better designs that last longer and work better across devices.
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Chris Cima, Creative Director, Victor & Spoils
What do you get up to at Victor & Spoils?
People know us for our crowd element, which most people see as just idea generation workforce. Our global crowd can do this, but what makes them really special and why I personally find V&S cool is the perspective the people from around the world give us. Instead of just creating a cool design or advertising idea to layer on top of a brand, our crowd lets us know how people really feel about a company or a problem.
Probably the most important part of my job is to protect these insights as we generate ideas for our clients. It’s not always easy, because a lot of great ideas come up that don’t always align with what the world is telling us, but when you do come up with a design or concept that actually comes out of a brand or human sentiment, it tends to be way more effective because it comes form a place that people can actually believe in.
What should tech companies be learning from the design world?
First off, don’t act like a tech company. Act like a human. Design for people. Remember who and where your audience is. Be honest and respectful of this and you will have a much better chance of transferring the passion you have for your company to your clients.
Speaking of people, also try to work with thinkers and designers that have the same level of passion that you have for your company and don’t be scared to listen to them. Your brand will always need you to protect it, but understand the power that others have to see the potential your company or product can offer to the world.
How does your work exemplify these important design principles?
This may sound strange, but the Broccoli Project comes to mind.
People weren’t eating broccoli because it was boring. This was a human truth, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. In a world with more bandwagons than ever, some people just want to be themselves and not feel defined by what they eat. So, by simply paying attention to this insight we were able to take broccoli and share it as a solution to trend pressure. In terms of design and execution, we just needed to share our point in a really human voice. So we did a very human thing and picked a fight with a trendy vegetable to let people know it was cool to be uncool.
What are some upcoming design trends that you are personally excited about?
One trend that gets me pretty excited is the fact that it feels like more brands are trying to give back to society. Good cause campaigns seem more abundant than ever. Some of these brands really seem like they’re trying to change the world for the better and some are just doing it for the positive awareness and free viral media dollars that comes with good deed stunts. I’m actually cool with either, because if enough brands jump on this bandwagon, a few of the world’s problems just might get solved.
What design fads are you glad to see phasing out?
As somebody who is not immune to failure, it’s tough for me to slam the efforts of others. That said, one overall trend that I’m glad we’re moving away from is over-aggregation.
Initially, it felt like there was an effort to show off as much as possible in every interface. This was cool from a technology standpoint, but it didn’t always offer people a better experience. The work I’m seeing now seems to be more confident and less cluttered. As more and more data is available to use, I really like seeing that brands are showing more restraint and using design to being less about connecting people to every single bit of information and more about taking a stand for the one or two things that matter most.
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