Designers.
This double-edged sword.
In a perfect world:
The product should have a voice. One of an angel: beautiful and clear.
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The product should not piss anyone off. Everyone will become our user, thus we should not piss anyone off.
These two things manifest all products, but especially big, meaningful, complex products. There is demand to have a voice. There is demand to make everything as usable as possible for everyone.
But the reality is, a great product is always growing, changing in big and subtle ways. As a great product grows, so does its voice. Voice check please! And as it grows, so does its user base, and the chance you’ll piss off someone is exponentially higher. You just can’t please them all.
That’s why we have designers.
Designers are in charge of nurturing both a product’s voice and bottom-line usability.
Don’t be afraid to tune that voice, take some risks, & piss off a few people.
No one gets it completely right the first time. That’s why we keep throwing ourselves against the brick wall and trying.
How to curb any bad habit.
Or at least, how I curb my bad habits.
Everyone goes through phases, sometimes bad ones. Here’s my philosophy on curbing the bad ones: Indulge. Let yourself have as much and as often of this thing.
Psychology tells us things are counter-intuitive all the time. This applies here.
Scenario 1. You actively refrain from shopping online, but all you think day-in and day-out is ‘just 5 minutes’ on the site. As soon as you let yourself pop open that browser window, all hell breaks loose. I can’t imagine you would drop that visit after 5 minutes.
Scenario 2. You want go to shop? Go shop. Buy all the things. Let it accumulate. Eventually, you’d just be disgusted in yourself for accumulating things you’ll never have a chance to wear. You’ll stop and that desire to stop comes from within. It’ll be out of necessity, not out of self-restraint. And in my experience, self-restraint is not a sure thing. Intrinsic motivation is.
Of course, this is just my theory.
Maybe it’ll work for you, maybe it won’t.
And there will be those few things which no matter how much you indulge, throw yourself at it, try to stop yourself from doing it, you’ll keep doing. Those things are your passion. Think about it. How can you make this raison d’etre your everyday reality?
Head fake.
Ira Glass on Storytelling. Everything I make feels like this right now. I’d call it “okay,” but it can be better. There’s a cloudy mess in my head and I don’t immediately see how I could make it better. Instead of dwelling on it, I just ship it, sometimes on the internet, and see where it takes me. I get feedback from brilliant folks and every step becomes incremental to that greater vision. The clouds clear away one-by-one, but it’s not quite there yet.
That’s why you have to keep building. That’s why I will choose to let go of certain things in the name of being able to keep working hard. People question these decisions all the time. That doesn’t matter as long as I don’t question it.
And, the best bonus: This kinetic type itself piece is magnificent. by David Shiyang Liu on Vimeo.
Made with Paper. “When I’m using Paper!” Yeah, that’s pretty much what my face looks like.
Made with Paper; an experiment to see if negative space could look good. I think it does. Or maybe it’s just the Totoros!
Made with Paper; nyan nyan night rider. Where do the soot sprites go after floating off into the night? Maybe they turn into stars.
I previously promised some process sketches of my recent portfolio revamp. Here you go!
I also planned to write a post-mortem. Feeling a bit not into that lately. The short-story is, lots of iteration. Lots of cutting away to the core. Conviction in pushing the format. It would be easier to fire up a CMS and call it a day, but again, I decided to try something else and saw it through (with some struggle no less!).
Made with Paper; trio trio trio.
During my flight back from Los Angeles today, the stranger in the center seat chatted me about Sociallist. (The dear side project I won’t shut up about; I was drawing frames during that terrible few minutes of no electronics ;)
He loved the idea and pitched one of his own to me: a vinyl app. Intriguing…
The best part? Turns out he wasn’t an ideas guy, but simply a guy who’s been traveling the world for the last decade enroute to Yosemite National Park. Has no stake in this industry.
It was clear he had a great grasp of the vinyl world (for the record, I know nothing about vinyl, pun intended) since it was enough to get me to sketch up his thoughts.
That was refreshing. The 1:25 flight passed very quickly as a result. A conversation between strangers who came from different worlds united by an inkling of wanting to create. No ulterior motives aside from a fleeting connection.
I parted with knowledge of his whereabouts for the summer and he parted with my sketch.
Sketches: a product design
Not sure why this one ended up on the (now eradicated) personal blog! Adding it retrospectively.
“Product Designer” is an interesting title these days. When I hear of it, I usually assume we are describing a software designer who is product oriented. Or, a pixel designer with a good big picture sense. To most, it still aligns closer with industrial design: one who crafts objects of everyday use. I just find this shift interesting, now, to the main attraction:
Chosen from a series of rapid iterations.
With some preliminary and scrapped forms, of course.
Complete with object rotation studies…
As well as hand studies.
Theme of life: Ther is barely enough time to keep up with everything, especially with regards to all your ideas. Thus, there remains even less time left to document and share it! Prioritize, prioritize, and don’t forget about the rest of the world.
Source: susanl
Glad I didn’t listen, part 1.
When browsing the folks featured on pandolist, especially the 2 student sections, many answered 4) similarly.
4) What is one piece of advice you’re glad you didn’t take?
You hear it over and over again. Parents: go be a doctor, lawyer, or something traditionally prestigious! Classmates: take a stable job! Friends: come out and play with us instead of working!
The answers, though with their own contexts, all point to the same thing: Glad I didn’t listen.
This is a sound mantra.
~
Similarly, in my own little life, Raincat just enjoyed a spike* in visitors, because of an awesome mention. (Thank you James of Programming in the 21st Century!)
But you know what’s funny? While making any effort to put a public face on it, I was told it was a waste of time.
Dissenters: You aren’t even planning to go games full-time anymore, why bother?
So here you go, 2.75 years and ~15,000 total unique views later: Glad I didn’t listen.
Raincat is still discussed and loved despite being an older piece. And while it may never evolve beyond janky student-made indie game, it is an attestant to building it and shipping it.
Here’s to many, many more adventures in building and shipping things.
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* These numbers are obviously nowhere close to big big, but really, this is something that hasn’t been actively promoted beyond conception. Go ahead and laugh, but I’ll only take shit from you if you’ve shipped something. ;)
A handful of more sharpie sketches of various projects I’m thinking about: sociallist and a future portal page, susanl.in. I pulled the trigger for the .in domain when I learned the awesome namecheap offered it for $2.78 the first year, so cheap!
* SQUISH *
We’ll show you the real thing once it’s ready. Ah, speaking of which, I should set aside a teeny bit of time to clean-up the sociallist blog design.
Late night wireframing for alpha.
Source: sociallistme
Compound growth: by improving yourself 1% a day, you’ll be 37x better after 365 days.
