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It’s now over a year since I graduated. I quickly learned getting a job in graphic design is hard. I really need to update this post, Tips for Young Graphic Designers, which I wrote back in March. The advice is still applicable. But I’ve learned even more since, so I’d write things differently, and probably write more.

Graphic Design. Most exciting to me is that I’ve learned I can drop the first word. I’m not really a graphic designer. I much prefer the term experience designer. In the last few months I’ve become a huge fan of Don Norman. I’m also fascinated by the approach towards design by places like IDEO, who embrace design as a whole (I’m working my way through Designing Interactions, an excellent book written by co-founder Bill Moggridge).

Similar, but not the same, Adaptive Path has a very interesting view on experience design. (Tragically I’m missing their UXWeek, which is next week.) I think their philosophy towards experience design is summed up in this blog post about Starbucks: Starbucks is not about the coffee, by Peter Merholz:

“[...] I don’t think it’s about The Coffee. Starbucks has to deliver a basically good product, but they don’t need to deliver a superlative product. [...]

What they need to do is make the store experience inviting, not so much about pushing product, but about being that Third Place (not home or work) where people can get a respite.”

Merholz’s advice to Starbucks is that they focus on the whole experience engendered by the coffeehouse visit. Coffee is predictable and nice to have, but Starbucks is really about having negative space where you can stay as long as you want without the pressures of home or work. It’s the whole experience that has made Starbucks successful… not (just) the coffee.

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Working for a software company is great: as well as designing graphic elements, I work with wireframes and think about how people interact with interfaces and devices. I get to use all of my brain. It’s the focus on people and interactions that makes this kind of design work utterly compelling. (And it’s removed all guilt about getting an iPhone. It’s work, right.)

My advice to the new generation of graphic designers: educate yourselves! Take your degree as a starting point, but really: don’t pigeonhole your interests too quickly, because the industry is changing.

I’d like to direct you to this really excellent post on Design Observer: Michael McDonough’s Top Ten Things They Never Taught Me in Design School. I’d recommend anybody and everybody read this, as it’s excellent advice and applicable to life in general.

I nixed the last post I wrote, for the reason that part of it was incorrect – my fault was to rush to review something without having spent ample time using it. Mea culpa. But I’m reposting my first impressions, along with some further thoughts:

So I finally picked up an iPhone 3G after not having a phone for a few months. No regrets so far, and the relief of having a phone is actually overwhelming.

The iPhone is the best phone I’ve ever used, and the first phone I’ve wanted so much that I’m happy to commit to fork out a considerable sum, every month for 18 months, for the privilege. It’s a joy to use: while some (most) mobile interfaces frustrate me, I love using the iPhone. There’s a seamless harmony between software and hardware, involving very organic and pleasing screen transitions which Mac users are already familiar with. The touch-screen feature really adds to this: there’s something inexplicably pleasing about using it. It’s different from pressing a button and seeing an effect occur in quite a different area from where you pushed the button.

One complaint I have is that it’s quite heavy to lift to your ear (call me traditional – pun not intended – but that is how I like to talk on the phone). Still, the weight is a small price to pay. The actual price is rather more considerable, but still, for me, worth it. Being able to carry my ball and chain around with me is a big bonus.

The three things I do the most with it are check email, check Twitter, check Facebook (in that order). The text prediction feature, while frustratingly wrong at times, is overall excellent. Many times I’ve completely botched a word to have the word I wanted suggested to me. It’s like magic.

Speaking of magic, the application Shazam – which has apparently been around for years – is extremely impressive. So many times I’ve been walking around town, or in a pub, and heard a song that I loved but had no idea what the name was. With Shazam, I can identify the song, even over background noise. The app is free.

I’d also like to add:

1) I’ve been taking a lot of photos recently – far more than I’d usually take (although my Flickr page is a chronological mess, it’s pretty easy to spot which ones were taken by an iPhone). I really like that I can snap a photo and instantly zip it to Facebook, Flickr, or send it to a friend by email. Facebook’s photo feature is excellent – a camera button sits prominently on the home screen – but there doesn’t seem to be a reliable Flickr app at the moment. The one I’m using, Mobile Fotos (previously Mobile Flickr) is buggy. It uploads portrait-orientated photos upside down, I kid you not. It was £1.79. Still, worth it for me – even if I have to rotate the photos manually, for now.

2) I’m still amazed at all the apps. Today I played with Graffitio, which is a means of adding digital graffiti to a location:

Attach conversations to the places you go and the things you see! As soon as you open Graffitio, it looks around you for Walls created by other users at restaurants, bars, stores, parks, events, or anywhere else you could imagine. Read what other people have to say, and leave your own thoughts behind for others to find later. You can even create your own Walls. Graffitio connects you to people who have been there before and those who will follow.

I read about the concept of digital graffiti fairly recently. At the time, just a few months ago, it felt like reading about hover shoes. It seemed like a really cool idea, but also something very far away in the future. I can’t believe it’s here now, though not mainstream yet.

It’ll be interesting to see how this concept develops over the next few years, and how institutions like cafes, restaurants, hotels, etc, will moderate it. I’m also concerned that these “walls” are owned by a company – when a company fails, its archives of digital graffiti go with it. It seems rather too ephemeral to me – but so are, I suppose, real-life walls. Graffiti can only ever be ephemeral. Still, I love the idea of browsing big archives of digital graffiti going back into history…

Jemima Kiss of the Guardian wrote an article today on location based services. I’m personally very much looking forward to Loopt being available in the UK, although I’m not convinced yet it’ll replace Twitter’s usefulness for the same thing. Here’s how Loopt describe themselves:

Loopt shows users where friends are located and what they are doing via detailed, interactive maps on their mobile phones. Loopt helps friends connect on the fly and navigate their social lives by orienting them to people, places and events. Users can also share location updates, geo-tagged photos and comments with friends in their mobile address book or on online social networks, communities and blogs. Loopt was designed with user privacy at its core and offers a variety of effective and intuitive privacy controls.

For more iPhone apps reviews, check out Idlemode. Here’s their review of Graffitio.

Here’s a list of books I have in a pile next to my bed, which I’m either reading, have read, or am planning to read:

Non-technical:

1. ‘Hackers and Painters‘ by Paul Graham.
2. ‘Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers‘ by Geoffrey A. Moore. (I wanted to know what a disruptive product is… yes, this was an impulse buy on Amazon.)
3. ‘Subject to Change‘ by Adaptive Path (* partial review).

Technical:

1. ‘Flash CS3 for Designers‘ by Tom Green and David Stiller. I won/inherited this book at a Flash Brighton event over half a year ago.
2. ‘CSS Mastery‘ by Andy Budd et al.
3. ‘Bulletproof Web Design‘ by Dan Cederholm.
4. ‘About Face 2.0: The Essentials of Interaction Design‘ by Alan Cooper.
5. ‘Designing Interactions‘ by Bill Moggridge. It’s extremely inspiring to learn about the history of the Graphical User Interface at Xerox PARC (among everything else in this book).

These lists should give you an insight into what’s on my mind right now.

Overall, I’m focusing on learning about web standards, which I have finally accepted are quite important. So, a new ambition is to write clear, standards-compliant XHTML and CSS. I’m getting there. Learning to write CSS/XHTML that is also standards compliant helps me to understand how it works, which is the underlying motivation. That is what it is about for me: expanding the parameters of what I am able to do with CSS/XHTML.

Reading books about CSS, to my genuine surprise, has taught me a lot – I was skeptical that they’d teach me more than pure tinkering could. I’ve always known what good website design looked like, but I never had sufficient respect for the underlying code – even if I told myself I did. It’s a good feeling to actually understand what the code is doing, or to begin to understand.

In addition to learning CSS/XHTML, I’m playing tentatively with Processing, mainly to sate my curiosity. After tiptoeing around the programming pool for years, I’m now dipping a toe in… and running off screaming. But then coming back to it, with euphoria, grit, and determination! And why not?

It’s hard for me to avoid or ignore programming, as I work for a software company. I design interfaces for mobile software. One of my coworkers suggested I start learning Objective-C, which I just might. I liked this quotation from Paul Graham, which made the idea much more appealing to me:

“It’s odd that people think of programming as precise and methodical. Computers are precise and methodical. Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh.”

I’ve just started reading Adaptive Path’s book, Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World. Here are some thoughts it’s provoked so far.

People / consumers / users / fool-proof
Ugh, the problem with words! This sentence stood out:

“Once you stop thinking of your customers as consumers and begin approaching them as people, you’ll find a whole new world of opportunities to meet their needs and desires.”

As I interpret the sentence above, the word “consumer” risks rendering an anaemic, flat, or mono-faceted view of a person, who should be considered as not just a consumer, but – well – a whole person. So if products should be considered in a wider context, so should people.

Still, you could argue that this is all silly pedantry – holding little to no value for designing a product or a service – and that the word “consumer” doesn’t imply a limit, per se, but usefully demarcates a single activity.

Inconclusive, and possibly over-analysed.

That said, words matter.

Don Norman wrote that we shouldn’t use the phrase “fool-proof” when talking about making a product simple. Why would you want to insult your users by calling them fools? He also wrote that if the product is difficult to use, you can only blame the product.

Empathy with users (user is my preferred term) is necessary for creating a good product experience.

Brand strategy versus experience design
Peter Merholz draws attention to an article on experience design by the UK’s Design Council, which confuses brand strategy with experience design. According to the Design Council, “experience design concentrates on moments of engagement between people and brands, and the memories these moments create”.

Merholz wrote a succinct and clear response to Ardill’s article. Merholz’s view is that brands work “inside-out”: brand is how the company projects how it wants to be perceived. Experience design works the other way, or “outside-in”: an “appreciation of customers’ motivations, behaviours, and context leads to the development of a product, service, or system that can satisfy them”.

In Merholz’s definition, brand strategy and experience design are totally different things.

I really like the clear definition of brand strategy and experience design as Adaptive Path explains it. The confusion is there because experience design is still formative, and there is no universal, solid framework established, and perhaps there shouldn’t ever be a universal, solid framework. After all, everything is subject to change.

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It’s a very thought-provoking read so far. I’ll write up other ideas and thoughts I deem worthy of sharing…