Digital Daredevil
Usually when someone hears the word “split,” it often has negative connotations. Splitting up with your partner, running from the scene of a crime, a banana split (if you really don’t like bananas) or having to do a LITERAL split. But if you’re a marketer or a designer, the word can take on a whole different meaning.
It’s 3 months after your company’s new product launches and there seems to be an ominous feeling permeating through the cubicle walls. Then it hits your inbox, an email emblazoned with a red exclamation point and the subject line “ATTN Product Team: Staff Meeting.” Clicking in, you see the somewhat passive-aggressive message from your director stating that the team is about to get slammed. The product launch has been a near failure and changes need to be made ASAP. It’s crunch time.
As someone who uses their phone as their device for primary contact, I bounce between seven social media/communication apps daily in order to connect with others. Yup, seven. While that might sound like a lot, each app has its own specific function and are split between personal and professional uses. For purely personal interactions, here are the apps I frequent: Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. On the professional side, you have: LinkedIn, Twitter, and WhatsApp. Altogether, that only adds up to six. The final app is Gmail, which teeters back and forth between professional/personal depending on which account I use.
A typical day for a designer involves being locked in a room or secluded to a cubicle for hours on end hoping that a miracle happens. Sometimes the days go by and everything they create is crap, and by the end of it, patience is thin and no amount of caffeine can guarantee great results. Don’t believe this process actually happens? Well you should, because I’m speaking from experience. Fact is, after all of that toil, designers never get to encounter or appreciate their project like a new or typical user would. This is important because users, specifically very targeted users, have distinct perspectives and needs. As products and services continue to become more granular, we need to understand how the end user will feel and interact with designed experiences.
Streamlined, intuitive, functional, responsive. All of these words have been massively overused to describe websites – but how did they even become the preferred descriptors of “good” web design? As our lives become more entrenched in the digital sphere, the way we interact – and want to interact – with technology changes. In order to let users seamlessly manage their online activity and subliminally guide them through the preferred customer journey, designers implement UX/UI. If you’re familiar with the design space, you’ve probably heard of these two abbreviations before. In case you’re completely new, let’s break it down.
In a previous blog post, I introduced several of the most popular project management methodologies that are used by professionals today. Included methodologies featured were: Waterfall, Agile, Kanban, and Design Thinking. These diverse methods help individuals – and teams – prepare and execute projects. An established and organized approach means that time is spent in a more meaningful way, increasing the likelihood of stronger solutions. Today, we are going to dive a little bit deeper into the Design Thinking methodology to dispel some questions and show you how it can be used in quick exercises to get you thinking like a seasoned pro.
Alex Piwtoratsky. 