Startup stories: A junior designer’s perspective

Chapter 2: Practice makes perfect

Yet again, a very accurate representation of me.

About a year ago, I was minding my own business and an old intern of ours brought a study book of my old university (can I get an amen from all CMD Amsterdam people) to the office. Immediately I recognised the subject this book was for and all the memories started coming back of my daily struggles to understand and remember everything. Mind you, this book is somewhere around 200 pages thick, and for a person with a small attention span, this can be a mountain to conquer. I remember the sleepless nights and the amount of stress I went through trying to understand the theory.

Everyone at CMD Amsterdam probably knows what subject I’m talking about. And yes, it is Human Computer Interaction. I kid you not, this subject was the pinnacle of year 1 at our university. It was probably the hottest subject among ALL students. Conversations that went “What’s the difference between Fitt’s law and Hick’s law”, “How do you pronounce skeuomorphism” and “What the heck does proximity even mean”. At least the teachers let us make a cheat sheet for the exam, because this was just way too much information for a freshman with no prior design experience. After failing the exam twice and getting some extra tutoring, I finally passed the exam (…barely).

At this point, you may ask yourself why I’m writing about this. The reason is simple, it’s because this created the foundation for my design knowledge.

Every year at university, you are expected to have a certain degree of design knowledge so that, eventually, designing becomes natural. It’s like another language that you learn, with the exception that this one is way more fun and interesting. And just like with learning a language, practice makes perfect.

When you can design effectively and efficiently, you have become fluent in the language of design.

But what does that really mean and how does that translate into daily practices? Glad you asked! Let’s jump right into it.

Note: I’m using the term “Basic design theory” as a big label for everything that is used as a base for what a target group directly interacts with. Think of color theory, UX/UI patterns and design principles.

Firstly, let’s take a look at what “design effectively” means. According to Google, the literal meaning of “effective” is “successful in producing a desired or intended result”. But when is something successful? Simply said: when your product is received positively. This could mean that the generated traffic went up, your product is selling more, you get more requests, you get the idea. One of the biggest contributing factors to having a successful product is…drumroll please…design! How does it look, how does it behave, does it go hand in hand with the message that is being conveyed, does it translate into the needs of the target group? Behind the curtains, when you really look at the digital product, you start seeing some patterns. The text could be aligned in a certain way, you recognize that a button belongs to a certain section and you can easily work your way through a contact form. Most of these choices are built upon basic design theory. That one button that feels like it belongs to a certain section? Principle of Proximity! That input field that looks like an input field? Recognition over recall! When I started at Fleks, I accidentally went down the rabbit hole of basic design theory on the NNgroup website, the holy grail of UX design. I realised that my knowledge was very limited and got fascinated by almost every article (mainly on Psychology and UX), that I even made a guide for myself with some examples that I could quickly scroll through if I was explaining something to our interns. By learning, re-learning, applying AND explaining design theory, I noticed that my decision making became quicker and my argumentation became more solid.

Secondly, let’s talk about what “design efficiently” means. In my optic, it comes down to becoming efficient in your tooling. So go learn all those shortcuts, download all the plugins, use those sweet data packs. The more time consuming processes you can cut out of your workflow, the efficienter you will become. Easy as that! It’s also a really nice feeling if you’re showing something to your peers and they get very impressed by your quick actions 😉.

Having expressed my opinion on designing effectively and designing efficiently, let’s round this startup story by asking two very important questions.

1. Do I consider myself fluent in the language of design since I’m writing about it? Nope! Yea okay, I’m pretty comfortable with my tooling, and yes, I do know how to apply some design theory, but I have the feeling that I have just uncovered the tip of the iceberg.
2. Were those sleepless nights for my HCI exam worth it? The present me says yes. If you asked me the same question 4 years ago, I would have a completely different answer for you 👀.

What are some takeaways from my second startup story? If you find yourself in the same position as me, take a deep dive into NNgroup and force yourself to optimise your tooling workflow, so that you can design effectively and efficiently, which will eventually lead to becoming fluent in the language of design.

Thanks for reading my second chapter of Startup Stories: A junior designer’s perspective! You can find chapter one here if you’re interested.

What are, according to you, the main ingredients in becoming fluent in the language of design? Let’s chat!