Designers Agree on the Key to Better Design

Iterating.

Some called it “play.” Some called it testing. Experimentation. Exploration. A rose by any other name.

Regardless of what you call it, designers at Smashing Conference‘s kick-off event tonight agreed that creativity and good design come from creating new ideas, testing them out, and then playing with those ideas constantly.

Apptimzie CEO, Nancy Hua, speaking at the Smashing Conference’s kick-off event. Yes, I should have brought a better camera….

The Importance of Play

Alexa Roman shared that the design firm, Carbon Five, uses what they called “play” to bring out the creative energy. They methodically fuel creativity amongst their designers by creating spaces, events, and culture where playfulness, experimentation, and exploration are highly encouraged and rewarded. The theory is that play causes the same parts of our brains to light as does problem solving, so if we can play more, that means we’re constantly exercising the parts of our brain that we use to create solutions to customer problems.

Carbon Five then leverages the ideas that come out of playing and iterates on them to create solutions for their customers’ needs, be it a new website, product, or cool new thing. The key is that a team needs to invest in a culture that is constantly churning out new ideas and testing those ideas to see what lands.

Testing New Ideas on the User

Adrian Bateman of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer team gave us an entertaining account of his experience being part of the group who spec’d HTML5. This was not a light undertaking. After creating a 650 page spec, what did he feel was missing? The user perspective.

In browser terms, the user is the web developer. Bateman wishes that there were more website creators’ opinions that were represented in the room when the HTML5 specs were written. That would have helped them test out the ideas browser developers had on actual users of the product.

Iteration as the Key to Successful User Design

Nancy Hua, CEO of Apptimize, emphasized that getting user feedback and then iterating on that feedback is THE way to continually improve on your product. Continual iteration is how the top apps in the App and Play Stores maintain their competitive edge and create an engaged, loyal user base.

But regardless of whether you’re talking about the design of emails, websites, or even physical products, testing out new ideas on customers and then improving your product based on that feedback is the single best way to create something customers love.