Superfresh by Finch

500 Designs Later...

This UI Makes Me Cry

I came across Songza this weekened and I was blown away by the simplicity and beauty of its interface. They could have taken it to a more common page setup like many of the other similar sites with album art and avatars for users, but they didn’t. Usability rules this site with an iron fist, and I love every pixel of it.

One of the best pieces for me is integrating the player at the bottom and allowing to continue searching for artists/albums. The next best component is the pie navigation that appears after clicking a track. This keeps the site clean and still intuitive in keeping all your options close by.

This site is a real treat to use and learn from.

UX...XD...WTF?

Here’s my problem: Everyone these days seems to refer to themselves as a “designer”. There are User Experience Designers, Experience Designers, Web Designers, Product Designers, etc, etc.

Now I agree that there are different levels of design, but I feel that the word itself carries some weight. For me, the definition refers to someone who deals with — on a high level — a look and feel and the interactive flow, which add up to the experience of an application/prototype/device. This to me is design. Note: I am speaking strictly in the web/interactive realm.

I know folks who can develop great web apps and sites, but what part of that is the design? I look at the actual task they are doing for the answer. If you are “developing” a FLEX/Silverlight application or a protoype, as opposed to “designing” it, then I am not sure adding “designer” to your title is doing more than just adding confusion.

So let me clarify all that; A true designer thinks through the experience, understands the end goals, and creates an engaging visual that connects the user to the brand through an intuitive experience using an application. I am quite sure that a developer of the site would rather look at making things work properly than spend time with the front-end.

So, if XD stands for Experience Designer what do we do for Experience Developer, call them XDVs? Ok, I really don’t want to be responsible for another acronym, but we need the confusion to stop. So if there are any votes for XDV, let me know.

My Own Worst Critic

I think that I am already sick of this tumblelog. Why? I think the design is lame, boring, insert hateful adjective here. Maybe I spent too much time getting things to work and look right. Or, maybe I just feel like I have to outdo myself every time. I am still working on the portfolio part of the site, and am changing my mind like Michael Jackson changes his nose.

I think that at this point I am going to call this iteration Finch version 1.5. So I really want to make Finch 2.0 look good and feel great about it after I launch it. Every designer probably goes through this type of battle trying to create for themselves. The good thing is that I know what my “brand” is, but maybe I’m sick of that too.

Then I get hung up on the whole “Web 2.0 look.” And let me tell you, it’s tough sometimes to fall into that when there are sites pulling off some kick-ass designs, yet they look like 5 other sites I just visited. That’s why I throw away the first few designs I come up with because they are normally the most unoriginal ideas. For example, the sample below was my first design for this tumblelog:

The intention is to have fun, and release the creative juices and really have some freedom to do work that clients would normally scoff at. But once I get to this point it turns more into work and frustration.