Attending the Smashing Magazine Conference in New York was an incredible experience!
I had the pleasure of connecting with inspiring professionals in the UX design industry and gaining fresh perspectives on thoughtful design and innovation. One of the highlights was meeting one of my design heroes, Brad Frost, the father of Atomic Design.
Some of my take-aways
- “Design is not just how things look – it’s about how things work”
- “I want to not be embarrassed about my work in 5 years” is the quote which needs to drive every designer
- “Accessibility is not a problem to be solved. It’s a culture to be built.” And website plugins like Userway don’t always cut it – I will write a separate post on that, inspired by the conference.
- Designers are not just rectangle creators. We work way deeper than the surface aesthetic level of the interface a user usually sees.
- “Designers often find themselves under pressure to create beautiful outputs rather than real impact and outcomes.” This is a very real issue among designers, where they blindly follow product manager’s pretty ideas instead of solving problems within the interface.
- Designers need to review the product after the development to avoid mishaps ruining the UX. We all get annoyed when we need to scroll through a long calendar to input our date of birth, or need to switch from ABC to 123 keyboard to input a phone number in the app, right?
- And last, but not least – think of developers as your users. We often design with the end user in mind, but in fact, the developers are also users who deserve to have a nice experience
I’m already looking forward to being part of it again next year!
