What the hell is UX design?

One of the most common misconceptions people have is that User Experience Design is all about usability. It’s easy to see why – usability means that a product is both usable and useful.

When you walk into an empty room, you can instantly imagine what purpose it will serve. Glance around and you get an idea for how to turn that space into anything that you want it to be. You can use it as a living room, an office, or a bedroom. It all depends on what furniture you choose and where you put it. The empty room is usable, but it’s not useful until you fill it.

In software, “the room” a user enters is never empty. Every software product has a user-facing side that was built for people to interact with. That interaction becomes an experience they go through when they use the product. It’s the UX designer’s job to make that experience a great one.

Designers: Good vs Great

Design is meant to show the intent that exists behind an action or an object in a clear way. Great design strips away all possible interpretations of intent, leaving only one. That is to say – it must be unambiguous. Achieving that level of clarity, however, is incredibly difficult.

Lenses vs Cameras

Story is Queen, and the queen conquers. Once you have that — here’s a primer on why choosing lenses matters more than choosing a camera.

Hollywood 2.0

Most independent production companies (and individual filmmakers) are competing with each other for the wrong thing - to be noticed by Hollywood. The industry's most demanding customer is the mainstream movie goer. She's the person Hollywood cares about the most.

Let's call her Lily.

The only competition that actually matters is for Lily's time. If she is a comic book, or an adventure movie fan - then those are probably the kind of products she will want to spend her money on. When a movie studio realizes that Lily is somewhere out there, in the entertainment market, really looking forward to the next Batman or a Harry Potter film - they make it just for her. This is called product/market fit - being in a good market with a product that satisfies that market.

Hollywood has a small problem when it comes to making original films. Because there is no way to know if anyone will want to watch them - the industry is mostly focused on making franchise films. That in itself, is not a bad thing. After all - Lily is real, she's out there, and she's exactly who they make those movies for.

The problem becomes more apparent when an original film is made. If a studio spends a modest $50 million making it, they are likely to spend that much on marketing, in an effort to fill theatre seats with people. In essence, they are trying to raise awareness for that new product, as well as find out if it will satisfy the need in the market.

Lily now has to pick what to spend her time and money on.

What if there was a way to find an audience for that original film early in its development process, instead of relying on marketing to do that? What if instead of spending that $50 million making a movie no one wants to watch, we could develop smaller parts of that storyline and know - with certainty - that an audience was there?

The answer may have been in the hands of indie studios and filmmakers all along. Those who make short-form fictional content, and those who are good at it.

Vanity

Great art lives on — free from its point of origin.

Behind the scenes, in the mad scientist’s lair, where tiny monsters hunt for harlequins — there’s a lot of trial and error. Scribbling on the margins, wrestling with the blank page, endless sketching and singing slightly out of tune to every newly written melody or riff. Just general "arrgghh I hate this, and I quit! For real this time."

Vanity is a word which adequately explains why artists often hate their past (and sometimes current) work. It is unproductive and only gets in the way of creating truly great art.