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A personal list of highlights and challenges

The tremendous effort John Maeda does in each annual Design in Tech Report is remarkable. The report gives us a good view of the evolution of the field over time and personally speaking, all its insights help recognize and outline the new things to learn as a designer at the short and medium term. I totally encourage you to read it all. Even though there is a lot of stuff to talk about, let me share some pieces I think are worth to mention.

“A computational designer understands technology, has facility with representational codes and maybe programming codes […] practices being a humanist technologist who aks questions about what’s being made, who’s making it, and why”

I’m not a big fan of new fancy role titles for designers, but I do like the new challenges behind what he describes as a Computational Designer, especially regarding a more close relationship with technology without losing critical perspective, and regarding the idea of designing products which are continually evolving. I think the challenge here goes in two parallel directions: 1) to continue learning new skills in order to understand better the technology and acquire more resources to program solutions. And 2) to improve our capabilities to be more critical of the problems we are solving.

“The reduction of a complex creative problem-solving mindset into five steps makes design seem easy when it’s not […] There’s more design than what design thinking dealers are preaching” — Natasha Jen

One thing came to my mind in this point: Complexity is a misunderstood concept among designers, that’s why I love how Natasha Jen describes the noise generated around this concept in her talk “Why Design Thinking is bullshit”. We shouldn’t try to avoid complexity because our job is to work with it if we want to provide more complete experiences, and this is quite important to take into consideration when we are applying any methodology. I highly recommend the book “Living in Complexity” for a better understanding of the complex context we must deal with and the importance of doing it right. The challenge here is: to improve our capabilities to embrace this complexity using a more critical mindset, putting more attention to the reality rather than looking down to the methodology with blind trust.

“The 5 dominant words to explain why a company is perceived to be improving design are: Innovation, consistency, scale, simplicity and diversity”

I would like to put attention to two of these words: Consistency and Scale. From my perspective, all the effort over the last years with the construction of stronger design systems follow these objectives, but addressing them correctly depends on how well we understand the importance of consistency and scalability. These objectives are directly related to an earlier statement about the importance of working on solutions which are continually evolving.

“[Think Beyond Silicon Valley] By 2050, India’s economy is projected to be the world’s second largest, behing only China […] Latin America has the fatest rate of smartphone adoption in the world”

This is a great occasion to watch away from our screen and examine reality. I’m from Peru and I think I can understand why looking over the world’s problems is so important. Some time ago, it shocked what a designer friend from San Francisco told me about the Valley: “People from Silicon Valley are only thinking of solutions for Silicon Valley”. The numbers shown in the report are a proof that the future is outside the valley, and things are moving fast in those regions, especially Asia and Latinoamerica. It’s not only about all the opportunities we could find there, but it’s also about the urgent problems these regions have that we must be concern about. The challenge for any designer interested in addressing these opportunities could be to start understanding better what is happening outside their bubbles.

“[About designer stereotypes] Designers can’t lead teams and they don’t understand business”

Over the last months, I’ve had the opportunity to be more involved in the improvement of a team’s process, which made me realize that design is not only limited to the solution of product’s problems, we also have the opportunity to contribute improving the team’s performance and designing the process. It’s not only about the designer trying to play a management role, it’s more about being a better team player improving coordination capabilities and communication in general.

This slide describes with accuracy the set of skills we must put attention to in order to work better in a collaborative environment and to be more accountable for our position as problem solvers.

“We are in a new age of data visualization”

Data visualization has become more important over time and it’s understandable why. If we think of the development process as the cycle where we solve problems and measure their impact, then our ability to analyze information becomes crucial, which also should consider the acquisition of skills to generate a better visualization of data. This curriculum included in the report is a great first move in order to explore more in-depth the field. Personally speaking, this is a whole new thing for me, but I’m looking forward to learning more.

“[About Conversational Design] Conversation is not a new interface. It’s the oldest interface […] We should be able to use the same principles to make our digital systems easy and intuitive to use by finally getting the machines to play by our rules”

Some time ago I understood that our foundation as designers is communication. It’s the reason behind every screen we design, but the future is not about visual interfaces. Little by little, these are getting obsolete. Conversational Design (the way we talk to machines) is becoming more necessary for the interaction between humans and technology. What should be our role in that future then? To mold this communication! James Giancole wrote a very interesting set of rules and principles in order to understand an address this new field. The idea of evolving our capabilities considering new technologies is also related to this other statement:

“Learn AI and don’t be afraid — stay awake. Don’t freeze.”

The examples showed in deeplearn.js are astonished. They are only a small proof of the pace AI is evolving. It might seem frightening, but it’s an evolution that we are leading (or we must lead). If we see this future in which AI is an inherent part of our relationship with technology, we are in front of a world of opportunities. For example, Google Design recently released a complete study case about how IA is helping to design really cool products like Google Clips.

“[About Design & Diversity] Design for All is design for human diversity, social inclusion and equality” — EIDD Stockholm Declaration (2004)

We can’t be good professionals if we don’t incorporate Social Responsibility as part of our core values. It’s not a secret that technology has been shaping our society for decades, which it means we can use it to build a more diverse, inclusive and fair world. It might be an explicit objective, but what are doing in order to achieve it? How much is technology helping to reduce inequality in the world outside Silicon Valley? This page contains a lot of data related to technology and its impact in the world. We can do it a lot better.

I’m pleased to witness a trend of influential design figures moving to more socially responsible efforts, I think it’s a path we must follow. Or at least from our position, we must do our best to put these topics on the table in order to be discussed within our teams.

To summarize

Here the challenges towards my 2019:

Continue learning skills in order to understand and program technology
Be more critical of the problems we are solving
Embrace reality complexity with a more critical mindset
Look for consistency and scalability in our solutions
Put more attention to what is happening outside Silicon Valley
Improve our skills for a better communication inside our teams
Acquire more knowledge and skills regarding data visualization
Start seeing AI as the opportunity for the future
Push towards putting the social responsibility topics on the table

Which is yours?

Thanks for reading 🙏

PS: Cheers again to John Maeda for the hard work with this Design in Tech Report 2018

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Notes on the Design in Tech Report 2018

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