Anonymous asked: What is your approach in terms to web design? Like OK-RM and Linked By Air, you have an interesting approach to web design that remains fresh yet sophisticated. I'm currently in design school (in the United States) and the curriculum they teach in terms of interaction design is very corporate and leans towards the type of design tropes you see almost every other startup rocking nowadays. Were there any resources that helped shape your approach to designing for web?
I actually try to embrace those startup design tropes you’re dismissing. The only difference usually just comes down to typography and the occasional rule-breaking. I do my best to keep up to date with the latest UX methodologies and research. An easy example off the top of my head would be like I don’t use image slideshows in my portfolio because overwhelming data shows that less than 1% of users actually click on them.
If you’re asking about resources to understand designing for the web better, I don’t think my reading list is that different from a designer from Silicon Valley. My stuff just looks different than theirs because they’re them and I’m me.
10 Usability Heuristics for Interface Design (1994)
100 Things Every Designer Should Know About People
I take a lot of UX findings as useful constraints and try to be creative within those boundaries and really only break them if the concept warrants it. I believe in taking something old or cliche so far to its logical conclusion that it becomes its own thing. Malicious compliance has always been more interesting to me than noncompliance. If someone tells you to make something red, you can make it green and argue with them, or you can make it so fucking red that they regret ever asking you to make it red and you might find yourself in interesting new territory that you had previously written off.
I notice a lot of designers are pretty quick to dismiss something because it doesn’t look cool and it’d not what everyone wants to hear but if your’e asking me what makes me different it’s because I really believe the fuck out of that whole “learning the rules before you break them” thing and I don’t try to discriminate against what I read.
I’m not saying this is what everyone should do, and I’ve been in situation where designers seemed genuinely bothered that I suggest this because it keeps people in restrictive thinking or it makes them not question or be critical of the deeper sociopolitical effects of a society that is becoming increasingly networked—to which I exasperatingly remind people that they’re adults and they can stop at any time and I’m not asking for people to turn off their moral compass it’s not that deep jesus christ lol.
