AWWWARDS Conference
AWWWARDS - AMSTERDAM 2019
PABLO STANLEY - Design Lead at Invision
The mexican designer, Pablo Stanley started the conference demonstrating his mastery in the art of storytelling. Catching the attention of all the audience with a funny and personal episode of his life, back in the 90’s, about the art of mixtape. A story whose moral tells us that we are the results of so many lived experiences, and we must not forget all those varied moments of our life that make us what we are today.
AMY WEST - Product Designer at WeTransfer
“Don't leave parts unknown.”
Amy is a product designer at WeTransfer, a company whose main service is to share and send massive files online. She is focus on the integration with other product like Slack or Sketch (E.G. share easily and quickly massive Sketch Moodboards in the main software).
The tools to create are changing but not the way how we work.
To conclude: Integrations with softwares are a good thing but it is better to build a public API’s and that by expand the sharing opportunities.
JOËL VAN BODEGRAVEN & PEDRO MARQUES - Product designers at Ayen
These two product designers described the impact of the artificial intelligence in UX. For context: AI is an old-fashioned word: now the right term is “Machine Learning”. That means learn by itself (input/output in a loop). With AI, code has become a UX decision and AI is a goal to understand media and user. They shared interesting examples like Netflix emotional covers or Youtube recommendations that matches with user’s mood at that exact moment. Ethical questions arise: Should designers learn machine learning?
Quick Tips:
Define what is useful or not in UX.
Design for less choice (reduce friction)
Design with failure in mind.
The designer should have a researcher mind to help to develop the technology in order to create impact using Machine learning within design.
LORENZO CORDIOLI & SERGIO MOJOLI at AQuest
“Technology is evolving to impress, to sell, to entertain.”
These two talented and experienced professionals came to share their mantras, this is their success list for every digital thinker:
Smooth technology, make it flow to make it work.
Do not rocket science.
Don't waste time on fake needs.
Take what you already have and fall in love with your idea.
Forget and erase everything you know.
Fuck protocols. NO DOGMAS!
Start with basics, grab only the essential.
Quick and dirty.
Test and break stuff, over and over and over.
Continuous exploration.
Don't dare to sit down and stare into space.
Remember that kid you were.
RAISA CUEVAS - User experience Specialist at Google NL
Raisa Cuevas from google, made evident how Performance is an essential design feature. Digital crafters (designers and developers) must solve the basics: mobile UX and speed. She presented the evolution of technology over the last 10 years like the Mobile first approach. During that time, the page weight have increased, we moved from desktop first to mobile first, and finally to user first. We can not deny the importance of the speed time and loads which are very stressful to users, even worse than watching a horror movie or standing at the edge of a virtual cliff. Less time means much more conversions and less bounce rate. Performance is the key.
Tips:
Include animated loading sequences in prototypes (fake loads).
Emphasize “speed” in design briefs.
Prioritise visible content and lazy load the rest.
Design offline screens, home screens icons and notifications that looks like mobile push notifications.
Design web like app.
PETER SMART - Head of Product at Fantasy
“Convention is just permission to try better”
Besides being the MC of this conference, Peter Smart shared his way to create digital magic. According to last reports we will spend on average about 41% of our life in front of a screen (21 years approx!), largely due to the increasingly popular use of mobile which has evolved into an extension of our body and mind. So we should be focus to design for this human being. How? By maximising the UX and creating impactful experience. So much of digital product is about user transaction design, not user experience design, but when you truly design for humans, the measurable results speak for themselves. Just by taking a look to his successful works (Nickelodeon, cruise app, etc) we can clearly understand this approach.
Tips:
Create a framework.
Work with motion. Motion is your friend.
Evolve and adapt the elements through motion, create fluidity which increase revenue.
Don't say MVP. Say MLP (Minimum Lovable Product).
Convention is just permission to try better.
Draw from the real world.
Think in flows not screens.
Less but better.
Feel it with life and fun.
MARIE VAN DRIESSCHE - Visual & Interaction Designer at ABN AMRO Bank
“Nothing about us, without us”
The deaf designer Marie Van driessche talked About accessibility design.
As UX designer we should recognize exclusion and Learn from diversity in order to have more universal and accessible experience. Because Sign language is not even universal.
Accessibility improvements:
Don't making phone fields mandatories.
Use headings and subheadings
Make on point per paragraph
Use short sentences: 7 to 10 words per line
Use bulleted lists
Use accessible language whenever is possible
Write in a journalist style: make your point and then explain it
Write in an active form
Avoid unnecessary jargon and slang. Which can increase the user’s cognitive load
Use images, diagrams or multimedia for a visual translation of the content
Chunk your content: Users only read 20 to 28% of a web page
Use white space
Include a glossary for specialized vocabulary and provide definitions in simpler language
The idea is to solve for one and extend to many = the main principle inclusive design.
ANRICK BREGMAN - Director at New Realities VR/AR/MR
“A story is bigger than technology.”
This cross-disciplinary creative director shared his research focussed at the border between real and virtual. At New Realities the ultimate goal is to create virtual memories. He writes unique interactive stories that are at the intersection of narrative and experiential technology.
He showcased few unique and impactful projects like autism 1st person simulator, crime scene investigation as rookie scientist, Seat BCN car chase experience, sea prayer a father goodbye, etc.
LIOR PINO - Design Director at Wix
“The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
Lior Pino, trend thinker, explained how is complex to design products suitable for more than 150M users and how to stay on top of the trends at the same time.
Sources of inspiration:
Second renaissance of classic art in technology (cinema 4D, VR, etc)
Contemporary politics (breaking traditions)
Rule breaking culture (fuck you mentality)
Z generation (the first post religious generation)
Environment (eg: plastic texture, pantone living coral, aquatic theme or liquid transition)
“Is the Narwhal going to be the next trending animal?” :P
LOUIS ANSA - Digital Art Director
This french interactive designer graduated from the prestigious Gobelins school and he focus his work on motion storytelling with a playful style on creative layout. It is all about catalyze emotions through motion.
Build meaningful animation = personality + guidance for UX to bring something on the table. He presented some projects in which there is a special attention to animation consistency with lots of tiny details.
Animation must have its own design system: find a simple concept (eg: 3 staking things). He shared some special motion principles: “over here dumbass”, “I just need 10 frames”, “follow me”.
JEAN FRANCOIS CHAINÉE & DUST LE BLANC - Locomotive (Agency of the year)
“Work hard play harder”
2 visionary guys (an entrepreneur and a talented designer) but more than anything: 2 true friends. Those are the special ingredients to lead the awarde agency of the year 2018. They came not only to showcase their unique projects but to show how they extremely care about the the team players: Employee and people first! They pay special attention to attract and keep talent, and build true friendship relation. Their digital team naturally evolved into a fellowship: creating a culture that resonates with employees, and work that stands out for their clients.
Mantras:
Work from abstract to concrete
In context
Prototype in the code = Devisigner
80% of the prototype goes to the final code
Present the work into context = magic potion
Involve all roles on meetings at early stages
Work & play balance
Value implication
Let them Lead
Back them up whatever happens
Build genuine friendship and work
Tolerance, flexibility, kindness: people first
Kill them with kindness
UX = EX (employee experience) Incite emotional response and employee engagement. Not only user first but employee first so people first
ANDY THELANDER - CO-Founder & Creative Director at Active Theory (Site of the year)
"You are only as good as your last project"
Andy Thelander, Co-Founder and Creative Director at Active Theory, winners of the Site of the Year 2018, presented his approach of how the technology heavily influence the visual style through prototyping and overlapping the design and development phases. At Active Theory everything is about creative coding, the results are uniques projects balanced between visual technology and digital art.
Mantras:
You are only as good as your last project
Happiness = reality - expectations
Under promise over deliveries.
ANITA FONTAINE AND GEOFFREY LILLEMON - Creative Directors of the ‘Department of New Realities’ at Wieden+Kennedy Amsterdam
“Creating Art for brands and redefining realities.”
This Creative couple experienced how is to grow in an isolated way and most important, how they found a path to go away into “new realities”.
This insight inspires new ways of presence for the website experience in which there is a strong connexion with the machine and technology. They turns data into art, where everything feels real, abandoning the “following formula” path. They try to “trick the brain” with new sensorial experiences like one of their projects for “Corona”. A Future Landscape is created, based on technology, not in devices: “We use a speculative future vision, beauty and absurdity to give technology a soul”.
IDA AALEN - Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Confrere
“What designers can learn from (code)review.”
Ida introduces the concept of “Code Review”, a methodology based on academia peer review (evaluation of work by one or more people with similar competences as the producers). Like an extensible tool for the whole project over its different phases, from ideation to launch. There is always an “author” (designer, developer, manager, etc) who owns the final decision but everyone involved in the project will give feedback through the process. It makes senses because as soon someone is part of the project they feel as part of it - ‘curtails “my” code and “your” code, it’s “our” code’ - If we want this new workflow to work we have to consider the following review principles:
Critique the work, not the author
Be critical, but remain affable and curious
Differentiate between: suggestions / requirements / points that need discussion or clarification
Move discussions from text to face-to-face
Don’t forget to praise the good parts
At the end, Ida makes her point about how this can help to the project and how involving everyone hasn’t to be the same as design by committee.
Finally, looking for the best products, Ida praises user tests, most of the usability problems can be detected with at least 3 user tests (ideally 5 is better). For her there is no excuse to avoid this essential practice.
DAAN Klaver - Founder & Creative Director at Build in Amsterdam (e-commerce site of the year)
Dan Klaver, founder of BiA, an awarded branding agency specialised in e-commerce, presented the strategy vision on how bridge the gap between physical and digital flagship stores. 3 years consecutively awarded for e-commerce site of year (2016, 2017 and now 2018), this is not a coincidence, in BiA best works attracts best people to set the industry benchmark.
These are the 12 insights to be able to achieve it:
Don’t Pitch (it’s nonsense practice, imagine other business doing it).
Start with a “Why” to every little steps.
No layers.
Blame yourself (you are in the project, you are the owner).
UX is UI
Conversion is killing conversion (keep the focus on brand experience).
Don’t think in journeys (there are lots of entrance points, not only through the home page).
Everybody knows nobody knows (Stay open minded during all the process)
STEAL, Take and improve (but better outside the industry - reference to open source in development).
You are a brand at yourself
Take a Nap (this lowers stress, clears the mind so creativity and productivity increase)
You are never finished
MARTIJN VAN DER DOES - Founder of Wonderland
“Designing for Emotions”
Martijn decided to go with a simple presentation, without sliders, only with “Wonderland” animated logo as background, sharing his thoughts about the future of the design, how design is not just about usability and how it’s a need to find the deepest meaning because design is about feelings and emotions.
Deep meaning is what people remember.
DAVID VOGEL - Executive Director, Experience Design (Europe) at AKQA
“How to Design For What’s Next”
According to David Vogel. the future of digital will transcends the screen. This future doesn’t exist in our present, for David, it is something that his company invent with their clients, every project is an opportunity to create future. But it’s really difficult to know what people feel/dream/know, because that implies a deepest knowledge: “People won’t tell you what they dream of, But those are the most interesting insights” In order to get there is necessary to “push beyond safe ground” maybe the first approach is not to built anything in the end, but it could drive you to another place and that is ok. Design is a continuous interaction, and this process always starts with a prototype. Prototype matters so much and “A good prototype should look great”.
PHILIP SHUETTE - Creative lead at Random Studio
“How we try to make exciting things”
Philip proposed the following formula like starting point: approach + collaborators = projects
As a consequence of this, for each project we should find a question and a answer. Phillip illustrated this idea showcasing different projects, most of them related to art and fashion, with clients like Raf Simons.
MICHAEL VROMANS - Partner & Creative Director at DPDK
“Finding the CX sweet-spot”
Michael presented his “islands” concept, each of them representing a single digital environment (website, apps, etc). But all of them are isolated and quite disconnected. If we want to leave a mark that impacts, we have to offer a great “Customer Experience” with interconnected “Best Product”. Michael underscored the need that “Brand Design” and “Product Design” become closer For this, he shared 4 insights:
Mind the branding gap
Go all out, then box it up
You get what you focus on
Make content great again
Business Goals and Customers needs should be aligned, keeping a vision all the time, understanding that content is more than a bunch of colors.
SOFIJA STANKOVIĆ & TEODORA STOJKOVIĆ - Founders of TEYOSH
“How (and why) to aim for innovation in a world of too much”
Teyosh exposed the way they start a project. Their goal is to find the connexion between society and UX/UI through the behaviour with projects like “Dictionary of online behaviours”. Some concepts like emotion, focus, dreams, reality, identity or metaphor are quite recurrent in their projects. They explore and expose the impact of technology in our generation and how dependent on technology we are: finding the symbols of a digital culture and how they are deeply part of us without being aware of that (most of the time): Their project Bananza!, they translate everyday objects to recreate part of digital environment in a physical environment.
GERT FRANKE - Co-Founder of Clever Franke
“Dealing with design”
After a brief introduction about how he tries to connect people with data through powerful tools and experiences, Gert showcased a couple of impressive projects but above all, Gert told us how he became the designer he is today. After several beginnings in his childhood he realised that everyone has a “different value system” and the consequence for this should be the “doubt”. People are afraid of having doubts, but they shouldn’t because doubts are the beginning because “Insecurity is a force: it can drive you further”. He gave a final advice to everyone who doesn’t like insecurity: “it’s part of our job; accept that”.
CLAUDIO GUGLIERI - Designer & Creative Director
“How far can we push it?”
Since first minute Claudio captivated the audience by testing our reading speed. After that he gave us a master class about how our human abilities defines how we interact with the world.
He describes how “experiences spanning across devices, inputs and senses, consumer technology staggered evolution”. As a consequence, creator tools continue this evolution. We could see how passionate he is about interactive design and emotional experience, all his awarded works are related to this, and it was generous time from him sharing all his experienced knowledge with us.
ANDRÉ JAY MEISSNER - Head of the XDI at Adobe XD
“Adopt An Unknown Unknown”
To close this event like it deserves, André Meissner shared a reflexive and emotional speech. A really big question appears in front of us, how far should technology lead us? “Is anything we produce detrimental to our human connections?” The debate is guaranteed, nobody likes to talk about limits and boundaries, but everybody is asking themselves the same question.
We are losing the trust when we create new things with old names (e.g. smartphone) in order to get a good acceptance rating, and as a consequence we generate bias.
We have to ask to ourselves why and what data we are capturing, where we are storing it and most important who has access to that data and how users can control their own data.
Andre cite Joanna Bryson to mark an intentional point in the discussion “We should focus on AI as a tool for knowledge and communication, not fixate on narcissistic pursuits … AI is not a thing to be trusted”.
After this statement, he referenced Johari Windows as a tool that we could use to know how to grow, and it was quite interesting the point that he made, with the instruction “Adopt an Unknown Unknown” he introduce another approach to the data where we are not looking for something for creators or for users, we are going for something that is completely in the unknown area, and this could push everyone to a new place.
Summing up, these are some magic potion ingredients:
Design for less choice (reduce friction).
Don't waste time on fake needs.
Take what you already have and fall in love with your idea.
Fuck protocols. NO DOGMAS!
Emphasize “speed” in design briefs.
Include animated loading sequences in prototypes (fake loads).
Design web like app (Design offline screens, home screens icons and notifications that looks like mobile push notifications).
Work with motion. Motion is your friend. Motion creates fluidity which increase revenue.
Build meaningful animation = personality + guidance for UX.
Animate with consistency (lots of tiny details).
Don't say MVP. Say MLP (Minimum Lovable Product).
Use accessible language, avoid unnecessary jargon and slang.
Chunk your content: Users only read 20 to 28% of a web page.
Solve for one and extend to many.
Create virtual memories.
Prototype in the code = Devisigner.
80% of the prototype goes to the final code.
Present the work into context = magic potion.
Build genuine friendships at work.
People first.
Involve all roles on meetings at early stages.
Prototype overlapping the design and development phases.
UX is UI
STEAL, Take and improve
You are never finished
Deep meaning is what people remember
Ideation is co-creation
Push beyond safe ground
A good prototype should look great
Approach + Collaborators = Project
Offer a great Customer Experience for the Best Product
Make content great again
Find the connexion between Society and UX/UI
Insecurity is a force: it can drive you further
Focus on increasing efficiency and accuracy of what we can do within a comfortable range.
Adopt an Unknown Unknown