Ze Electronic Web Work of Jason One @webworkone - Tumblr Blog

Measuring success. Tbsp vs. Km?

What is success? The success to this blog is steeped in the goal of conveying my thoughts on design in the public arena, taking criticism, with the hopes of training myself to produce regularly and aide my future projects with the discipline to just churn things out instead of micro-analyzing each line and stopping myself from getting work out there in the hopes that I have sterling perfect wordplay.

So did I/do I do those things?

It’s probably not so straightforward.

The ability to convey in the public arena? Well, yeah, really not much of a bench mark there. Just put something anything down within your CMS and you’ll easily convey any number of things from being a smug moron, to a curious cynic.

Taking Criticism? I haven’t quite told many people, so I haven’t had the opportunity to evaluate it. Incomplete.

Training myself to produce regularly? So-so. I think daily would be impressive and hardly something that is impossible. A lot of people do it. For the mid-length content I hope to write, I think I’ve done OK, but there certainly is room for improvement.

Not micro-analyzing? Has to be an epic failure I think. It’s important to filter and proofread your work, but worrying about how you sound or what you do at some point is detrimental. If you do that you’ll hold yourself back and produce nothing at it’s most extreme peak. Now I haven’t quite done that, but I’m certainly reflecting at these blogs and projects I’ve done in a harmlessly deprecating manner. At some point you have to just trust that you’ve learned and experienced enough to be level-headed and judge and comment on things objectively and honestly.

It’s also valuable to me to know whether or not these goals are helpful to the purpose.

Conveyeeness? Designers often express themselves through their work, but being able to explain their work and their process is so essential because it’s the difference between stakeholders accepting and shipping work. So this is super important, non negotiable.

Criticism? Also essential, not everyone is going to agree with you nor should they outright. I would be doing anyone a disservice if I just made shit up and nodded along when I actually had an issue and a lot of the time it just takes some explanation to give someone perspective.

Produce regularly? Absolutely. Even when my career is long over, I hope my mind can still produce thoughtful ideas for anything I encounter.

Not micro-analyze? This is only a problem if you it hinders the aforementioned goals. So mostly important, as it’s not a hinderance, but I still do it and I don’t want it to become a problem. I’m beeeiinnggg prooooactive.

So if you’re still with my long self-psycho blog-analysis, this is more or less the way I approach design success:

Establish my goal. Try and tie each goal to a success metric (in my case it’s blogging frequency, my attitude toward criticism, and inner-mental judgements), which hopefully are not subjective unquantifiable statistics, but the beauty about web and product design, are that if you do it correctly you can measure your goals and evaluate whether or not your reaching your goals.

Now these can be heavily tied to business objectives and rightfully so because in the end, the things we are making are more or less affecting the monetary outcome whether digital artists like it or not. 96% of aesthetics on the web are tied to credibility and credibility often is the difference between people adopting your business or not.

So it’s important to be able to convey your design in business terms depending on who you are trying to justify your designs to.

CEOs or other non-”designy” people are not going to give a shit about margins, type, and color theory. They will care about customer retention, brand recognition, purchase influence, and cost savings.

So being able to tie our design decision to these business terms is so essential in justifying a design from something other than pretty.

#design success #success metrics #time philosophy

The most obvious next design frontier

The future always excites me. I’m always interested in learning new things seeing my family grow, experiencing new things and I’m extremely fortunate that my hobby is my job and the industry is moving more rapidly than ever. The brilliant people of Design inc breakdown product design’s rapid history excellently in their Design Details interview.

And the next wave of designer will almost certainly be designing in the Virtual and Augmented Reality space. The psychology of it is fascinating, with a lot of the early work being done in gaming. But eventually it there will be even more industries coming into the space and that is what I’m really excited about and hope to take on a project like that once in my career.

It’ll be fascinating designing a physical space of content and data will completely change the way you digest information, advertise, and live.

The challenge

is how do we make immersive experiences that fully utilize the technology and involve the user? The answer is way too complex to get in at once let along a blog post, but shipping and testing people’s behavior in the short term will be super important. Studying human’s mental and physical psychology to VR and AR will be an art in itself.

From my very rough, short observations from demos and videos I’ve been able to pick up on some fundamentals:

We experience things that are directly in front of us and reaching for things disorientates your balance and perception, so keeping things in your direct frontal orientation is important.

For early adoption, it’s super important to give people experiences that they are familiar with and the on-boarding process has to be short so the learning curve isn’t very high, much like product design.

VR is very isolating. Making it inclusive and giving you the option for it to become social or not is key. I’ve heard it referenced that the ideal usage is 30- 1 hour because essentially you’ve got a helmet on and losing yourself in these “spaces” for too long, we’re probably teetering into the Inception psycho space.

The Hololens is something I’m getting really excited about.

It’s worth a whole post alone, but I could really see myself in the AR space more as it is more integrated into your physical world and to me, it makes your spaces even bigger.

In my case, I’d love designing specifically designed web content for these platforms as I believe they really have no bounds. Your canvas is the world in front of you, we're just renting them for the time that we have.

Minority Report is an excellent example of curated experiences that are geo-located. I'm not entirely sure we can get there with speed, but the easier application to me would be personal curation rather than AI. And I think that personal homes is where you start.

The Internet of Things is already creeping up on us and AR would be a great supplement to AR. I would be very cautious of doing it in public spaces. There might have to be blocked off area (large ones at that) for something like AR Twitter.

Could you imagine people bumping into each other trying to organize content on their public spaces, it could be a mess with screens overlapping each other. Ugh.

Also time is something that makes AR more appealing to me. In the AR realm, its incorporated into your everyday, so using it intermittently throughout the day for 5 min up to an hour or 2 is even more plausible when you think of the work/office space. It’s always a dream for designers to have things widely adopted by people that are using it in their everyday routine.

I’m starting to draft some websites I use a lot and reapplying them to an AR space, I’ll share my research soon. It’s been pretty fascinating thus far.

#Virtual Web design #Augmented web design #digital psychology

Why we do it, why spend wayyy too much time thinking pixel by pixel.

In a word? Curiosity.

In many words, it’s taking a problem, any problem big or small and trying to solve it. And solving it simply.

Reaching a goal of solving your problem and nothing else.

And once you’ve done it, giving it enough verve and panache that gives it an aura of style without compromising the primary goal and representing a brand or voice.

It’s what seems silly to others, but within design circles we know that 10 pixel gutters or a sound hierarchal placement structure are the difference between comprehensive adoption or utter dissatisfaction.

Good designers crave the ability to serve our thoughtfulness to connect people to information or behavior

And it’s the ability to connect where designers don’t have to be passionate about the particular industry they are designing for to succeed. Who the hell has ever been truly passionate about giving directions? shipping items? taking notes?

The new horizon of augmented/virtual reality, wearables, and the internet of things are racing to be a part of our everyday routine and it excites me that we’re rapidly building the infrastructure to make that a reality, but it proves another monumental cluster of problems that need to be solved when we haven’t even solved all the problems of the current day.

That is the danger, but it’s also beautiful that the challenges are becoming larger, vast and having the relentless curiosity to find the answers is why I do it.

#purpose #drive #design determination #curiosity #inquistiveness

Collaborating, That talking, listening and working thing right?

Good collaboration at it’s core is mutual understanding.

Don't ever assume you're talking about the same thing with someone. Because if you assume, you donkey punch the ass of U & me..... Even if the people you collaborate with aren't visual learners, make them so, because people need to be on the same level at the very beginning for any type of project to work. It’s easier for 2 or more people to look at something and come to an understanding than talking each other down hostage situation style.

The clearer the vision is from the start the easier it is to get there.

And I wouldn’t move on to the next step until there is a strong mutual foundation of expectations. It might seem like it’s taking a while, but I’m a strong believer that the more work you put into the planning the less time you spend trying to redefine essential facets that makeup the very basis of your project along down the line.

But once you have it, get started while it’s fresh and produce in small, quicker iterations, so you get feedback and get close to your mutual vision and goals.

The worst is spending quite a bit of time on work you think is fully perfect and thought out for someone else on the team to think the opposite.

As long as you keep referencing your initial goals, you have opportunities to shape logical solutions together through quick iterations rather than placing a never ending amount of “veneers” and ideas on your canvas.

When ideas reach conflict, it’s easier to explain what doesn’t work because they should be directly linked to a goal.

And when you disagree, as the designer, it’s helpful to design other people's ideas quickly. And maybe put a tweak on it. Show people what you think of their idea and what you thought didn’t work and how you thought it could be better. That shows that you haven’t completely disregarded someone’s voice and that you put thought into something other than yourself.

You’re already indirectly collaborating and taking initiative. That thoughtfulness will go a long way in building trust with your stakeholders and colleagues in collaboration.

#collaboration #design think #working together #planning with people #teamwork

Slowly realizing the public forum is public and virtual people can laugh, sham, and berate you out of internet town.

I’ve only just started consolidating my journal into design-related topics that I can contribute to my portfolio and even more recently decided to share it. I’ve barely twittered, facebooked, and instagrammed. So if you’re reading this, I’m truly sorry if I come across as tea you may not particularly want to sip on,

but I overwhelmingly will not be supremely apologetic

I’ve been addicted to this 6.5 yr hustle of freelancing, designing, and managing my way through the design world, learning so much and continuing to do so. I

I’m hoping to express my closest accounts of perspective that I have developed as a 30 something Filipino-Chicagoan startup designer with a very large family with liberal affiliations, but independent curiosity trying to write and put himself out there more.

If you have time, you’ll read how I try to simply navigate my design life to be the happiest person, son, cousin, boyfriend, designer as I can be. And how I try to make my time as useful, and meaningful as possible with thoughtful decision making.

It certainly doesn’t ever turn out that way, but I spend a lot of time trying to get there.

These thoughts do not reflect any other entity other than my own. No need to take this as advice or what not, just simply one person’s experience that hopefully you can connect to and realize that you might have had that same thought like I did, but didn’t think anyone else did like I thought so long ago.

#Jason Bustamante #my insights #designing my life

The interview torture chamber

I’ve just recently been meeting new designers interested in a position at my company and our process and goal of finding high performing up and comers has been about normal in the sense that: we can’t find anybody.

It could be that we’re setting the bar too high after we set it too low, but regardless, it makes me value my profession more and gives me the hunger to genuinely develop my skills and make my next hire with great care.

In the interview itself, we all have pre-conceived notions about who the candidate is and isn’t, but scaling that back and letting the person feel comfortable to express his/herself is important, but incredibly difficult.

So how do you do that?

For one, allowing the interviewee the ability to navigate his way through the decision making process of their designs. The dribbble beauty pageant is nice, but it lacks process, planning and collaboration that is essential to becoming a valuable member on our team.

No I know that in itself can be difficult, I often find my self in imposter syndrome, thinking my projects weren’t worthy or not being able to articulate the nuances are not having experienced the “proper” way of designing.

Not knowing is perfectly fine, in fact it’s expected.

What I do mind is making shit up. Or making it look like something you’re not. I understand you are trying to impress, but in design, having humility is what will impress me. I’ve been around the block. I know the limitations of projects. No one wants to spend and no one wants to spend what little budget that they have. Our teammates are not always motivated and our clients are not always the right clients. But if you own up to it, give me the full context and show me what was designed and what was shipped I promise you I won’t hold it against you.

At the end of the day, no matter how good a designer you are, that is only one cog in the wheel.

You have to grind and plead to get your design across the finish line and it’s messy.

There are things that are out of your control. As long as you convey what you did, what happened, and what you learned, I’ll be able to judge it well and know that you have the potential to do much better than what you experienced.

But instead of that we seem to get this interview awkwardness of a broadway play and our candidates are performing this hollywood production of their work history.

We know we’re not looking at John Ives’ and we’re not expecting them to be, what I’m expecting is people to admit their flaws and convey what they’ve learned because much of your design career you’ll end up being wrong and it’s the learned process that makes a good designer.

The only other things I’m looking for is that you consistently finished projects and that you have tastes that map to our brand. Everything else are things you can learn and that is the final thing: Never stop learning.

#business impressions #design interviews

Design fears, career phobias.

Time is sooooooo valuable, the most important currency. If you get comfortable with your lifestyle, you lose your creative edge, your ideas get stale. Make your time valuable.

Of course people fall into lulls and things don’t develop as quickly, but being able to identify it and understanding a way that works to give yourself enthusiasm again is a vauable life skill, people don’t invest enough in.

When you are in a “producing” state, then you have to move efficiently

Asking yourself, “what's the fastest way to MVP?” “What is a realistic time table given your life” (Assuming everyone’s life has far too much jammed into it.) Once you have a slew of answers and understanding. Iterate quick. Don't be in love with your designs, as they shortly change for the benefit of people.

#complacency #legacy #accomplishment #fears #career navigation #imposter syndrome #faking it till you make it

Romanticizing the brand, philosophizing the narrative

My gf was just explaining to me the other day the value of a trendy bracelet, that people are talking about and you require a tool to take it on and off and it fits perfectly. The bracelet was a Cartier bracelet. A bracelet from a french luxury company from the 1800s.

If you take the brand out of that statement, what do you have left?

Most likely a decent looking bracelet that is difficult to put on and off, that has another accessory needed to own the bloody thing. Seems like a difficult purchase to justify.

But it isn’t because that functionality comes with a trustworthy ethos: The luxury and quality that has been attached to something iconic.

A brand can change your whole perspective on something you would otherwise dismiss.

It creates a descriptive narritive that is simple, easily recognizable, accessible even if it isn’t accessible to a demographic. It is just know.

You essentially need the name recognition of words, but eventually when the product matches the personality you set up for it and people start to believe it, then you can take the name off and then doodles or swooshes become iconic for adjectives that you essentially have earned within your industry.

#branding #logos #design marketing

Tangible world design, hmmmmm...

Never designed a menu before. I don’t really do much print design in general. It was an interesting challenge. To me, you just want to make sure that you can read the effing thing, and that it has good stuff on it. So really it’s on a the restaurant.

Fortunately this place has the latter. If you make good things, you’re going to worry about how it is presented from top to bottom and it was a really great relationship working with Hacienda Cantina.

What a beautiful logo they have and brand that lends itself to creative direction and I’m very pleased with the outcome for their Valentine’s day menu.

So based on my criteria, really, you had to find what was important information, which to me is the food. OK make it big and bold, easy to notice. All the other text describes the main dish to help you understand it further. Make the reddish pink becoming the accent color that pops. Naturally.

As far as the visual presentation, this “scribbly” heart did just enough to convey the theme of St. Valentine and keep it simple and elegant, which is something you will notice quite a bit in my design history.

#menu design #holiday themed #print design