The role of a product designer comes with a lot of responsibilities, such as ensuring you’re making the most considered decisions since there is a downstream impact in the product development process. Designers can combat this by learning as quickly as possible. A designer has a unique skillset in which they can take requirements/problems and make it tangible in a visual way to create understanding. A very small percentage of this is screen design and in the conceptual process.I am a huge fan of film production and am often inspired by the process. One of the most costly elements in the process is extensive and costly reshoots. The definition of a reshoot is when a movie has to incorporate additional shots to capture content, whether it’s missing some key shots or there are changes in the process. Two prime examples of films that suffered from this are Solo: A Star Wars Story, and The Justice League; where extensive reshoots arguably affected the quality and success of the films.

Xin Xin, a UX Researcher on my team at One Medical often says, “You want to make sure you’re not polishing a turd.” There is no purpose in refining something that is not the right solution.We want to learn as quickly as possible, and this is where thumbnail sketches come in handy Thumbnail sketches are quick, abbreviated drawings, usually done very rapidly and with no corrections. You can use any medium, though pen or pencil is the most common. Thumbnail sketches, usually are very small, often only an inch or two high.The legendary Ridley Scott once stated that “the storyboard is the first look at the film.” I equate storyboards in films to sketching, wireframes, and flows as it pertains to design.

Similar to filmmaking, we as product designers can avoid extensive debt in the development process by ensuring we have the whole picture thought out at a low fidelity level.

Low fidelity iterations in thumbnail sketches can really drive the direction to something excellent. So before your team starts designing screens, consider storyboarding the project out together in thumbnail sketches.

Today marks my third anniversary at One Medical. Aside from my own ventures, this is the longest I’ve been at one company. It can feel like an eternity in Silicon Valley. Despite that, I feel there is still so much left to do. I’d like to share a few thoughts from the last 1,095 days.

Embrace Change

The biggest thing I’ve learned is that rather than anticipating change, prepping you and your team to embrace change is the key to a solid foundation. What I set out to do when joining on my first day is drastically different than what I’m doing now, and that’s okay. A lot of unexpected change has led to new opportunities I never would have imagined.

Transforming the self

I’ve changed a lot as a person during my time here both professionally and personally. Working in health made me really cognisant about wellness in my own life. In fact, I lost 25 pounds since I’ve started until now (that probably fluctuated a bit over the holiday). On a professional level, I discovered the love for the team I lead and their continued success. As someone who thought they wanted to be the best individual contributor for the rest of their career, this was a big realization and change. My managers have embraced this continued evolution.

Designing with purpose

There is no doubt that One Medical is the place where I’ve felt the most impact during my design career. As I grow older, my desire is to use Design for good and maximize the impact that it can have on people and industries who need it most. We have the opportunity to shadow our clinicians on a daily basis and really be in touch with who we’re designing for. It is really easy to get up in the morning to go to work.

Witnessing people grow

In addition to people on my design team, I’ve seen people all over the company grow. Whether it is first-time managers or one of our interns returning to join full time and now is a feature lead, it’s amazing to see people develop on a day-to-day basis.

Building teams require long-term commitment

A mentor once told me that if you truly want to make a difference at a company, it sometimes takes years to see it come to fruition. This really resonated with me as the design team has grown from two people to now 10 with continued growth. What you decide and set in motion continues to grow over the years.

Recruit your friends

For me, the most important thing about a place of employment is the people. I’m a person who always will recruit friends to join. In 2018 my friends Tyten and Sofia joined—making it such an added bonus to see friends at work and see them love work.

I am thankful for everyone who has made it such an amazing journey and continues to do so.

A few weeks ago, Twitter blew up about an interaction on iOS that people discovered. This behavior allows users to navigate through a text field by pressing down on the device.

How come you guys never told me this iPhone trick? I feel duped. pic.twitter.com/2RfRhI4Y1X

— Krissy Brierre-Davis (@krissys_kitchen) November 18, 2018

This feature has been available for 3D Touch-enabled devices since the iPhone 6. However, the release of the iPhone XR probably re-surfaced this discovery.

This sparked a lot of criticism by people on social media. Some were upset that Apple was not explicit about this to users and just rolled it out as a feature. I’m writing to challenge the criticism and say that it is not bad UX for Apple to roll out a feature like this without clear instructions. No, it’s not because of company allegiance or fanaticism, but on principle.

Let’s start by being clear that I’m not in the business of blaming the user. Is it wrong that users don’t know this? No. Should users have to watch an Apple Keynote to know how interactions work? No.

This interaction is an accelerator gesture, which is a supplementary way to achieve something. The beauty of multitouch interactions is that there are multiple pathways to achieve something. I believe the primary interaction has to be intuitive and clear. However, for secondary interactions, it does not have to stand out like the primary one. In this case, the primary interaction is tapping on the area you want to edit.

When Android rolled out this feature (prior to Apple) there was a similar sense of discovery with about the same level of onboarding and education.

Primary interactions need to be clear and obvious. However, secondary interactions and accelerators can often be something more broadly accessible, and can be a moment of delightful discovery.

The “No NUX” (New User Experience) rule does not seem to apply to Apple as much these days. There is a dedicated app for Tips and now onboarding has been introduced to iOS devices. That being said, here are a few reasons in defense that this design decision is not bad UX.

Interaction Accelerator

Multi-touch often also means multiple ways to use it. A few more examples of interactions like this on iOS:

• Tab and hold to bring tabs you recently closed in Safari
• Tap and drag to select photos
• Tap and hold to archive emails instead of deleting
• Swipe to delete digits in Calculator
• Hold the compose button in Mail to see drafts
• Interaction accelerators do not necessarily need to be discoverable as long as the primary interaction is clear.

Shortcuts that can be discovered and mastered

A mentor of mine once taught me the idea of interactions that can be mastered. He used the example of a light switch. It’s so simple that after interacting with it, it can be mastered. His point was that if you installed a light switch backwards, it’d be moments for someone to learn how it works. Multitouch gestures behave in a similar way. The more you use it, the more one understands how the ecosystem works.

The user should always feel empowered, and Apple has an opportunity to raise awareness of features without expecting people to sit through a Keynote event.

However, to call this “Bad UX” is a bit of a stretch.

P.S. Thank you Rosa McGee for edits and feedback.

Xin Xin, one of the Senior Product Designers on my team at One Medical wrote a piece about the importance of Storytelling for Healthcare. I highly recommend this read. If you’ve ever got through a health issue or experienced a loved one going through it, it’s very simple to see healthcare as part of our life, and our life is our story.

I’m excited to share that I’ll be speaking at SwiftConf this September! This will be my first time in Germany and I’m so thrilled to visit. I will be speaking about infusing the collaboration between engineering and design. My hope is to work on a side demo project that will hopefully share some cool concepts.

I have been thinking deeply about this quote from the author of one of my favorite books, The Little Prince.

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.”— Antoine de Saint Exupéry

Though this also applies to my personal life, I often reflect on this in the work setting and with design teams. This quote always finds me looking back at Kimber Lockhart’s post about fostering a sense of purpose. Everyone has a different drive and motivation, and when you can find people who are purpose-driven, there is an infinite amount of energy because it is their human need to explore and be curious.If you can find people who are in love with the process and are curious, they will lead you all over the ends of the earth.