Design Details

288: Articulating Design Rationale

Episode Summary

This week, we answer a listener question about articulating design rationale during presentations. We also shared some exciting news from the Sketch team and recapped feedback from last week's episode where we pulled back the curtain on Design Details. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a fancy toothbrush and a design interview FAQ.

Episode Notes

This week, we answer a listener question about articulating design rationale during presentations. We also shared some exciting news from the Sketch team and recapped feedback from last week's episode where we pulled back the curtain on Design Details. And as always, we share a couple cool things like a fancy toothbrush and a web app to make your own generative art.

Sponsor:

This week's episode is brought to you by Abstract

Abstract is design workflow management for modern design teams. With Abstract, you can bring your design workflow into a single, unified place for designers, developers, and stakeholders to collaborate and keep work moving forward. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to abstract.com. And if you tweet at @goabstract and @designdetailsfm, with the phrase “improve my design workflow” you’ll be entered for a chance to win a $500 credit to their Business plan.

>> Want to become a sponsor of Design Details yourself? Email brian@spec.fm or sarah@spec.fm to get started :)

Follow-up:

• Last week we pulled back the curtain on Design Details and asked for your feedback. You replied! Some key takeaways:
  • Our titles need to be more straightforward and clear.
  • We need to bring back interviews, at a non-regular frequency, to balance our opinions and provide new insight .
  • We should try new ways of engaging with designers outside of the podcast - thank you to Kevin Gutowksi for the notes!
• Our Twitter poll about the proper pronunciation of "favicon" had a lot of votes, and some interesting results.

News:

• Sketch announced a $20m fundraising round to help them build new collaboration tools and a web version coming in 2019.
  • In the past we've interviewed Chris Downer and Pieter Omvlee from the Sketch team - listen to those to learn more about Sketch and how they thought about fundraising at the time.
  • Our good friends on the Layout podcast also discussed the Sketch news on this week's episode.

Listener Questions:

• Silvia asks: "I'd love to get advice on how to present my design rationale to others, and ways I can improve rationale overall. I find that I do have reasons for the design choices I made but when presenting I can't seem to put into words."
  • Jobs to be done is a useful framework for understanding critical user journeys and validating rationale.

One Cool Thing:

• Marshall shared the Philips Sonicare DiamondClean 9500, a toothbrush that can do everything except take out your trash.
• Brian shared Tinkersynth, a web app created by Josh Comeau that lets you playfully create generative art.

Design Details on the Web:

• We are @designdetailsfm
  • Brian is @brian_lovin
  • Marshall is @marshallbock
  • @Sarahberus and @Luperdev make us sound smarter than we are
• Join the conversation on Spectrum or leave us a review on iTunes

BYEEEEE!