2014 Accel Design Conference

#design 2014

One day of panels and fireside chats with design leads from Android, Facebook, Dropbox, Slack, Pinterest, Squarespace, Twitter, Wealthfront, and others.

A few highlights and observations:

Mobile is not a category. Matias Duarte (Google): Mobile was a real distinction only when the device was constrained, and those constraints are dissolving as handheld touch devices become more capable. Design for one person moving from desk to pocket to car across a day, not a portfolio of separate products.
Metric discipline. Stewart Butterfield (Slack, Flickr): Orient teams around simple, objective, shared targets with strict definition. _“A DAU logged in, and read at least one message. It’s all or nothing. The whole team is using it or they’re not.”
Give it away early. Sarah Alpern (Wealthfront): During onboarding, users get an itemized portfolio they could take and invest independently after just a few questions, even before account login/signup. Shows value while offering direct path to it.
Scope research to the decision in front of you. Bradford Cross (Prismatic): Lengthy persona studies that are run out of sync with active build efforts will be ignored. Useful research is targeted. Aim research at the immediate problem.
Flat design is peaking. Duarte both championed flat UI and warned against too much of it. Stripping depth cues also strips differentiating objects.
UX titles absolve responsibility. Peter Merholz (Groupon) and Mia Blume (Pinterest) keep “UX” out of role titles. If you say one person is the UX person, everyone else stops owning the experience.