Weeknote #601: Beautiful simplicity
This week our industrial designer Mika Nenonen did beauty shots of products he has been recently working on. Seeing them made me realise how much I’ve missed products that not only function well but are also aesthetically pleasing.
For the past decade in the design industry we fought hard to bring customer experience as a key element of a brand. We tried really hard to make everything simple and functional so that the customer would fall in love with a product and stay loyal to the brand. To make the love last we dismissed the fleeting “wow-effect” and focused on making the “of-course” type of experience. We have succeeded pretty well at making simple products. I feel, however, that we have forgotten about the beauty.
The side effect of simplicity is that designers don’t take enough risks anymore. They don’t push themselves enough in fear of making things too complex and instead settle for common practices that work well. As a result everything looks the same. This can be especially seen in digital design where every website and app looks the same and behaves the same. Brands lack uniqueness.
These days in tech products we’re so focused on releasing fast and iterating later that we only leave ourselves time for releasing. Building something beautiful is a slow process as beauty comes from detailed nuances that take time to perfect.
I’m not advocating choosing form over function. In the end beauty is function. As Marie Kondo would say beautiful things spark joy in us. Joy is an emotion that makes us feel and feelings make us something that we lately forget to be — human.
I wish we all could be more like Mika. In his designs he is not afraid to take risks and make bold statements. His designs are honest and he takes chances. He makes beauty and function dance together.
My other colleagues also worked on beautiful things this week:
Topias has been designing dashboards for visualising complex data, and building prototypes for logistics service.
Petri has been exploring future technologies and building a project plan for a global client around them.
Shakti has had a busy week workshopping and mapping customer journeys and prototyping concepts for another project. Sometimes one also gets to be a part of not one but two new project kickoffs in the same week, exciting stuff incoming — stay tuned!
Elisa has been working for small improvements in office interior and basic admin and financial duties.
Mika Lindstedt has been helping our clients to sharpen their business model and customer journeys to gain deeper understanding how to roll out a new service for people.
Jukka is solving tricky problems with consumer customization of ticket options and creating universally scalable components, conducting Nordkapp personal development program interviews and on the private side creating new Noise Trees songs for his upcoming collaborative release on Post-Rift.
Sometimes a calendar with a lot of meetings is just exciting, like it has been for Annukka. Preparing for some new things, while still working on the same brand stuff (also exciting!) as last week.
Remembering the importance of accessibility, Sari has been defining the previously made designs to be fully accessible as well as started to think some data visualisations.
Tuukka straight after his winter holidays started a new project and while having beginner’s mind he is trying to figure out what is the real problem that needs to be solved.
Meri and team have been in QA mode. First release to a test audience is approaching, exciting times ahead when we start getting feedback from real customers on how the product performs in their lives and the value it brings to them.
Masha is continuing fine tuning interactions in one of her existing projects and excited to start two new ones
Sonja is on well deserved holidays which she is spending in London. While at it, she got new ideas how AR can help with child care.
Satu has been resonance testing concepts with first internal stakeholders and later with customers. There no feeling like getting proper feedback from the people and learning what has been designed right and what should be reworked.
Sami has been diving back to basics and has worked on a couple of early stage branding projects, at both sides of the table. He feels that in the middle of all abstraction and long term outcomes that are so common for our industry and projects, it’s really healthy to get one’s hands dirty and head down on pure, simple craft every now and then.
For Vesa, it has been nice (again) to realize how well our old and new customers trust us and how much value we can create together.
Juhani has had his hands full on kicking off new projects with sales and operations planning. Fortunately the kids have been on winter vacation in order to enable longer hours :)
Eero is still polishing things at Yle but it looks like a new project is starting (with an old customer). Also preparing Nordkapp crew for the coming Himos trip!
Panu has been creating new brand identity for a new technology client and getting ready for new project for an existing client.
Helmi is continuing to make beautiful and smart things with her client. She has been asking the right questions, challenging the team and making sure her project delivers on the highest level of quality.
Mika Nenonen has been busy with documenting ID work and contacting new potential clients. Focus on China.
Liam is gearing up for usability testing next week, and looking forward to hearing how people will feel about the new product!
And myself, I have been spending this week hanging out with end customers and conducting qualitative research.
Five things we read this week
- How Great Design Could Fix the World’s ‘Wicked Problems’ from Fortune, with IDEO’s Tim Brown
- The charity: water story — truly amazing and inspiring movie.
- Our Digital Lives Don’t Need to Make Us Unhappy, Unhealthy, and Unwise from the Harvard Business Review
- Tech Is Splitting the U.S. Workforce in Two from The New York Times
- Designing for accessibility is not that hard from UX Collective
Weeknotes are what happened at our studio this week. This week’s weeknote was curated by Monika Zych
Monika is a UX designer and a curious human being with a deep love for aesthetics.
