Khoi Vinh
Principal Designer at Adobe, blogger at Subtraction.com, former design director at NYTimes.com
Discussion
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Khoi Vinh
@khoi · Subtraction.com
I'm Principal Designer at Adobe, co-founder of Kidpost.net, Design Chair at Wildcard, and blogger at Subtraction.com. Ask me about design, creativity software, tablet software and movies.
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Brian Lin
@brianisme · Sr. UX Designer @ukengames
@khoi Could you speak a little about how Adobe goes about validating design decisions when creating a new tool like Comet?
@brianisme Lots of customer interviews and user research. Comet, in particular, has been shown in private to lots of people. Early next year we'll release a public beta that will then further inform design and development. But I think what a lot of people miss about product design and development is that validation can sometimes take years, that validation sometimes takes the form of dedicated, persistent iteration. That's one thing Adobe does really well; they keep coming back to continually tweak their solutions. You see that a lot on the many amazing apps that Adobe has developed for mobile—we're still very early in bringing creative workflows to phones and tablets, but Adobe has been really dogged in trying to progressively knock down the barriers to making that a reality. You see that in continued software innovation on Adobe's part, but also in the way the company has built meaningful dialogues with Apple, Google and Microsoft to help influence the direction of these OSes and devices.
Kate
@katesegrin · Community @ Product Hunt
Do you have any habits/routines to help get you in a "creative mindset" or flow state?
@katesegrin That's a great question. I always like to put headphones on to really concentrate. I usually start by clearing out as many simple to do tasks as I can (I use Todoist—amazing product) so that I can feel good about having swept the floor before I do something more creatively satisfying, if you know what I mean.
the doer
@thedoerdoes · frontend developer, UX designer
If you were to start your way in design as if from scratch now, which way would you go? Who were your design mentors, what rules did you follow in your way that made you stand where you are now?
@thedoerdoes If I were to start my design career from scratch today I would learn how to code at a much more advanced level than I'm capable of now—which wouldn't be hard, to be honest! But I'm not sure I would want to end up anywhere other than where I am today; I feel quite lucky to have been able to do what I've been able to do, and while I might wish for more time to learn or indulge in this or that, I'm pretty happy with the way things have turned out so far.
As for my design mentors, the one that I look up to the most is probably Steven Heller, a designer, writer, educator and historian. He's incredibly smart and well-rounded and a big hero of mine. I got to know him at The New York Times and we've stayed in touch, and I always get inspired after we catch up for lunch once or twice a year.
Sahil Kathawala
@sahilkathawala · editorial at Wildcard
@khoi @thedoerdoes what facet of coding? front-end, user-facing code, or the whole gamut?
@sahilkathawala @thedoerdoes Probably not the whole gamut, but starting with front-end, and then going as far into the stack as I could.
Wade Fasano
@doubleyew · Graphic Designer
When you get stuck, or are in a creative rut, where do you draw inspiration from? Any specific sites or people that are your go-to?
@doubleyew I usually turn to books. Lella and Massimo Vignelli have published a few monographs that are invaluable to me. I also like to look at design for print—the Society of Publication Designers has a ton of hardbound design annuals that are full of brilliant ideas even for product designers. Also, like I mentioned above, going for a walk or just taking a break from a problem is a huge help.
Sean Green
@disruptart · Founder, ARTERNAL
@khoi thanks for participating in this. Great to e-meet you. I'm the founder of ARTLOCAL CRM (for art galleries) and I'm bringing on 2-3 designers from General Assembly to design our UX. What are your suggestions for the 3 week period that we have them for to get the most out of them and their design deliverables (ie: our re-envisioned UX/UI for web and mobile)? We have them full-time at 40 hours per week per student beginning Monday.
@disruptart That sounds like a great opportunity but it could also be a big mess. I recommend that you have an advisor who has experience with the kind of problem you're trying to get these GA students to solve for you to help you with the overall process. Setting the right expectations for all sides at each juncture of the project will be critical, and only someone who has been through it before will know where and when to do that.
lugiamx
@lugiamx
Hi Khoi, what do you think about web and app front-end development these days, isn't it a downgrade?
I really missed the Flash era when I could directly create graphical objects and manipulate them later by code snippet. Nowadays development is code-compile-see-results-code again, taking away all the fun and the hand-on creative iterations process.
@lugiamx You're right, we have a long way to go before front-end tools can be considered to be truly robust. But I think that's what's exciting about this field; our craft doesn't sit still, it's constantly evolving, so the tools are constantly evolving too, trying to keep up. The downside to that different approaches to presentation layer implementation come and go. In some ways I miss the visual manipulation of Flash too. But I'm confident that something like that will return again before too long.