Greetings from the Gazette — Edition #1
Hey there! First of all, I want to welcome to all of you new readers. It feels great to see how people interested in your thoughts and curations.
Last year for me, a new company, a new domain — It has been a very busy year in which I had the opportunity to develop myself in the areas of user research, design tests, OKR and product design focused on market needs.
In addition, I had to postpone the decision to move to London since my family expanding.
Considering all of these, it was an enjoyable yet exhausting year for me. I can say that I couldn't be as productive as I wanted, the articles I wrote, and the podcasts I published and madebybatu were interrupted.
Anyway, as of this year, I am planning to produce more content for madebybatu and diversify the content types.
The Gazette is one of them. In the Gazette, which will be published every two weeks, I will include the content I discovered and consumed during that time, as well as the content I produced myself.
Let’s start with the first essay I would like to mention.
Copying designs doesn’t work, and here’s why
We may find that designers sometimes imitate where competing products are considered successful, either in order to ensure that users have a similar experience, or in visual styles.
Sometimes we think we're just inspired, but we cross the line between copying and being inspired. However, with all this, Peter Ramsey has explained very well why copying design solutions doesn't work.
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Since the beginning of my career, my responsibilities and expectations as a digital product designer have focused more and more on strategy, research and development in every company I have worked for. During this time, my perspective on product design has ceased to include purely aesthetic concerns.
How will our product respond to users?
Are our hypotheses correct? Or are we wrong?
What do our users think of us?
Can they use it or where do they have problems?
What are the needs of our users and the problems with current competitors? How can we close these gaps?
Are we developing the right product for the right market? What are the market needs?
… and even more
searching answers for to those questions such as managing the processes leading to these answers; It has evolved into a process that works with researchers, data analysts, and product managers.
In this article, Andrea Pacheco explained what he learned during his 1 year working as a product designer at Meta.
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11:FS, have been released the new report for financial service products
If you are working in the field of fintech, you may want to review this report published by 11:FS, which includes impressions about financial products and the industry.
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Designing the future: How we prototype in AR and VR
It is very good behavior for companies whose product design processes are equipped at Meta scale to share their knowledge and experience as transparently as possible.
The article describes how Meta designs for AR and VR platforms, as well as how a designer with no experience in 3D design prototyped 3D.
Although the tools used -- Unity, Blender, etc. -- although it varies according to web and mobile products, the process followed is the same as in all design works.
Another topic whose importance I remember once again with this article is "Demos win arguments". They discussed the importance of demos made with early-stage prototypes in interviews and tests with stakeholders and users, especially in processes that can take a lot of effort in both design and development processes, such as products that require 3D design.
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Should designers code? I don’t think so. Should designers research? I hundred percent think so.
A couple of weeks ago I’ve shared a post on LinkedIn which was pointing the issue of “Does it possible to become a product designer with Figma courses?”
I actually didn’t mean that we shouldn’t take care of learning and improving our skills in design tools. It is definitely also an important thing to consider but in the end, they are all just “tools” which are not necessary to invest in firstly while design juniors while developing themselves in this field.
But I also would not want to say that these courses are not needed. Someone —who expert on these tools— should teach them to us.
The main point of this post was the terminology that we’re using. It is important because it is important for companies too. If we argue that “Hey, if you take this course and finish successfully you will be a product designer and you can find a job.” Would it be true? No. They would probably just learn a tool and they still need to learn (even maybe code, yes code!) and experience the knowledge of the platform that they’re designing for, and processes.
I personally think that this is important to consider because It is important for companies too. I have seen designers around the world promote their courses like “ ... become a product designer!” which sounds not correct to me.
Companies, looking at your story-telling skills, communication skills, domain and platform knowledge, thinking perspective, problem-solving skills, and the methodology you’re applying your design process which includes research → execution, etc. So, improve yourself on these topics instead.
Eurostar rebranding by Design Studio
The 2022 Awards Winners of Framer
IKEA Museum Presents — The Story of IKEA
Every product and every design has a story. If you're a company like IKEA that designs products that touch every aspect of our lives, you probably have a lot of stories to tell.
IKEA has told the story of each product in its digital museums, where it is inspired by the quality and experience of its products. I spent quite a while and I recommend it to you too.
Started using Craft for notes and to-do. It is an application where I can keep my daily work and personal notes so simple and organized, which significantly increases my productivity.
A new episode of Talkcast has been released. We’ve talked about topics such as “How should design works be criticized? Can anyone criticize or should they? Where do we go wrong while criticizing in general?” with Ozan Karakoç.
madebybatu.com has a brand-new view. It’s been a while since I was experimenting with different styles of visuals but each of them aimed to be simple, elegant, and content-based as much as possible.
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Last year, I decided to close Instagram since it was wasting my time a lot. According to that, I've closed my Twitter account as well because of similar reasons which affect my productivity and time management.
Since I still like to share photos I shoot, blogs I wrote, things I did, etc. I've started using Unsplash and built my own Photos page. I will also continue writing on Medium and Blog.