The People, Place and Space Newsletter #24
Magic moments, design blanding, and prototyping physical experiences
Has it really been 2 years since starting this newsletter? Thanks for sticking with me! And if you’re new - welcome. I hope you find this monthly roundup of user centred design content useful 🙌
How we design magic moments at Monzo
By Vuokko Aro
I’ve not always had great experiences with the Monzo app itself - mainly with the navigation and information architecture - but what they have nailed are the really interesting interactions that Vuokko talks about in this blog.
Magic moments make people feel something. And details that evoke emotion are also more memorable. Like Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Why everything looks the same
By Ryan Duffy
Picture credit: Knowable via Ryan Duffy
A really interesting dive into the “blanding” of design, the aesthetic that seems to permeate every new product and service that emerges.
Blanding is the copy-paste model of consumer product development and brand marketing that follows repetitive patterns in the name of modernity but at the expense of authenticity and originality.
It’s a great article, with a lot of scorn poured onto AirBnB as the originators of this monotonous design trend (“startup gentrification”), but equally addresses the deeper issue that those doing the design work are from non-diverse groups, contributing to the lack of variety in the resulting designs. Also good to pair with the linked article from Bloomberg.
Hat tip to my fab colleague James Thomas for the link to this 🙌
Simulating in-store experiences with physical prototyping
By Steph Clubb and Hannah McDonald, Co-Op Customer Experience Team
Picture credit: Co-Op Customer Experience Team
Co-Op is a Uk supermarket, and the team has blogged how they approach prototyping and testing the in-store experience. The whole write up is fascinating, and shows the depth of consideration that was needed - noting store delivery times, employee shift patterns, and discerning shop floor from activities carried out in the stockroom.
Our desktop walkthrough was a quick, cheap way to prepare for an in-store trial. Bringing our ideas to life in this way meant we picked up on things that might not work in stores and we could adapt our concepts without wasting time or money.
This is a great method for considering a whole physical system and the interplay between its parts, rather than a separate pieces in isolation. I also loved the co-op team write up this month on their user research on form design, really worth a read.
Also worth your time
Stoking my FOMO of Service Design in Gov conference, Caroline wrote a great article on “what is a service designer?” which is brilliant
Fun article on negative space, and sometimes how taking the most counterintuitive path can be the most successful way forward
Useful summary of 6 principles for inclusive design
Slides from a presentation about how to annotate designs for accessibility - a useful resource
Great resource from Create/Change on creating a Design History for what you are working on, and why they are important
Open Peeps is a library of customisable illustrated people to use in your design work
What I’ve been up to
I’m heading into my last week working at HM Land Registry before moving over to GDS to take on the Head of Design post for GOV.UK. I’m hugely excited, but it’s bittersweet for me - I will really miss the team at Land Reg, they are incredibly talented, lovely people that have made my time there worth it a million times over.
I’ve also been watching the inevitable unravelling of Twitter since Elon took over, it’s sad to see a many layered community i’ve been part of for years start to disintegrate. I tried Mastodon but ended up so frustrated with the whole experience. I’m hoping to stay on Twitter as I have so many connections with great people. In the meantime, I enjoyed reading this scathing take-down from the Verge, enjoy!
That’s all for this month, take care folks and see you next month!
Laura