E19 | A Conversation about Design for Non-Designers | Kim Calderone

In this episode, we have a great conversation all about the language of design with my guest Kim Calderone, a Product Designer at ServiceTitan with a background in User Experience, Design Research and Graphic Design. ******************************* Questions Asked ******************************* Tell us about your background. Please define design from a UX perspective. For user centered design, is layout or style affected by the user? Is the blueprint more objective versus style being more subjective? How can a company standardize on a single blueprint? Why is it important for developers to understand more about design? How can we bridge the gap in design knowledge between designers and developers? How do you strike the balance between your design and the limitations of code? What should designers know about developers to improve communication? What should developers know about designers to improve communication? Tell us about the designer lifecycle and how it compares to the software development lifecycle. What is a problem statement? Tell us about user research and when that happens? When do you work on the blueprint for the design? Tell us about information architecture and when do you start it? What are wireframes and when do you start that? What is usability testing? What is a prototype? When is style and colors added to a design? When do developers get involved during the design phase, if at all? When should you involve content authors during the design process? What is ideation? What are the tools you use to create prototypes? How do you strike the balance between the amount of time you put into a prototype versus the actual finished product. What are "micro animations"? What kinds of research do designers perform, apart from user research? How do designers use data to guide their designs? What's the difference between User Experience Design, Visual Experience Design and User Interface Design? Should designers be involved in the content modeling phase of a project? How can we bring content modelers and designers together earlier in the project? What is the most important thing people in a team should know about designers? ******************************* Reference Links ******************************* Figma (https://www.figma.com/) Sketch (https://www.sketch.com/) Zeplin (https://zeplin.io/) Invision (https://www.invisionapp.com/) ServiceTitan’s Anvil Design System (https://anvil.servicetitan.com/) Kim’s Portfolio (https://www.kimcalderone.com/)