Designers are all obsessed with process. I am, too. I think the following is true:
- Unlike the scientific method or any sort of legal method, there is no one “design method” that anyone agrees upon.
- Nobody agrees on what any branch of design is, to the point where DTDT, or “defining the damn thing,” is a common acronym.
- Methodology is a competitive differentiator.
And so, we exist in a realm where the only correct design process is the one that I personally invented.
At the same time, we all steal from each other. My first book is an amalgam of hundreds of sources; it invents hardly anything. (Heck, even the page layout is a ripoff.) Value-Based Design sits on the shoulders of giants, too, from Mike Monteiro’s groundbreaking work to traditional consulting texts on value-based pricing to business books that don’t suck.
Store Design will be available for preorder in one week, and unlike our other evergreen text, I don’t cite a whole lot of other work in it. But I also don’t have to – because it comes with over a decade of on-the-ground experience. By this point, if you know, you know; and if you want to know, you’ll join us.
I don’t claim to have all the answers, but I know this works reliably enough to ship it. And maybe someday I’ll have the honor of being ripped off.
In preparation for next week’s launch, we have significantly restructured & slimmed down the code base for our site. Let us know if you encounter any bugs, typos, or other issues!
This week, for paid members
- Our design of the week shows how to display discounted prices – and how not to.
- In our final public lesson that’ll be worked into Store Design, we talk about the practice of customer experience & personalization. All of CX can’t fit into one lesson, can it? The answer, of course, is no. But it won’t stop us from trying!
- And this fortnight’s teardown is for soon-to-be-defunct low-waste brand Dizzie.
Want in? Join us now – named one of the best ecommerce communities going on the web.
Links
- I’m preparing a small presentation about onboarding for a private community, so NN/g’s latest on contextual help versus tutorials lands. Tutorials generally don’t work for onboarding success, retention, or churn. Take note!
- The only way you can get me to post about your icon library in 2023 is to have over a thousand of them. That is how absurd icon libraries have become – mostly because icon selection has become extremely specific, always requiring the right icon for the right noun. One has cleared the bar.
- Choosing colors. Related.
- iOS 16.4, now in beta, provides you with the opportunity to instantly turn push notifications off in Safari, and never look back.