Designers follow laws, rules and guidelines (day in day out) to come up with user friendly, usage focused mock-ups, prototypes and models.
But, I guess it’s time for some vacation..
Let’s pack our bags to the ‘dynamic island’! Time for some gyan!
There’s this old quote in Tamil that we use:
“vallavanukku pull-um aayudham”
which means
“A blade of grass is more than a mighty weapon for a strong person”
likewise ‘notch-um aayudham’ to sell as the USP of this gen phone. Yup, it’s about the just launched iPhone 14 Pro comparing it with other smartphone(s) design!
Right after the launch event, as a designer, here’s what I’m gonna take with me to work, stronger:
- Users have pain: Majority of smartphone users have viewed the notch as an awful disturbance on their gorgeous screens. All they’ve wanted was their screen to emit out wonderful content for usage & consumption with no black mark!
- Hear ‘em out: predominant users have yelled out - “we want the front camera for selfies, we like the Face unlock but we don’t want this notch on the screen, take it off and give us something better”
- Empathise with the user’s frustrations, which doesn’t mean a designer has to address what the user has only instructed to do so. Now is the time you remember Ford’s quote: “If I had asked people what they wanted, they’d have answered faster horses”. So, empathise just means bringing in the designer’s touch to either rule out the pain or to convert the pain to pleasure making it something useful. End of the day, the product/service gets evolved for the better.
So many brands only focused on the user’s pain and wants, they came up with a camera under the screen, many ditched the face unlock and brought back the finger print over the screen, while some went beyond levels by designing the camera system raising off the screen…
But on the other side, the fruit company kept calm, understood none of these would work out because user requires the front camera, Face ID sensor on screen no matter what, so they empathised and decided on creating an island around it. *plot twist*
Dynamic island is the modern day lateral thinker’s way of design!
It may be removed or retained later, may be welcomed or rejected now, but can never be ignored!
Empathy is to solve the users’ pain after crying along with them, while empathise is to understand, hear the users out and churn out the most useful decision, no compromise on quality, no comprise on evolution.
So, wishing myself and y’all designers a happy bag packing, not to the island, but to the land of lateral design mindset!