DESIGNATION Labs interview with Alli Dryer, Designer at Twitter.
Please tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you become a digital designer? I trained and started out my career as an architect, using digital tools to design physical spaces. The character of the built environment has a huge impact on the quality of people’s lives, and thinking about how to improve the experience of interacting with buildings and spaces was what I loved most about architecture. I eventually left the field to concentrate on digital design, but human interaction with complex systems is a theme that runs through my work.
"I figured out enough HTML and CSS to hack a Wordpress template into shape and started writing posts. I enjoyed designing and building the website even more than I liked producing content for it."
When did you decide that you wanted to head into digital design professionally and why? While I was studying for my license, I became fascinated by high-tech building materials. I started a blog to record my research, thinking it could be a great way to organize thoughts and share what I learned with others. I figured out enough HTML and CSS to hack a Wordpress template into shape and started writing posts. I enjoyed designing and building the website even more than I liked producing content for it, and even though I’m a morning person I found myself staying up late to make tweaks and improvements.
One day I was browsing Twitter looking for info on materials when I stumbled across a job posting for a UX designer role at a mobile agency called Bottle Rocket Apps. I remember reading the description of the position and thinking, "I want to do this! I think I can do this!" I was excited about the possibilities that had opened up with the advent of the iPhone, and I saw such strong parallels between what I’d experienced building my website and architectural design that I didn’t hesitate (much) to make the jump. During my interview, I made the case that formal training in systems thinking and visual communication could translate to a new medium. I got very lucky and Bottle Rocket decided to take a chance on me. I worked there on apps for media companies for two years and then briefly on enterprise apps at an agency called Idean before making the switch to product design here at Twitter.
"I think in order to improve it's important to ask lots of questions and practice using your tools."
What do you think it takes to become a good [digital] designer? What are some industry sites or blogs that you read on a regular basis? While I've been in the workforce for a while now, I still feel like I'm just getting started as a digital designer. I learned what I know about the field through side projects or on the job. It can be overwhelming, but I have been lucky to work with smart, patient, insanely talented designers and developers who are generous with their time and expertise.
I think in order to improve it's important to ask lots of questions and practice using your tools. I also spend a fair amount time reading books on design, keeping up with articles posted to Designer News and Medium, and downloading and playing with hundreds of apps to stay current and find inspiration. With all of that, it can be a good idea to step away from the pixels sometimes. I enjoy drawing and painting because it’s relaxing but it also sharpens my hand/eye coordination and observation skills. Lately I've become interested in animation and how motion in software design can convey meaning and delight people. I wanted to understand how animations work and where animation in interaction design is headed so I built a website called Capptivate.co. I post short, looping videos of high quality app animations that are sorted into useful categories. Capptivate.co preserves integral and tricky to communicate aspects of app design, sparks new ideas, and also works as a kinetic pattern library for designers and developers working on iOS apps.
What are a few of your favorite design software tools, and why? (Web frameworks, Adobe software, etc.) I'm in and out of Photoshop and Illustrator most days at Twitter. Right now it's surprisingly hard to find tools that are specifically geared towards designing for interaction. I find myself using Keynote, Flash, and After Effects to make quick movies to explain how certain UI elements should move and behave on screen. I'm also slowly learning to use Framer.js and Quartz Composer + Origami, software that's getting better as people build examples and create patches specifically for interface design. I'm hopeful that as the industry continues to evolve we'll have the ability to experiment with animation and interaction more easily. I think digital designers are still learning the limits of what we can achieve with animation and motion in digital design. It’s an exciting time to be a designer and there are still so many problems we have yet to solve!
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