This year, I decided to make a turn in my career and instead of being a person who implements various user interfaces, I’m longing to become a person who can design them.
On my previous job, I’ve been doing rich software applications with the help of Adobe Flash and Flex technologies. I’ve seen countless number of interfaces designed by the people who don’t understand how to implement them, and I decided to try being the one, who can actually implement.
Motivation#
A friend invited me to work for the company he’s currently working with, Sopos. They were looking for a design person, who’d design various user interfaces. That was exactly what I’ve been looking for, so I gave it a shot.
Turned out, it’s a very complicated job, and is much more complex than I initially expected.
Instruments#
I’d say it has two instruments: a paper and software. First, we try to think of the logic of the interface, and then we try to draw it in Photoshop.
The latter part makes me mad. I think over the course of these two months, I learned the Photoshop much better than I ever knew it. Yet, when the interface becomes more and more complex, it’s just impossible to maintain it.
As for the 1st step there are some prototyping tools, they’re not really necessary. The primary part of this is thinking, which is done outside of instruments. Or, for me, thinking and my moleskine, they’re my process of meditating upon different ideas.
As an interface designer, I still struggle to produce the result I’d be happy with. It’s a very difficult job, and it’s hard for me to make it beautiful, if it need to be beautiful. I’m trying to make it work in the first place.
First Project#
My first project was a web-shop-like (of a size) web portal, and I was mostly on my own trying to develop it. While it was a great learning experience, it was very difficult. I was at the verge of giving up and just returning to where I’ve been, developing.
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