Hello, team —

A reminder: you subscribed to this newsletter written by me, Naz Hamid, because you were interested in what I am building here and missives around product design. I’d suggest you can always unsubscribe below, but you may not need to… read below for more.

Well, that was 2020. And I had plans to launch Preflight back in Q1. 2020 turned that on its head, though not in the negative. Space was created, for better and worse, to focus on other important things, and I found myself in Q4 working harder and more than I have in a while. Making up for some kind of “lost” time.

With 2020 came a clarity. Less is more. Simplicity is key.

Hi, just a friendly reminder that you signed up for Preflight→PATH, a product design-focused newsletter by your host, Naz Hamid. I’m happy you’re here. But if you’d prefer not to be, you can unsubscribe anytime below.

I am quite fortunate to maintain a steady stream of work during these times, and I continue to have conversations with potential clients regarding the build of their first apps.

It’s been a while. On purpose. A lot has happened. I wanted to pause. Writing a newsletter about product design didn’t seem to rank highly in terms of the effects and movements that everyone is going through. 

In my talk at New Adventures in January 2019 (wow, does that feel like a lifetime ago), I spoke about diversity and inclusion. One of my talking points is titled: “Champion others.” Under that point are three sub-points, with the pertinent one being “Engage and amplify.”

In the last weeks, engaging and amplifying has been what I’ve been practicing. In my presenter notes, I wrote this:

There are days when I find myself dawdling. My attention drawn here and there, but never for long. No committments. Just following interest, discovery, and playing.

I missed last week. I didn’t show up. I was in a mood. And this week, with Christian Cooper on top of Ahmaud Arbery, and now George Floyd, it feels crushing.

But here I am in your inbox. Amidst everything else going on between work and the world, I felt like this would be a place to show up.

Somewhere in there, I’m reminding myself it’s okay to dawdle a little bit. To remember to chase curiosity and learn things because of events in the world. That dawdling is a response to being a better and well-rounded human.

No, not that Headspace.

I’m referring to the headspace that happens during design. Not the pencil-to-paper kind, nor the high-fidelity pixel-pushing variety. But rather, the design with your mind.

Here in Issue 8, I wanted to say thank you to those who are still subscribed and reading. It’s an effort to write every week, but it has disciplined me into fostering a regular writing habit. I recognize not every newsletter is gold (or even bronze), but hopefully we’ll continue to do this together. The group here is small at just a little over 110 subscribers, but that intimacy permits me to write more honestly and for peers who care about what I have to say.

I am fortunate that my early-stage clients and a VC firm are still working with me and that two decades of operating independently have allowed me to weather the ups and downs of not only our industry, but also social and economic transitions at large. Despite my experience, I continue to learn. I have genuine interest in exploring new topics and am receptive to differing opinions.

In that spirit, I’d like to open up this conversation to get feedback and input, but also to offer guidance.

Over the course of my career, I’ve developed a certain style, a comfort zone. My personal inclinations for design angles toward classic versus trendy.

Reflecting on my early work, some of it is mildly cringeworthy while some retains its value and effectiveness — I could dig up something from a decade ago and still be proud of how it looks, works, and feels.

That said, it’s fun to explore new styles and techniques.

During the 22+ years of work I’ve produced, not much of it exists anymore, but I don’t feel any sadness or despair. That is the inevitable nature of designing for the internet. You’d be fortunate to have a design survive two years, let alone double that.

Taking a break from deeper thinking, I decided to focus this week’s newsletter on a new tool I was recently introduced to. Remotion is a video collaboration app that I’m using with an early-stage client as we design an iOS app. It’s remarkable how Remotion is less intrusive, and yet, its ambient awareness is better. Plus, the user interface and user experience are really slick.

One of my favorite bits is onboarding. It quickly captures a webcam still of you at your desk, and that image becomes your avatar. It feels authentic — as if live video is on even though it isn’t. And when you do chat, the avatars come alive.

If you use Gallery View in Zoom frequently and squeeze the window width to stack everyone, Remotion has a superior take on this feature. (Also these are different days: I just wear black tees a lot).

Every morning I read about a situation that pushes us further away from what we’ve come to know or expect. With that comes the question of how our evolving reality affects product design. In particular, for those who practice it.

While some tech companies are seizing opportunity during these times, with others downscaling their ambition and growth, plenty of soul-searching is circulating. As a product designer, you may be asking yourself: What now?

Part of Preflight’s creation was to explore the function of an independent designer in a world where designers were going in-house, a result of the industry normalizing heavy structure and hierarchy. Tech has leveled out to develop corporate structures with at-times unknown or archaic HR structures to match (leveling, pay bands, etc.). It leaves designers in states of deep specialization.

To help me understand this move to in-house and specialization, I joined VSCO in late 2016 and stayed for almost two years. Since my departure in 2018, I have thought at length about my experiences, the lessons learned, and the knowledge gained.

I recently ended a meeting on the now-ubiquitous Zoom. As with many times before, a few attendees would unmute themselves to speak. Even though I’ve used Zoom for years now, the particular shortcut (spacebar!) eluded me. Partly because of forgetting to look it up after a call was over, and partly because it’s not an action I do very often. I just click the mute/unmute button when needed via mouse.

How barbaric!

Perhaps I dislike the mode because it requires a temporal action: holding down the spacebar to unmute versus switching between modes with a little bit more…depth? Permanence? Commitment?

Regardless, it made me realize I only have some semblance of competency with so many available products. Very few require me to master them. In most of these cases, it’s because I learn just enough to enable me to achieve what I set out to do. Beyond that, certain features are tucked away unless it’s something I do often or repetitively, thereby unlocking a 🤯 mode when I do discover them.

The current situation has changed the world, and in many ways, potentially forever. One of the biggest changes to the office environment is the shift to working remotely, and from home specifically.

I’m well-versed at this. For 22+ years, I’ve worked with clients remotely, with in-person accommodations for essential meetings, fruitful working sessions, and eventually a three-month in-house stint that turned into my first full-time gig at VSCO.

Physical distancing before it was mandatory! (Too soon?)

Hello, how are you?

I didn’t send out an email last week. It seemed… unfitting to do so. We all know why, and here in SF, we’ve been under a shelter-in-place (a.k.a., stay home) mandate for a bit. If it’s occurring in your neck of the woods, or hasn’t yet, let’s trust that we’ll all be okay, that everyone is going through the same thing, and that we’re all in this together.

Dimension

A design trend in recent months has gained traction: neumorphism. A strange uncanny valley look, it’s a kind of drop-shadows-meets-flat-design design. Just enough shadow and elevation, as if to mimic real industrial design.

Digital design has long gone back and forth with dimension. Our medium is inherently flat. First, on a large, convex CRT screen, and now on a high-dpi retina screen that brings fidelity ever closer. And we embraced skeuomorphic design with aplomb — we wanted to feel something, even if all we could do was look at an interface and use an abstract substitute in the form of a mouse for our hands to touch (or rather, click) that thing.

Over the past five years, we eschewed drop shadows and gradients in favor of pragmatic flat design: an initially trend-driven repulsion of the design we’d been doing all along, driven by minimalism and worshipping at the altar of Rams, chanting the mantra, “Less is more!”