Beyond the UI: Unconventional Sources for Product Design Inspiration
Updated on:
May 27, 2024
A little while ago I was thinking about where I learn or refine the skills I use as part of my role as a product designer. I realised I had shifted a lot of my resources from traditional product design content, to resources from many areas including politics, film and science. On the face of it, this comes across as a little odd - however many of the skills we use in our roles as product makers are also shared across other areas including creativity, empathy, strategy, logic and decision making.
When designing for a digital product, it’s easy to get caught up in the online experience, whether it’s analysing data, user testing or researching competitors or inspiration. This is true whether you are a designer, engineer or product manager. To help you understand how I’ve tried to learn from less traditional resources here are a few of the areas and methods I have incorporated.
It’s fair to say this century was eventful. Political discourse aside, it’s a great resource to improve your understanding of core skills like logic, compromise and prioritisation, as well as the pitfalls that come from poor decision making. Events such as the Berlin Airlift and Cuban Missile Crisis are great examples to emphasise this and are worth spending some time looking into if you want to understand how to solve complex problems.
American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, is the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer. Other than covering his time managing the Manhattan Project, it's an in-depth look into his open-minded outlook and approach to changing politics and scientific breakthroughs. It’s a great read for any Product Manager and will help develop skills in empathy, strategy and logic.
Another great example is A Line In The Sand by James Barr, which tells the history of the Middle East after the First World War. A good portion of it covers the Sykes/Picot Agreement which for any product designer shows what can go wrong when you fail to understand important human and cultural factors in decision making.
The best film makers can bring content to life in ways that help increase engagement, and tell a story in a more intuitive way. The skills are easily translatable to working on an app or software and so it’s worth product designers spending time breaking down a scene or creative decision to understand why its engaging.
Edgar Wright has popularised the so-called “fast-take” and “fast-transitions” to communicate a message in a way that engages the audience on some of the more mundane parts of the story’s he’s telling. In Hot Fuzz the main character moves from London to Somerset, and traditionally film makers would avoid or skim over this kind of story element. Edgar Wright however created a montage which shows the journey in a creative way - notice the declining signal on the Nokia phone.
A recent example came from the opening scene from the TV series The Last Of Us. The series is about a fungal pandemic that turns the human population into zombie-like creatures, and the show-runners wanted to open the series with some exposition on fungal infections (lovely stuff). Their solution was a scene set in the 1960’s on a light night chat show, where a scientist calmly explains that the biggest threat to human kind is not a viral pandemic, but a fungal one. The beauty of this scene is that it keeps the content relatable to us the audience, who have just experienced a Covid pandemic, and are wary of future outbreaks. The build up to the line “...what if, for instance, the world were to get slightly warmer” is then the moment 'we', the audience is hooked - i’m not just interested in the show, i'm now invested in it.
This is maybe the most important thing I do when working on products. It’s easy to forget that most of what we do online also has a physical method, whether it’s buying new clothes, or opening a bank account. The digital and physical experiences are not exclusive of each other; they share the same journeys, decisions and concerns, and I’ve found it extremely helpful when designing products to understand the physical experience where one exists.
If you take the experience of opening a bank account you need to consider many micro-experiences like reviewing different banks, speaking to a bank employee, selecting the right product, understanding the requirements, fees etc…
A good exercise is to mentally log the decisions you made when completing a physical task. You can go as granular as you need to, but it’s important to understand why you made that decision. In the example above you could note down any tasks, required help, tone of voice or information you need to acquire and supply. Doing this can really help you develop a deeper understanding of the problems and pain points you can also expect to encounter with the digital equivalent, and resolve it in a creative way.
I want to make it clear, spending time using product design/management resources to hone your skills and discover new opportunities is crucial to developing in your chosen function. However I firmly believe in order to acquire a more nuanced perspective, it’s important to explore other areas and identify transferable skills. Product is in essence rooted in human behaviour, and that extends to many other areas. The examples above have really helped me, and while they may not be helpful for everyone, the important part is to find what non-product resources you can engage with, and help you in your development.