My notes on the 10x design conference 2024
This years 10xDesign conference brought together designers from different areas of expertise. These are some of my takeaways from the 25 talks I attended during the conference:
The influential product designer — Femke van Schoonhoven
How can you have more influence when dealing with different project stakeholders?
- Think about what they care about and how you can speak to what they care about (for example, engineers vs. Product Managers)
This can enhance your ability to get the buy in that you need when pitching your design decisions.
Nelson Noa
In the later part of his presentation, Nelson mentioned that motion & interaction design will become a stronger design trend moving forward. This is in part due to the onset of technologies such as Apple Vision Pro and the overall popularity of immersive user experiences which extend beyond the screen. So as a designer, it’s probably not going to hurt to try and pick up some skills that go towards immersive user experiences.
I can observe as well that nowadays, it’s important for brands to start to become more personal and customer focused. When consuming content online, people are flooded with options. It can help to incorporate storytelling elements and showcase what kind of vibes your brand has. At the same time it’s a mistake to ignore social media for your brand or the benefits that building a personal brand can bring you.
Facing fear and embracing growth by Benten Woodring
Benten Woodring emphasized in his talk, where he shared about his personal path and growth that it is key to be consistent. He recommended regularly sharing your work online as it can build community and try to do something every day for your growth, even if it is just something small.
This goes in accordance to my personal philosophy. In my head, resilience and consistency beat money, talent and intelligence. You don’t have to be the best, the smartest. It doesn’t matter from where you start. But if you can keep doing something to pivot, to grow, every single day — even when you don’t feel like it, in the long run you’re going to get to wherever you wish to be going. It’s about cumulative interest. Small wins every day.
I recently saw on the futur instagram account that something else that will help you is to focus on the actions you think could have the biggest impact on your growth. Where you see that you could enhance your skillset, or what are some things you feel like you should know more about.
“About 99% of the time, the right time is right now”
-Kevin Kelly
“The time will pass anyway. Why not go after what you want?”
He also recommended building your audience & personal brand. And to try and find a niche.
The logic of gorgeous UI — Erik Kennedy
Erik Kennedy mentioned Jakobs law: don’t reinvent the wheel where it’s not necessary when designing User interfaces. Jakobs law says that people are going to spend 99% of their time on other peoples apps and websites so you should make yours look & work like theirs. If you’re designing a common user flow like a log in/ sign up screen and you design it completely different then how it looks on other sites then you’re going to confuse people.
I think this was a main lesson for me when I transitioned from being a Junior designer to being more Senior. At the start you’re going to hear everywhere that as designers we’re always supposed to iterate, improve and innovate. However, if a component has been done over and over and over again — perhaps there is still a way to improve it. But you’re not doing yourself any favors if the log in screen on your app looks different then in 99% of other digital products. It’s good to do due diligence and even deep dives into UX studies to see why each component was designed the way it was. Why should there be a placeholder text in a form? And so on.
In summary I enjoyed the talks of the conference, there was bits and bobs there for everyone to learn something new.
