Design Principles & UX Philosophy
– part 2 with Erik Lövquist, Head of Design
This is the second part of our three-part series with Quiddly’s Head of Design, Erik Lövquist. With a background spanning business intelligence and fintech, and a PhD in Computer Science and applied UX design, Erik has spent his career moving from VR and AR research into leading roles in design.
For the past three years, he has been shaping the user experience at Quiddly. In Part One we explored his journey and the challenges of designing multi-layered user experiences across factoring, invoicing, and debt collection. Now, in Part Two, we zoom in on Quiddly’s design and development process, and the principles and philosophy that guide Erik and his team.
The Design & Development Process
It’s one thing to sketch up designs, create systems and map out user flows. It’s quite another to take input from customers, sales teams, and product managers, and translate that into real, clickable products that get used (and loved) rather than ignored.
We do regular customer visits where we observe how our system is used in practice. During those visits, we identify improvements that are anchored in actual needs and the context of use.
Erik explains that Quiddly has ongoing conversations with customers throughout feature development. Customers are part of the requirement process and provide feedback during product discovery. UX designs are reviewed by customers before implementation, ensuring expectations are met.
But of course, not everything is guld och gröna skogar (all gold and green forests, as the Swedish saying goes). Over another shortbread and sip of chai, we lean in and ask Erik: what are the common pitfalls designers should avoid when turning user needs into flows and interfaces?
Failing to deeply understand the needs and context of use. If you don’t, you risk creating solutions that fall short of user expectations. This is a constant risk for us too, which is why we work closely with our customers to identify accurate requirements and evaluate design ideas early.
He continues by stressing the danger of creating “snowflakes” – components that only exist in one isolated place in the system. The ambition should always be for similar views to re-use as much as possible from other views, ensuring a seamless user experience across domains.
Translating for the Code Gods
Software development involves many professions, and they all need to understand each other to create the right outcome: a product. So how does Erik hand over designs to developers in a way that ensures consistency with the original vision?
For the handover process, we’ve found Figma works well. It allows developers to access and review design files in detail. Our developers already know our high-level design principles and Quiddly’s design patterns, so as part of the development process they dedicate time to review and comment on the designs.
Erik adds:
There’s also an active dialogue between the design team and developers during code implementation, when questions naturally arise as they dig deeper into a feature.
Quiddly’s developers review requirements and designs as part of product discovery. Jira is used to facilitate questions and discussions between product, design and development before implementation. Finally, everything goes through a test environment where all stakeholders can try new features internally before they are released to customers.
What Are the Underlying Design Principles?
Now that we’ve seen the process, what about the principles behind it? Before discussing Quiddly’s overarching guidelines, we ask Erik which principles he personally comes back to again and again.
He highlights one in particular: “Design for purpose as well as delight.” This is achieved through:
- User empathy: Identify user needs and understand the usage context.
- Stand on the shoulders of giants: Re-use established UX patterns wherever it makes sense.
- Challenge yourself: Keep design practice relevant and interesting by finding new ways of delighting the user.
We already know from Part One that Quiddly has its own design system, guiding both designers and developers and ensuring a coherent UX that doesn’t break. But what underlying “north stars” guide that system? Erik sums them up in three points:
- Focus on the job: Tasks should be solved when, where, and how the user expects it.
- Professional yet playful: Contemporary and minimalistic design, infused with the playfulness of our brand.
- Familiar and reliable: A flowing experience that’s quick to pick up and easy to trust.
Continue Reading in the Final Part
In the third and final part of our series, we zoom out and ask the really big questions about the future of design. Will AI change everything? Or is something more fundamental at play?