How to Break the Rules & Get Away With It

• What is the talk about?

  Sabrina: If you've ever designed a mobile application for either iOS or Android, you're probably familiar with each platform's respective design guidelines. These standards were put in place to help developers build apps quickly and consistently, but what happens when you encounter a unique design problem that can best be solved through a piece of custom UI? You experience that glorious "A-ha!" moment, only to be followed up with a jolt of anxiety at the idea of straying from Apple or Google's steadfast standards. In this talk I'll cover the right and wrong arguments for customization, for example going over the instances when one shouldn't reinvent the wheel but also the cases in which retrofitting your product's functionality into standardized UI elements could result in a sub-par user experience. I'll be showing concrete examples from my own experiences and existing popular mobile apps as well as examples of intelligent "rule breaking" that's paid o ff positively in other fields. To fully cover all sides of this topic I'll also touch upon how to best approach designing guidelines and content creation tools to both enable creativity while reinforcing quality.

• Who is it for?

  Sabrina: Designers, Developers, and Product Managers who work on (or are interested in working on) mobile products would benefit from this presentation.

• What will the audience get from it?

  Sabrina: Both practical advice for designing complex, custom UI elements as well as inspiration, motivation, and confidence in advocating on behalf of those more daring design decisions.

• What do you presently work at?

  Sabrina: I'm currently working on redesigning the Venmo app for Android. The existing app essentially mimics the design of the iOS app, thus it feels unfamiliar to Android users and doesn't take full advantage of the Android platform.

• Which of your existing achievements do you value the most?

  Sabrina: The first app I ever worked on, Weave, is still a valuable experience in my mind. It was my first taste of how startups work (even though I worked on it at Intuit, a large company). We built something so fast and simple with a small team. It was also the first iOS app I worked on and sparked my interest in mobile.

• What would you like to achieve?

  Sabrina: Right now in my current role I'm focused on trying to achieve design consistency in the products. In general I would like to achieve a state where designers are viewed as equal partners or leaders in the product development process, not just executors.

• What do you look forward to at the WebExpo?

  Sabrina: I'm looking forward to getting a more global perspective on design and development, as well as new knowledge of best practices.

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