The Jewellery Process

"Dear my love, would you like to pick any of these three? A ring, a necklace, or an iPhone Pro Max 15 for our anniversary gift?"

"What would you like to eat today, kiddos? Fried chicken, fish soup, or fried rice?"

"Where are you going after this, dude? For drinks, snacks, or smokes?"

"Copenhagen #checkedin! What will be my next destination? Vietnam, Japan, or Switzerland?"

These could be the most typical questions in our daily life. But what would life be like in our work as creators or designers?

"Talking about all the vendors that attended yesterday, would you prefer JZArtsy? Their set designs are more attractive than the others, not too generic."

"Right now, we have three visual options. We need to decide which one aligns more with our brand, target audience, and budget. Juayla, which one will you pick?"

"J, we have a few options for our gift with purchase (GWP) for the upcoming Raya festival. Which do you think would suit the most and not be boring?"

"Have you checked the results of our A/B testing and CAC? From the options we ran through, the page with the cute rabbit had a better impact, right? Proceed?"

"Naaahhh, don't do this manually. Just use the recolor feature to ideate your color options. Save a lot of time!" Err, nope. Those are not from my heart. Ouch. Every typical day.

Our mind and heart are gifts, able to accumulate and neuro-bridge the complexity of decisions that happen daily, at every center of other people's experiences, times, locations, and contexts. Creating choices and making choices. It considers not just data alone, but together with emotions, physical occurrences, and, to a certain extent, our spiritual aspects.

We keep operating in the unseen reality of Boolean type operators, those binary True/False answers, which are typical, but we never come across what is in the middle of "/", or around it before coming to a conclusion.

"This world isn't just binary, Pocik," 'Ashim once told me.

If you predispose yourself as a problem solver, keep reading this article.

[Oh wait, taking a break to prepare my family's lunch]

When I managed to understand that design does not revolve around inspiration and creativity only, it felt like I was able to see again with a torchlight after walking halfway through a completely dark tunnel.

There are layers of contextual messaging based on any possible perspective that anyone intends to think of, and they all lead to one goal: to share the best thought-out solution and work professionally to make it useful, accessible, impactful, and acknowledged.

A problem requires a solution; a challenge needs to be overcome, not an eureka moment.

But that's what always happens to me! Lol. I easily get lost in the discovery stage because there are a lot of things that seem to match or are wired to my personal experiences, triggering all sides of my brain. It's like picking groceries hassle-free with an unlimited budget or free sketching with unlimited time. But that's the thing: budget is limited, time is limited.

One of the 'unlimited' feeling I had was during the rainy season in college, eating instant noodle with hot chocolate. 🤤

I had to align all the dots from various points of view, not my view alone, to get to the crux of the pain point. You are a designer, but you need to acquire marketer's brain to produce MVP (others saying MLP).

"This is good, let's do the prototype." At the early stage, I was thinking, "Should I make a 3D model for this sketch, huh?" because the first time I ever heard it was during CAD. No, it isn't. It is Figma, a vector-based software like Adobe Illustrator, but with more features to make it interactive.

"Ah, I really love the components feature, style, and colors in Figma," easily beats global color editing, swatches, and libraries from Adobe. Zas!

But still, designing at this stage is still considered as a graphic designer with a different term, user interface designer, but with extra caution since there’s an interaction for each element inside.

Or,

A graphic designer who understands the way finding system; all of INF, IDN, DIR & BOH signages in physical space, but we have to squeeze it into a virtual solution - be it a landing page, mobile app, or website.

My early involvement in product design required only existing web services such as EBER & WordPress. So I created prototypes for the landing page of MyCARE & IMAN's website just enough to complement the overall marketing strategy. No design system, no repeated components, no hard code.

The journey got exciting when the management at MyCARE decided to smoothen the operational tasks: project and fund management system. Pretty seamless for internal operation. Encountered with external developers' brief regarding database flow and user flow, it was a worthy experience to be involved in the 6-figure project value, and it’s still functioning until today.

Things became intense and mentally exhausting when failure kept coming when hosting a VIMEO livestream from a webpage. It was an initiative to test another potential revenue stream during the COVID break, but the streaming kept hanging due to unbearable load. A pretty-looking solution, but with a lack of usability. Ergh. I kept looking for help, and it was such a blessing to meet Zahin for a detailed explanation about how things work and fix the issue. Another world behind the web was unlocked.

✅ Always happen - Seeing design from the designer's POV. Checked.
✅ Just happen - Seeing design from the developer's POV. Checked.
❓ Yet to happen - Seeing design from the project manager's POV?

Yeah! I feel glad that I was given another opportunity to collaborate with Hafiz & Afiq to establish a desktop app system for a Volunteer management system. This is where, for the first time, I was told to design just enough, not design all pages yet. Once the user requirements specification (URS) was established, the problems were clearly stated by the client, and the agreement was sealed. Designing became easier. It's a matter of proof of concept (POC), then we design (and sprint too!) the rest according to the timeline.

However, for a large organisation or agency that serves big clients, this is where the most intense activities can be, with all data experts summoned here: data scientists, data engineers, and data analysts, together with marketers, managers, and, oh wait, tech experts, the devs!

Oh dear, the more crafted the jewellery, the higher value it will rise. What if I give you a diamond? Because I think I found what is in the middle of "/".