Google UX Designer Owen Otto, recently participated in a field study where he interviews designers who worked in the digital space to find out what the pain points where when in the process of design to production. The feedback he received was centered around the universal problem the limitation that surrounds tools designers use. Creating an interactive experience that is dictated by user input is sometimes too abstract.
“In my experience, 60% of design happens during implementation, and a lot of the original design winds up not working” – Owen Otto, a UX designer at Google
The Material Design Team at Google is diligently working to challenging these limited design experiences and developing the next generation of prototyping tools for designers. These futuristic tool are intended to help designers develop and test concepts but also aide in collaborating and pitching design. The goal is to “make it easier to share your imagination” explained, Max Weisel of Relative Wave.
The tools also aim to close the gap between designer ideas and engineering needs and constraints. The team also identified that many of the existing design tools could be perceived as limiting due to their intent on creating print-based and not interactive products. The latest and greatest of design product should assist the designer in developing interaction for VR, which is still an area of unique interaction that has a lot of room for exploration. This involves prototyping for a whole next level of user experience for this, it is important to have the right tools.
“We don’t want to make a tool for one kind of experience… We believe very strongly in this idea of making the system resilient, and organic, and composed out of lots of pieces that work really well together.” -Matias Duarte, VP Design at Google
