My inspiration and friend Steven Heller has written what seems like his 1000th book on graphic design called Becoming a Digital Designer (with David Womack). He conducted a great interview with NNN founder Tim Shey. (Which was particularly inspirational to Tim, who’s been a Steve fan himself for years).

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Case Study: Small-screen Television

Timothy Shey, founder and head of network development at Next New Networks

Q: How did you get drawn into the digital world, and into design specifically? Did you train as a designer?

Tim: I grew up doing digital design, though I didn’t know it at the time.

As a kid in the 1980s, I would design and write software games on my Commodore 64, and was also pretty active on the BBSes (bulletin board systems) that were a precursor in many ways to the Web. Design then meant working in low-res pixel and ASCII art, but it was good training for what I’d end up doing in the nineties and beyond.

Design for me has always been about doing the best thing possible within the limitations of the media and the scope of the project. In college, I studied English and fine arts, but spent most of my free time in the computer lab, figuring out HTML and designing Web sites for many of the student organizations on campus. By 1996, a friend and I had started our interactive design company, Proteus, in a dorm room, and had signed on a number of corporate and nonprofit clients.

I had a good grounding in composition and color theory from my art education, but I had to learn the subtler points of layout and typography as I went, through close attention to other designers’ work and books like yours. I still feel the lack of having an educational grounding sometimes — I don’t always know the right terms, and I tend to measure almost everything by eye instead of using tools — but it’s probably too late for me now to change my habits much.

Q: You were originally designing for handheld devices; what kind of skills and aesthetics did you need for this curious-indeed, Lilliputian-format?

Tim: When we first started designing applications for handheld and mobile devices, the limitations were so extreme that design was mostly about content and user experience. Aesthetic decisions were simply how much copy you wanted to put on a screen, and whether you could use abbreviations or type-based symbols (like a caret for a forward link) effectively on the page.

The devices’ download speeds were so slow and processors so limited, you had to think a lot about caching any images you used and reusing them effectively from page to page in a design. At that point, we were getting a bit bored with Web design as it got increasingly graphical, so having such limitations again were fun. Whenever we came up with something really clever that we thought improved a design, we were pretty proud of ourselves, even if no one else could appreciate it.

Q: Were there other challenges?

Tim: The other challenge, which continues to this day, was a lack of standardization. As more and more mobile devices hit the market, you found yourself designing for an extremely complex landscape with thousands of permutations of screen sizes, coding language support, browsers, and operating systems, and the trick would be to use flexible style sheets and adaptable layouts to create a good user experience on as many devices as possible without designing for the lowest common denominator.

We were pretty happy with the work we did on HBO Mobile in 2004 for The Sopranos‘ fifth season launch, which supported a wide variety of handsets with a pretty deep amount of content, from games to episode recaps, and looked good on nearly every one.

Q: Do you believe design standards have been established and reached, yet go beyond the basic functional requirements of design for small screens?

Tim: It doesn’t seem so to me, though I’ve been less involved with design for small screens in the past two years. For example, I’m nearly incapable of spending my hard-earned money on a mobile phone. Nearly every time I pick one up, I’m disappointed by the user experience.

I don’t know what’s happening in the industry — maybe there’s a lot of churn, or a lot of design by nondesigners, but it doesn’t feel like there’s been much evolution or progress in the design of mobile apps, but rather, that people are making the same mistakes over and over again. I think that small screens should take context into account, such as a user’s previous decisions, their potential distractions and limitations, and present the options that people will most need, with a minimum of scrolling or input needed at any stage. Try nearly any device, and you won’t see that happening — and until we have that basic requirement met across the industry, we won’t move forward to truly exceptional design. That said, I’m pretty impressed by the new Blackberry Pearl’s OS, and Google’s apps like their SMS tools and mobile maps, and the iPod experience was nearly perfect, until their capacities got so large that browsing by a scroll wheel became less optimal.

Q: Are the tenets of good design the same for a small-screen format as on a luscious page?

Tim: For me, they tend to be. I like my page designs like my small screens, with an economy of design, well-chosen imagery, clean typography, and an emphasis on ease of use. That said, if a graphic artist wants to mess things up in either format for aesthetic reasons, I really enjoy that, too. One of my favorite experiences on the small screen in the past year was a game called Lumines for the PSP, which took a while to make sense of, but was absolutely beautiful.

Q: You are now involved in creating video content (TV shows) for internet distribution. First, tell me what those shows are all about. Then, what are the design requirements for these to separate them from what we usually see on YouTube?

Tim: I’ve been working on online video content with an episodic, serial format — in that way, they’re more like television shows than the individual clips and short videos that are making up most of the video viewing on the Web right now. The formats vary — some of them are like newscasts or interview shows; others might compile clips and videos sent in by the audience and wrap the up with an editorial point of view. It’s videoblogging, basically, in the sense that what we’re doing relates to television in the same way blogs relate to the publishing formats that came before. The content in most cases is fresher, more interactive, and more personal to the audiences’ interests and tastes than television has been — and the best people doing it engage in a conversation with their viewers that blurs the traditional line between audiences and creators.

Q: And what about design quality?

Tim: The design requirements for these formats are still emerging, but we’re starting to learn things that work. Short form works, because it’s easier for people to download, view, and share with others. We brand the shows, so that viewers can recognize them in the Wild West of the video landscape, though we do it in different ways from television — the branding is usually an integrated part of the experience, very quick and straightforward. Less post production is a good idea as well — the more graphics and editing and polishing you do to these programs, the less viewers often like them, and the more it costs, which hampers our ability to move fast and try a lot of new things. The best shows are a pure expression of talent, and pretty close to a first draft, though made as perfect as possible within the limits of time and budget. I like to tell people it’s like sushi, or good Italian food — you want to get the best ingredients and assemble them fresh, and serve them quickly — overcooking or too much time on the shelf can ruin the meal.

Q: What do designers entering this digital environment need to know that you, at thirty-two years old, didn’t even know when you entered the field?

Tim: I didn’t know anything when I entered the field — I didn’t even know that the field existed — so I would say they should not be afraid of what they don’t know. I’ve worked with dozens of designers now over the years, and I’ve never seen one that didn’t learn more on the job, and faster, than they had in their formal education. I jumped right into projects because they looked fun; I made a lot of stupid mistakes and bad designs; and I stayed humble and kept learning, and at some point along the process, I became a legitimate designer, then a creative director. It was probably helped by the fact that I didn’t know enough about the field to be intimidated — so I would say that to anyone just starting: Don’t be intimidated — you’re young, we’re old, and we have at least as much to learn from you as you do from us.

Q: What are you looking for in designers for Next New Networks?

Tim: Ambition, critical thinking, and a desire to learn. I’ll always rather work with someone who can roll up their sleeves, try ten different approaches to a design, and improve every time than someone with a lot of raw talent and a stunning portfolio who isn’t willing to learn how CSS works.

……

..:::If you’re interested in animation, Steve did a short interview with me in the same book.:::..

Posted by Fred at 8:45 pm on Tuesday, December 11th, 2007 in Books, Design, Interview, NNN People. You can follow responses through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.