HandbookDesigner handbook
Slaying Pixels: Our Philosophy to Design.
Our philosophy to design, tools of the trade, design processes, and culture ideals.
Design Philosophy
Getting into the right frame of mind for slaying pixels at Fullscript
Boiling Down
We like to refer to ourselves as the makers of music, the bringers of beauty, and the slayers of pixels. But ultimately, what we do is boil complex problems down to elegant solutions.
If the solution to a problem we’re trying to tackle has to be explained by an on-boarding, modal, overlay, or loads of text, you’ve probably missed the mark. Take a step back, let it simmer, and it will boil down. True intuitive design takes serious self-discipline – it’s easy to get carried away with vanity and lose focus of the task at hand; whether that be a marketing CTA, a take-away metric, or a primary action. This is what we strive for at Fullscript.
Prioritization
One of the greatest skills to learn in a startup: picking the right battles.
Proposals
Startups are inherently a continuous forest fire for the small design department they rely on. Designers must decide which fire is raging most, run to that fire and help put it out as best as they can, as quickly as they can.
No fire is the same, and the fire could spread, so they need to adapt to each fire. They are also expected to partially manage the fire fighting team once they arrive – and coordinate their tactics for fighting fires with their fellow designers. That’s a lot of shit to juggle.
Knowledge Silos
Analogy aside, designers at Fullscript aid every part of the business which sometimes makes prioritization very difficult. Use critical thinking and keep milestones or our current product swim-lanes (practitioner, patient, integration, growth) in mind when deciding what to spend your time on.
Don’t let last-minute projects continue to come in from the same department or people. We never turn away a project solely on when in a project cycle we receive it, but make sure it’s known that the more heads up we have for a project, the better the outcome as we then have the capacity to make it shine.
Data vs Gut
We are driven by data in our designs when it is available, but must trust our instincts when it is not.
Proposals
Whenever humanly possible, we are driven by data in our design. We refer to this guide on the regular and add to it when something is missing. Assumptions will get you in hot water at some point, sometimes it just takes awhile for it to get up to temp – avoid them at all costs.
Since we are designing the future of healthcare, we are often on the bleeding edge and in uncharted territory. No Google search or Dribbble post will give you an idea of what is the norm, or act as a guide in best practice. In this situation we are forced to rely on our gut. A gut call is an educated guess, but it is never an excuse to avoid asking questions to skip user experience research (UXR).
Role Importance
Whether you are in visual design, UI design, or UX research, your role is important and has as much of an opportunity for impact and career growth as the next.
Proposals
We don’t place one role on a pedestal over another as they are all part of the same funnel – just at different stages. Nailing visual design widens the prospect funnel and can engage leads; nailing UX design can onboard and retain those leads, converting them to users; nailing UI design can lead to a long tail of user engagement.
We all have a part to play to strengthen every part of our funnel. Mastering and owning your part of the funnel and improving it will help us push the boulder, and help you achieve your career goals.
Rules of thumb
Always place the CTA or primary copy first, and build your design from there.
As a general rule of thumb, don’t use lorem ipsum! If you find yourself having to use it for more than one small blurb, you’re probably ahead of yourself and need to jump back to planning, ask for further copy from your PM, or jump in to some copywriting yourself (should you feel confident to do so). Still struggling? The section is probably not worth keeping.
Always place the CTA or primary copy first, and build your design from there. There is so much we can do with type to shape an emotional response, or create visual hierarchy. Graphical, illustrative, and iconographic elements are meant to be supporting roles to copy. So unless your image can actually say exactly what you want to convey to the end user, start with copy and build from there.
Mobile devices now account for 50% of all web traffic, worldwide.
Starting a design off with a mobile first mentality will help in deciding in what is important and what is not. It sets us up well for the future, as this percentage is climbing year over year. It also helps us easily expand to emerging markets down the road, where mobile traffic is even higher than 50%.
Building tools are never a waste of time – they’re a multiplier.
Marketing is always running digital campaigns, sometimes popping open photoshop, visiting conferences; and a videographer doing motion graphics on top. Front-end developers are hungry for standardized colours, fonts, buttons, and form elements for use throughout our products. Talent and Culture is creating and hosting events. Execs want to make sure their presentations visually match the platform. We have team emails, internal tools, and recruiting events.
Our brand guide advises it all. Building tools like it are never a waste of time. If it helps others do their work faster, better, or delivers consistency across the company, it’s a multiplier.