Inside Shopify UX S2 EP02 | Did UX kill visual design?

An interview with UX Director Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, UX Director Yesenia Perez-Cruz and Principal Designer Roy Stanfield

Lola Oyelayo-Pearson: Welcome to Inside Shopify UX. I’m your host, Lola Oyelayo-Pearson, UX director at Shopify. On today’s episode I speak with UX Director Yesenia Perez-Cruz and Principal Designer Roy Stanfield about the relationship between UX and visual design. We’ll shed some light on where style can go wrong and give you the inside scoop on Shopify’s culture of play. I hope you enjoy. I am absolutely delighted to have two guests that we have today, Yesenia and Roy. And we are gonna talk about maybe a controversial, maybe not so controversial element of design, which is has UX killed visual design. I don’t know, you tell me you. Yesenia, tell us a little bit about you.

Yesenia Perez-Cruz: Hi everyone, my name’s Yesenia Perez-Cruz. I’m a UX Director here on the build team, specifically client foundations. And so we build the tools that help teams deliver high quality faster. Things like our Polaris design system. Based out of right outside of Philadelphia. I also, so I am someone that came from a graphic design background whose first title was, like, visual design. So, that’s how I came up into working on the web.

Lola: Love it, love it. And Roy, tell us about you.

Roy Stanfield: Yeah, hi, my name is Roy Stanfield. I’m Principal Designer at Shopify, working on the merchant services team. And that team, Lola knows a whole lot about. I won’t stumble my way through it, but I’m excited to talk about visual design here. It’s one of my favorite subjects.

Lola: So let’s, maybe starting with you, Roy, just digging into your role a little bit. You are a principal at Shopify. And that is a unique role because it’s a director level IC. So maybe just in your own words, what does that actually mean?

Roy: Sure. It’s not my first time I’ve been titled this, and it means something different at every company. I think at Shopify in particular, it means that I spend about, I’d say maybe two months with different teams, in a sorta parent team. And in my case, the parent team is merchant services. And I’ll dive in to any sort of particularly tricky project that any one team is dealing with at any time.

And often I find that, inside Shopify, our teams are awesomely working in an iterative way. And that sometimes means that they’ve lost the thread of, like, where they’re trying to go. So I’ve most often found myself at Shopify, like, trying to create a sort of green path for that iterative work to kind of proceed towards.

Lola: We’re gonna dig into that a little bit more in this episode, ’cause we’re gonna talk about the mechanics of what I’ve seen you do, and how cool it is. Maybe just to table the, you know, in a less controversial way, maybe, so Yesenia, you kinda look after Polaris, which is our design system. It’s world famous. We use it, other people on the internet borrow it regularly. What role does visual design actually play at Shopify, especially in the context of, you know, such a powerful design system.

Yesenia: One assumption about design systems is that it takes away the need for designers to work on problems that are considered less of a high priority, so that they can focus on the big problems. The quote-unquote big problems. But I think that that is a bit of a misconception that then paints decisions about things like visual design as a small problem that is handled by the design system.

And so, you know, the design system, it has type scales, and it has spacing tokens, and things like that, but it should still be up to a designer to know how to lay out a screen, to know how to use those tools, to know how to have a good sense of hierarchy, to know which things should be conveyed with, need more visual affordance versus something that needs just words.

And so, I think that sometimes the, like, perception about a design system is that it has all of those building blocks and you’re just, like, plugging and playing. But actually there still needs to be designers that are intentionally thinking about how do I use this tool set in a critical way, and how do I push it when it’s not working, and how can I, like, break out when it’s not working or when I need to do something new.

Lola: Yeah. And it’s funny because I think, you know, not that I’m shy in saying things that are maybe somewhat controversial, but I always find that sometimes that the biggest risk with the design system is you turn designers into layout people, right. It’s just, here are all the pieces, I’m just going to organize them in a two dimensional way. As opposed to like, hey, I have a bunch of problems that I need to solve, and I’m gonna work through some kind of UI or experience where I can make choices about what actually ends up on the page. And I know this is a conversation you and I have had a lot this year, Roy. But like, you joined Shopify 2020, and you’ve been kind of observing us in this kind of peak maturity of Polaris, and coming in as somebody who’s, like, a deep crafter. So like, what would you say is your perception of how we’re doing visual design in an organization where something like Polaris exists? Like, how have you observed the craft being executed?

Roy: I have observed a lot of, like, a little more offloading than I would have expected to see. And I think it has a lot to do with, you know, our focus on UX design in the past few years, and Polaris being a tool that sort of filled a gap for a lot of UXers. That said, I think there’s a lot of room inside of Polaris to update it and to move it forward, both in terms of visual look and feel. So that it feels a little more future forward. Because I believe it’s dated to 2016 or 17. Is that right, Yesenia?

Yesenia: ’17, yeah?

Roy: ’17, yeah. And I’m coming from a company where I was used to seeing these things updated yearly, so that they sort of kept the new glow and feel. So that’s one thing.

Lola: When you say update, do you mean, like, visual refresh or, like, adding things in? Like, what level of update are you actually talking about?

Roy: I’ve seen it like a flywheel. I’ll use a great Shopify term where, you know, a design system starts in a certain time, 2015, ’16, ’17, and it has a minimum number of components, and it has a job to be sold through the company. And as more and more people adopt it, you see a demand for it. And as you see that demand, you increase both its scope and you refresh it as you go forward. And I think we could do a bit, and I know Yesenia and I talk about this all the time, and you too, Lola. Like, we have a little bit of work to do to kinda get that flywheel turning.

Yesenia: Do you know what’s interesting about what you just said about, so typically, a design system, you start with a couple pieces, then those pieces are integrated. As those smaller pieces are integrated, the value for it builds, and you keep building on it over time. And I always think about like, Gall’s Law. Like, you have to start with a simple system. And if you start with a complex system, you can’t get to simplicity. So, starting by having a very comprehensive amount of components then makes it very difficult to change once it’s, like, made its way into products. And it’s something that I think about all the time.

Roy: We’re in a great space where our designers can push the demand. They can show where Polaris was excellent a few years ago for an admin-centered world, and where new products that are being developed could benefit from a rethink of certain components, or an addition of certain components. And so, what I really am looking forward to at Shopify is I feel like we’re on the road to creating that kind of demand through our UX work.

Lola: And so, this is something, it’s interesting, in this conversation we’ve done it as well. It’s like, we do end up talking about Polaris as if it is the design output of Shopify. When actually it’s a tool that we have, right. So maybe to center back on this concept of visual design, and you said it earlier on, it’s like we have optimized a lot for UX, and potentially some that meant that we kind of looked a little bit differently at this concept of visual design, or, like, UI. Now, there are a ton of people who are like, and tell me what now? Like, explain the difference. Okay, so what is that difference, potentially, in that thinking about, like, UX, or, like, interaction design versus visual design, and how we’re thinking about making sure that we’re maybe doing a little bit of a better job on both fronts, right, in general.

Yesenia: Something that I just see across the industry is kind of positioning those two, like, as against each other. So I’ll see things like, well, why is a designer caring about, like, this nuance of a typeface when you should be focused on, like, big business problems? And I think it has to do with some of just digital design being less of a mature practice that, like, you see first there was this reaction against, like, the snobby, like, designer, like, visual designer that was like, oh, Comic Sans is awful, and designers are just here to rant about, like, Comic Sans and Papyrus. That went all the way to then, like, UX, like, no we’re legitimate, and everything that we do is quantifiable, and here’s all of the steps and processes that we take to make UX design appear legitimate, and design isn’t part of it.

And so I still find that we talk about, we still talk about the way that we work as if there’s, like, an underlying layer. That it’s, like, the functionality, and then there’s, like, a veneer on top of it. When, like, that’s not enough. Like, the visual design is not about the veneer that is on top of something. I think it’s about, like, the visceral reaction that someone has when they first encounter a design, and how it makes them feel. And then once you get past the visceral reaction, then it’s like, okay, does this work? How well does this work?

Lola: Yeah, ’cause I think that’s an interesting distinction that we make, because to a certain extent, you have these two extremes of internet, right. Like, for your average Joe, it is very easy to bootstrap UI. Like, there are a million and one design systems and tools, including ours, that are super easy. Grab and, like, you know, copy, paste, shift, and you’ve got, like, UI that kinda works and is fairly usable. And then on the other side, you’ve got, like, Dribbble and, like, other sites, with beautiful design portfolios of absolutely stunning craftsmanship. Things that would never be buildable or usable in the real world.

And then you’ve got, like, the reality in between, which is, like, companies like us, and products where we’re, like, solving problems, still trying to make stuff that’s beautiful and good-looking, but having to deal with like, you know, the inheritance of legacy and all that. So there’s, like, a bunch of complex things in there that still demand our attention, but yet we do still want to see this great, like, visceral thing. We still want people to see our designs and be like, wow, that is a good looking piece, right.

Yesenia: Yeah, the funny thing is people always mention Craigslist as a reason to describe why visual design doesn’t matter. But the thing about Craigslist is that the design looks like classified ads. And so, like, the metaphor is there and it’s appropriate. And so it’s actually not a good justification for why, like, visual design doesn’t matter. It just means that in that case, that choice made sense for that product.

Lola: Absolutely.

Roy: It was a context shift for me to come to Shopify and to realize that UX design and visual design were seen as somewhat different, or not the same thing. And I had been coming from a world that had been using the term product design for quite a while, and UX design had fallen outta favor. And product design had linked those pretty heavily for me. They weren’t separate.

So I like to look back to that UX design terming and kind of see these things as not separate. And one of the points that I thought about, like, before we had this conversation, I was trying to bring forward, was that there’re sort of, like, every year, new visual norms that are occurring in software. And part of what, I think it’s Jakob’s Law, it’s the laws of UX, Jakob’s Law, says that, you know, obeying these norms is a key to usability, because most of the time people are on different software than your own. So in my mind, what we have to do is sort of keep up with those visual norms. Maybe sometimes push them into the future. But it’s part of usability to make sure that we’re matching up with the current.

I also believe that it’s not good to accidentally create visual design that sort of feels older, because I believe that that erodes trust that we’re a part of the future. So it’s pretty important to keep, I’ll use that term again, that flywheel turning in order to keep this stuff saying that we’re a part of the future and that we understand how you work today.

Lola: It’s interesting what you say there, because I think you’re alluding to, like, using patterns as a kind of a proxy for usability, like define the patterns. And sometimes the challenge is there is no pattern, right. There is no, I can’t design familiarity into this because this thing has never been done, this problem has never been solved this way. And I think that’s where the challenge of a design system comes in, because then you’re trying to take a tool that has a set of jobs that it was doing, and then apply it to a new job that it was never designed to do. And what you should really do at that point is say, hey, as a designer, just gonna take a blank sheet of paper now, and I’m just gonna create the most appropriate thing to solve this problem, right.

And I think that’s where the push is to get any designer to think. It’s like, try and contextualize the need above and beyond any kind of other toolset. And that probably applies to whether or not you’re opinionated about using Sketch, or Figma, or Framer, or some other, you know, like, any tool kind of has that challenge, right, that limitation.

Tell me then about how we’re thinking about this at Shopify. Because one of the things that the two of you have been working on is, you said something earlier on, Roy, about UX and visual being different, or feeling distinct at Shopify, when actually we also use product design as, you know, the kind of the job title. But we have maybe over-indexed on one end of that spectrum versus the other.

So you two have been working on, like, our intake process and, like, the ways in which we assess people, and talk about that. So tell us a little bit about what you guys have been looking at and what you’re looking for as we, like, hire new designers into the organization.

Yesenia: Something that we have been looking at is, like, the first step that usually happens in an interview process historically has been, like, this initial portfolio review. And that’s typically been, like, a person is having that interview to kinda give the candidate a yes or a no. But what we have been looking at is, like a blind, like, pre-screening, where portfolios come in, and there are people that are kind of, like, assigned to, like, screen for just, like, a baseline of, like, visual design chops.

And so, we created some criteria, we kinda, like, went through with a small group and kinda defined, like, well, what are the signals that would tell us whether someone has that quality, like, baseline quality bar of visual design. And so there were things about typography and hierarchy. I’m very big on space. Like, someone that can really, like, design space well, that is, like, the difference between, like, okay and great to me a lotta the time. And it sometimes can be really overlooked.

So yeah, things like spacing, opinionated grid. Also, like, does it feel like this person has a point of view about design, and like, is there a sense of, like, joy that comes through, like a joy in the work. I mean, how do you quantify joy, that’s trickier. But I think it’s just like, if we can get people that are doing these screenings that have an eye for it, sometimes it can, again, like, design can be a little bit unquantifiable sometimes. So yeah, we’re doing that as that initial check, just so we’re making sure that, yeah, we’re prioritizing this baseline for people that are coming in.

Roy: We had previously had two in-person UX reviews, and they were sort of redundant. And they were individuals doing each one. And what we were finding from TA is that-

Lola: TA being our talent team?

Roy: Yes, our talent team, was that we were getting conflicting opinions from those two different interviews. And what was happening was that interviewers, probably their own judgment call or their preferences, were leading them to say yes in one case and no in another case for the same person.

So this was kind of like a signal that those weren’t very rigorous in some sense. And then we also were starting to confront the idea that we needed to sort of rebalance the UX team towards visual design in order to sort of project ourselves into the future of design. So, thanks to our VP of Design, Cynthia, and our Director of Merchant Services, Monica, there was an openness and desire to do better.

And so we came up with this pilot. And it was the opportunity to replace one of those in-person reviews with this async portfolio review process that Yesenia just described. And in doing that, like, we found some major benefits. One was there’s a high correlation between people that are passing that visual design screen and also passing the UX interview and getting hired.

So, super high correlation is happening. The other big benefit is we now have a great set of data to work from to train other people inside of our company on how to do these interviews going forward. And lastly, I’d say it’s hard to quantify exactly, and I don’t have the real numbers in front of me, but it looks like we’ve saved something like 150 in-person interview hours for our interviewers by doing the async upfront.

So ultimately, great big data set we now have, we know that the quality is improved, and we’re much more efficient in the interview process.

Lola: I love that metrics add up across the board, and we have something, I love the fact that it’s a blind process as well. So there is that opportunity that the portfolio speaks for itself. And like, it’s unequivocal; A portfolio is a really important design artifact. Like, as a designer, you need that. That is your suitcase of skill and experience and everything else. And so we value that, and we wanna look at it as objectively as possible.

So let’s come back to something else that I think is still an element of visual design, right, which is, like, style. Or like, you know, you both mentioned opinionated UI. And, you know, two things that we’ve released this year are very opinionated UI, oriented towards our developer audiences, but we have Dev Docs, which was released earlier this year, which kind of took on this very retro vibe with sorta, like, gaming references. And then Hydrogen, which pushes that even further with, like, some super old-school gaming references, but also very current, in that it alludes to a lot of the UI that’s coming out, the Web3, and blockchain world, and, you know, decentralized apps. So it’s kind of combining old school and new school in, like, an interesting way. They’re both so different from each other, and then so different from Polaris, but it’s all come out of the same shop.

How do you feel about that, that sort of usage of flair or, like, style, being, like, super pointy about, like, you know, some people are looking at it and they’re, like, what the heck is this? Like, you know, why did they do that? This is a company, for goodness sake! What is your take on that, Yesenia?

Yesenia: Yeah. So, I mean, I think that something that we can sometimes over-index on is trying to explain a feeling just with words. So, when we were working on shopify.dev, some of the things that we wanted to convey to people were, hey, you should feel excited about working on this platform. This platform makes it really easy for you to get started. There’s a great opportunity for you here.

And you can do that in a way that is just listing out bullet points with generic images of code. But again, that’s not tapping into a visceral response in a developer. And so that’s where, like, the idea of leaning into, like, the pixel art and the gaming metaphors came from, because we can use it as, like, a storytelling device. And a picture is worth a thousand words.

We don’t need to be as verbose if we’re telling the story of, like, the homepage illustration was like, here’s commerce town, and everybody can claim their spot on commerce town. But below that you have, like, the unspoken heroes who are the developers who are coding this. And below that in the basement, right, there we are with, like, the APIs that we’re building, that, like, let you be the heroes in commerce town.

So you can convey that with an illustration and you don’t have to be so literal with the words. I think something that I think about a lot though, when it comes to visual design and, like, flare is it has to feel authentic. So, I think where style can go wrong is if it feels inauthentic. And if it feels like you don’t understand the people that you’re designing for.

So, the thing that was beneficial for shopify.dev was that people that were working on it understood the culture. They understood like, okay, what are the types of things that developers have used before. What are, like, the types of tools that they’re using and how do we reference that so we appear like we’re in the know, we’re not, like, the hello fellow kids meme.

And I think that a lotta the times the difference between something that feels, like, overly designed and, like, Dribbble-style design for the sake of designers, and something that feels like, oh, you know, you took a risk, but it makes sense, is that authenticity. I think in the case of, like, both these tools being for a developer audience, it’s slightly easier because it’s a-

Lola: It’s the correct tool in that sense, right?

Yesenia: Yeah, and it’s also, like, a more focused audience versus when we’re designing for merchants, there’s just so much variability in types of, like, where merchants live, the types of work they’re doing, their brands, that it becomes a trickier to figure out how we can be spiky there.

Lola: Yeah. It’s interesting though, because Roy, I feel like you, so in our time working together, we’ve worked on a bunch of projects. And I feel like you innately find a way to inject style into the merchant experience. So like, you seem to role model how to, like, keep it feeling consistent, but then here’s just a really cool way of treating this kind of box. And then like, you’re seeing things in shadow, and lines, and depth, and three dimensions. So like, how have you cultivated that ability to have style even when you’re designing for essentially, like, mass appeal, right?

Roy: Wow, what a nice compliment. Thank you, Lola. And by the way, working with you has been-

Lola: I’m sure I’ve told you that before.

Roy: Working with you has been such a pleasure, and I can’t wait to, I’m so glad that we get to keep going.

Lola: I paid him to say that.

Roy: You know, I was thinking about, there was a question that I was reading. I’m gonna answer the question I know how to answer, ’cause I’m not sure I know exactly how to answer it from where I sit today. But how can designers bridge, you know, function with the art of design? And I was thinking about, like, how I learned to design. And what it came down to was I did three things, I think. I studied the fundamentals of graphic layout, as like, in a serious way. Like, I tried to know as much as I could. And I probably spent several years, like, kind of looking at each book that I could get my hands on. The Strand in New York was great. Copying screens that I admire to learn their precise dimensions by heart.

So I would, yeah, I would screenshot, like, a mobile app, you know, to death, something that I admired. And I would just, like, layout over it until I could remember, you know, if I went back to iOS 4, I can remember that it was Helvetica 17 point, you know. So it was like precision, right. And the last thing that kinda keeps me going today is learning about the people that made the stuff.

So, this is something I actually look for in our interviews that I seldom find, but when I do find it, I know I found a person, is, you know, who are the other designers that they know of, and do they know the stories of how some of these things came to be. One really great one that I’ll just point out that anybody can look up is Bas Ording. B-A-S, and then second word, O-R-D-I-N-G. A video you can find on YouTube, put out by, gosh, I’m blanking on the name, but the history of computers. And he describes, you know, being a student, focusing on animation, visual animation, bumping into Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs, like, seeing in him a way to create the dock that we all know today in our Macs, and then that later kind of evolving into a lotta the UIs we know on the iPhone. So, learning about people kept me interested over, you know, something like 15 years now.

Lola: Yeah, it’s funny you say that though, because something that strikes me is how often do we see modern examples of people telling the story of how I designed it around, say, UI, like software UI. Not so much like a platform, but certain web-based UI. Like, we’re actually missing. I feel like there’s an air gap. And I almost wanna be able to be like, who designed this? This is super cool, who designed that? It’s like it come from an organization or a company. But there’s gonna be a design story behind that. There’s gonna be an inspiration story. The story of .dev is exactly that, where actually maybe we should be doing a better job of sharing that perspective so that other designers can also be continuing to be inspired by it more often, you know.

Yesenia: The thing that you described, about, like, the second thing that you described, like trying to deconstruct the decisions that someone made, I still do that sometimes. So if I see, again, going back to, like, good space design, the Stripe Team published this press status site?

Lola: The book site.

Yesenia: Yeah. And like, you can look at it, and there’s so many amazing things about it. But again, I was like, wow, look at the space system. And that’s the second time that I’ve looked at something that Stripe has done where I’m like, I wonder if I can just inspect code and figure out their space scale, like, how quickly I can figure out their spacing scale. Just for fun. But sometimes I wonder if the tools that designers have today makes it too easy.

Lola: You know what, it’s really funny you mentioned that, because one of the sites I used to reference a lot way back in the day, and it was totally not safe for work, but I used to reference it because it was so well-designed without any visible UI. It was called TheWorstDrug. And what it was was like a collection of, like, a rolling screen of, like, internet memes. So the most popular memes on the internet. And obviously most of them were, like, cats and, you know, porn.

And so you weren’t gonna open this in front of your boss. But actually like, the site was so well done that it looked like you couldn’t control it, but, you know, everything you thought to do, like if you pressed your arrow keys, or your clicked, or you pause, you press the space bar, or like, you know, stuff would appear from the top. Like, everything just worked.

And I always looked at it and I was like, how brave did you have to be to create a UI with so many controls but no UI. You know, how did you actually determine that you would make this keyboard control work versus just putting a button there for, you know, like, some epsilons and stuff, and having like forward and backwards and all of that kinda stuff. I think that’s the similar thing to what you’re saying about like, working out, like, space decisions, ’cause that’s almost an act of boldness in itself, isn’t it.

Roy: It’s so exciting. It’s so exciting to see a piece of software that feels like it was made, that it’s designed as the moment of its creation as well, where it was born of prototype and it has been refined as prototype. And that’s just a super exciting place, because you still find intuitive interactions that you weren’t, you know, wouldn’t have otherwise planned. So, I love what you’re describing there. And maybe I could tie it back into Shopify by thinking about our studio culture. Like, how do we create a space of play that enlivens our culture beyond the work that we’re doing. I think that that kind of positivity inside of our UX designers is what’s going to lead to things that eventually do make their way into the product in some form that’s extremely usable for a merchant.

Lola: Yeah, I love that, and I think that is something that is a huge benefit, actually. So this is the largest design organization I have ever worked in. And I think it’d probably be, you know, magnitude of difference for most people. You know, we’ve got, I dunno what the official number is, but upwards of 450 designers in the team across the globe. And the amount of inspiration that you can share in that context, where it’s like, here’s a thing that I saw, here’s a thing I created, here’s a thing that I used to do in my old company. You know, our experience of the internet is different, our experience of design culture is different. And, like, that richness being brought to bear into the product is, like, so much potential to blow each other’s minds and like, just keep doing cool stuff all over the place.

Okay, so… I have a gimmick. And the gimmick didn’t work the last time, but it’s gonna work this time. So as we close out the show, I wanted to introduce our little fortune teller. Now, this has been expertly designed in Shopify. So we have four starting points. We’ve got the rocket, we’ve got the banana, I can barely see, so we’ve got a shopping trolley, and then we’ve got, oh, where’s it going, the cabbage, which is a link back to an internal joke about Tobi talking about cabbages, and it is here. So Yesenia, you’re gonna go first. Which one of these would you like to pick?

Yesenia: Rocket.

Lola: The rocket? Okay. So we’re gonna go R-O-C-K-E-T. Right, you’ve got the number. Seven, eight, three, and four.

Yesenia: Seven.

Lola: Seven, okay. The number seven says, question is. What is your process for starting a new thing? So you’ve got a new piece of work. How do you start? How do you get going?

Yesenia: I use a lot of whiteboards. I have one, two, three, four, four whiteboards, separate whiteboards scattered about. So I like to kinda get like, yeah, like my map, my map of everything, like, mapped out, because I’m trying to understand, like, what I wanna narrow in on. So after I do that, then it’s a lot of pacing back and forth to refine my idea, pace pace pace, back and forth, go back to my whiteboard, pace pace pace. Eventually I have something that I wanna, like, execute on. But same whether it’s a doc, or presentation, or something that is designed. I try to spend, like, the least amount of time in front of the computer as possible, and, like, shape my idea, then go into execution mode after that.

Lola: That’s super cool. I love the fact that you’ve got all so many whiteboards everywhere, ’cause you know a different one is gonna do it. Depends, like, do I want the small one, do I want the one that’s on the wall, do I want the?

Roy: The one on rollers.

Lola: We’ll have to do a designers Cribs type episode, where we just go, like, how have you set up your place? Here are Yesenia’s whiteboards. Thank you for that. Okay, Roy, what would you like to go with?

Roy: Oh, I gotta go cabbage.

Lola: Cabbage? Okay. Can I spell it off the top of my head without, okay.

Roy: Oh, you can do lettuce.

Lola: No, no. Oh, that’s true, actually. It’s supposed to be lettuce, not cabbage.

Roy: It’s lettuce, yeah.

Lola: See? Okay, it’s actually lettuce. Let’s do that. L-E-T-T-U-C-E. You have numbers one, five, six, and two to pick from.

Roy: Now, numbers are really important, so lemme think for a second on this one. Two.

Lola: Two, okay. Let’s go with question number two, which is, ooh, what is your favorite iconic design? Can be digital or not.

Roy: Favorite iconic design. I’m sort of torn between talking architecture. I think I’ll talk architecture.

Lola: I had a feeling you were gonna go to architecture, but go on.

Roy: And gosh, I hope I don’t mispronounce the name, but the Breuer Whitney Museum? I’m not even sure if it’s still the Whitney Museum. But the original sort of Whitney building, I loved experiencing and going through, empty or full of art, regardless which one it was. And I spent a little time working there at some point as well. And so I kinda felt the, I felt that building. And it was such a need for the curators to have a new space and to make something different, and I understood that need. But it was such a, you know, a removal of that one building that I had such an attachment to. Does that make sense? So I loved feeling that feeling of that building.

Lola: Yeah, no, that is a really great one, because I think those spaces, especially museums do have that, like, very, they are designed to create emotion and to, like, carry you through. I think one that’s maybe similar to that is, like, the Tate Modern in London, which was never envisioned to be a museum. Like, it was a functional, you know, industrial building that was turned into. And then they’ve got this space on the ground floor that changes depending on the exhibit, but it feels like it reinvents itself. Should basically just feel like a giant warehouse, but every time there’s a different exhibit and art in there, you kind of go through a different set of emotions on the way in and through and out, and then you look up and it just, it has this very physical effect. I think in a former life, some of us would probably have been architects, just because it’s the same kind of energy that you take through these different types of design artifacts, right?

Yesenia: Yeah, but just the way that you can communicate a sense of awe is, like, I would love to figure out if we could do that digitally. But I think that that’s the thing that I always think about with architecture. Like, the way that you can, yeah, what you were saying, Roy, that you can feel it.

Roy: That commitment to a single design. The years you’re gonna be with that thing. And sometimes, I guess maybe I can relate that back to working in house. It’s like, the years I’m gonna spend with Shopify.

Lola: Yeah, yeah. We’re gonna refine and we’re gonna hone this thing, and we’re gonna make it pristine. Roy, Yesenia, thank you so so much for joining me. This has been a fantastic conversation, and I think we can conclude UX has not killed visual design. But we definitely gotta do some resuscitation and get some extra lifeblood, maybe a couple of transfusions of inspiration in there, just to kick things back into equilibrium. So, thank you so much for walking us through the discussion. Very happy that this worked. Yay.

Lola: So we’ll be doing more of that. And yeah, we’ll speak to you next time on the podcast. Thanks for listening to Inside Shopify UX. Check out more from our team or find out how to join us by visiting ux.shopify.com. Inside Shopify UX is hosted by me, Lola Oyelayo-Pearson.

Jen Shaw: Produced by Jen Shaw.

Isabelle Hamel-Carassi: Assisted by Isabelle Hamel-Carassi.

Michael Busse: Edited by Micheal Busse.

Alisha Giroux: With art and graphics by Alisha Giroux.

Dani Chavez Ackermann: Dani Chavez Ackermann.

Trevor Silvani: And Trevor Silvani.

Matt Griffin: Music by Silent Quiet Spaces.

Lola: Next week, I chat with the one and only Tobi Lütke, Shopify CEO.