Reaction to Abstract: Ian Spalter

I’ve recently been really struggling with my opinion of social media, in general. I watched the new documentary, The Social Dilemma, on Netflix, and it really struck a nerve with me and made me make a conscious effort to not use social media as much. It’s turned more into a place for division, money-making, data-mining, and wasted time than it was originally designed for: connecting the world together. This episode of Abstract made me feel slightly the same way, and I really like how they incorporated that aspect into the episode, towards the end. Instagram isn’t free–we’re the product and our data is being harvested into a trillion-dollar industry.

On the other hand, I really liked the episode for its contents of what UX/UI is and why its valuable. Some cool quotes I grabbed from the episode this week were:

• “One in seven people on Earth use something that Ian Spalter has designed.”
• “UI is the interface that someone uses on some kind of digital device. UX is the experience that someone has while using those interfaces.”
• “Define the problem, find why we’re doing what we’re doing, what is the thing we’re trying to solve”
• “You make a lot of bad stuff, and that’s a part of the process”
• “Within 5 seconds, users should know what to do, or else it isn’t good UX”
• “The challenge for Instagram now is trying to stay Instagram.”

I really enjoyed the process behind the redesign that was happening in this episode and seeing how a product designer goes about redesigning an app for over 1 billion users. It made me want to work for Instagram because of their intentionality in their design, as well as just a vibe I got from them that they are trying to do something about the negativity and negative self-esteem that comes from using the app. But, at the same time, I don’t know if I want to work for companies (i.e. Facebook) that aren’t doing anything about political propaganda, negative posts, racism in content, etc.