Transcript

00:50Hey, great to see you.

00:51Thanks for coming.

00:52This is the pilot episode of Wireframe.

00:56And today, I’m going to talk a little bit about what to expect in this

01:00show and give you some background into my journey with design.

01:04So, my name is Donnie D’Amato.

01:06I’ve been designing experiences on the web for over 25 years.

01:11And that started from a very young age, before the web, working

01:15with things like Legos as a kid.

01:17And I used to build all these very creative interactive, tactile pieces that

01:22were really engaging, of course, to me.

01:26And as I got older, I started getting into, of course, larger materials.

01:30So I used to go to Home Depot or Blick or Michael’s and pay all this money to

01:35make this object that was, you know, again, artistic, but interactive.

01:39And that made me feel good because people can forget that feedback of just touching

01:44that piece and seeing how it reacted.

01:47But as you can imagine, that gets expensive really fast, you

01:51know, especially as a teenager, you know, you can’t really.

01:54Keep that up for very long.

01:55So when the web came around about that time, I was very excited.

02:01I saw a lot of potential because now I’m able to create experiences

02:06with very low resources and having that very high reward.

02:10And what I’m talking about is being able to create a website, make that hyperlink

02:15and put it into an AOL chat room.

02:17And I know.

02:17Some people might not know what that is potentially, but just imagine you being

02:21able to post it on your social feed and actually have people respond to it and see

02:28the number of people in your analytics.

02:30And back then it was just a counter to see that just go up and get feedback from

02:35your peers or even people that aren’t your peers that are just visiting your site.

02:39And that meant a lot to me back then, not really knowing.

02:44What user experience design really was.

02:46I mean, it was the wild, wild West back then.

02:48Like anything was possible.

02:50We didn’t know what a good experience on the web was going to be yet.

02:54But you know, fast forward to today.

02:57For me, I’m working at GoDaddy as a principal engineer on

03:01the UX core component library.

03:03I’m also faculty at Parsons School of Design where I teach user

03:06research and interaction design to dozens of students a year.

03:11And I’m also the founder of a company called Design Systems House, where we’re

03:14dedicated to the future of design systems.

03:16So, very busy and doing a lot of things.

03:19In fact, I have a couple of side projects that you might have heard of.

03:22One of those is called Gridless Design¹, which is talking about the mismatch

03:26between Design tools and our web medium.

03:30You might’ve heard of something called token operations², which is meant

03:34to describe how we might transform design tokens in a JSON file, and

03:39I also presented at Clarity last year, something called Mise en Mode³,

03:42which is scoping our token values to create new brand expressions.

03:47So obviously very involved with design and development, and I

03:51really am excited to share some of these thoughts and ideas with you

03:56in this new form called wireframe.

03:59So let’s talk a little bit about what to expect.

04:02What I want to do is I want to make design clear and that’s, not just

04:07for our users, but also for creators.

04:09We’re talking about designers, developers, and anyone that’s involved in our field.

04:13And I think.

04:14It’s really important because there’s a lot of information out there and it

04:18can get really confusing, it can get contradictory, it can get complex,

04:22and I really want to break it down.

04:24I want to simplify it.

04:25I want to make sure we cut all the fat out and get right down to the

04:28things that we really need to address.

04:32And if you know me, you might know that there’s going to, of course, be

04:35a whole bunch of hot takes that are going to question popular opinions.

04:40But I also want to empower folks to re evaluate their own needs and make their

04:45own decisions based on the things that I’m talking about here on this show.

04:50Now, I also want to make a little note about the word wireframe and why

04:54I chose it for the name of the show.

04:57A wireframe is supposed to be the foundation of an experience

05:00and that’s without any influence of the brand or expression.

05:04It’s really trying to be the first step in providing that interface to our users.

05:11And I find that wireframes are often missing from the professional

05:15design process these days.

05:17And my hope is that the name wireframe will grow in popularity.

05:21And so will the practice also.

05:24I think that would be great.

05:26So what’s next here?

05:29Well, of course I want to hear from you, right?

05:32What is confusing about design or development and where you’d like

05:36clarity in these things, right?

05:37I want to discuss this.

05:38I want it out in the open.

05:40I want to be explicit about it.

05:41I want to tear it apart and I want to make sure we’re, we’re understanding and

05:45Exactly what’s important to all of us when we’re making these things for our

05:50users So if you want to get involved and interact you can tweet at me at wireframe

05:55FM on Twitter⁴ Or whatever you’d like to call it at this point, and I’m hoping to

06:00hear from you I want to interact with you.

06:02I want to share stuff with you folks.

06:04I’m really excited to start this thing it’s been a long time coming and

06:08I’ll see you on the other side.

06:10Thanks