Tim Caynes Senior User Experience Designer

What do you think design can achieve?

I think the purpose of design, especially in digital design and cross-channel design, is to enrich experiences: to make life better for people.

Part of our design skill set is the ability to immerse ourselves in peoples’ problems: understanding behaviours, understanding desires, uncovering user needs, however ethereal they turn out to be.

It’s nice to beautify the world too, while you're at it.

Design can improve the world aesthetically, but is design about more than that?

I think aesthetics is part of the design process; a component rather than just an outcome. It's a part of the emotional engagement that folks have with the object or the experience.

It also depends on what kind of design artifact, or design project you’re working on. Some things you want to be invisible, usable and bulletproof, and that’s the focus of the design activity. It doesn’t have to be lovely to be great design.

What is your favourite moment in the process?

When you're in the middle. When you’re using your understanding and design skills to interpret user desires and needs, and can say that in this product or service, in this context, this is the right way to address those user needs. It is the moment of creation; the stuff that feels spontaneous, but driven by insight.

I guess the feeling of spontaneity comes from being able to put your experience into practice. The decisions you make during the process; often they’re unconscious decisions, but they're inspired from something tangible, rather than ethereal.