Rocket Science: Preet Singh

Preet is a product designer and the founder of DesignX, Toronto’s largest UX & design community.

Whose creative work do you really admire?

There are a couple of folks that I really look up to. When it comes to the tactical, execution part of design, there’s this German designer who now lives in New York named Tobias van Schneider.

He was the Design Lead at Spotify. I really look up to his quality of work. He focuses on the storytelling aspect and shares his personal nuances around every design piece that he puts out there.

I also follow the work of Jared Spool quite a bit. He’s a really well-known figure in the industry, especially in the UX forum.

What’s your favorite restaurant in Toronto?

Oh, there are so many! There’s this Distillery District in Toronto, and there’s this Mexican place that I really enjoy going to called El Catrin. Great interior design, great patio, interesting location.

What do you tell junior designers not to do?

What I say is generally more about the setting of expectations about the kind of work that they are looking for.

I see a lot of junior designers coming out of these boot camp schools. They’ll say things like, “Oh, I want to do a lot more UX strategy. I just want to do strategy work and I don’t want to do the actual design execution part as much.” Don’t close off opportunities based on that narrow view.

I would say don’t get hung up on a templatized way of approaching design. In school they’re taught a lot of frameworks. When I’m interviewing designers, I’ll ask about their portfolio, “Why did you do a user journey map here? The product you were working on did not actually need one, based on the timeframe you had.” Usually the answer is, “Oh, I was told to do it.”

You don’t necessarily have to use every tool in your toolkit. Take a step back and think about the best approach for a specific project.

Your sister worked on the Netflix documentary Wild, Wild Country. What were your thoughts after you saw it?

Right! She went to Switzerland to interview Sheela Birnstiel (formerly known as Ma Anand Sheela). So my first reaction, even before congratulating her, was, “How do I make sure she’s safe there?”

In the whole documentary, this lady is running the show — the other guy is just collecting money. After I saw the documentary, my opinion of her stayed exactly the same. This is a person who has no regrets for what she’s done and thinks of herself as this really badass woman. Which she is, but in a more complex, negative way that’s challenging for viewers to define.

What’s your favorite building?

I really am fascinated by the buildings back home in India. In particular I like Qutub Minar, one of the tallest buildings in Delhi.

I like it from the aesthetics side, and the history too. When the Mughals came to India and conquered Delhi, they brought all this fascinating architecture with them.

What type of non-digital design gives you inspiration?

These days I notice myself observing the design part of print. Publications, magazines, books … all those types of things.

I used to view magazines as just content. Now I try and focus more on the layout, and how pieces are arranged to create an immersive reading experience. Fashion magazines do this storytelling aspect really well, balancing content and space.

I’m also a big fan of old-school watches, especially the face design. I’m also into how sneakers are designed. Sometimes it’s just the color palette, sometimes it’s about the pattern and the shapes. It’s just refreshing to look at.

What’s a coming trend in UX that people should be thinking more about?

We should be thinking more about how to personalize the design side of UX … the more interactive part of UX … to each user.

When you’re talking about personalization, you have three things going on. You have the designer working on the UX side, trying to understand how each customer or user behaves differently. You have the technology side, building out AI systems to just implement these components and libraries. The third side is all this data out there, right? I think once these three can effectively merge, it’s going to change everything.

Big companies like Facebook say that on any given day there’s something like a thousand versions of the Facebook feed that are being tested. But how do you bring that down to a five-person design team?

How am I, as a designer, able to set rules in an algorithm so it can start designing something that could provide a little different user experience for everyone? A much more curated personalized user experience … that’s something that is a hypothesis but I think it’s already happening in bigger places.

What’s a website that UX professionals should follow?

This might be obvious to a lot of designers, and many people already follow that but there is this website called Yanko Design.

It doesn’t focus on just screen-level design. It’s more like tactical design, industrial design. They’ll feature watch faces or new alarm clocks designed by someone. I enjoy learning more about the design part of those things.

What’s something Bollywood does very well that Hollywood should do more of?

Oh, I think definitely dancing and music. I definitely enjoy the cliché. I am a big fan of musicals, and the music part is integrated so well into Bollywood movies.

Everything is a hundred times more emotional in Bollywood movies. A son saying goodbye to his mother, because he’s moving to another city for a job or something, is cause for you to pour your eyes out in a Bollywood movie. In a Hollywood movie it’s just like “Okay, I’m moving out, see you later.” That’s it!