Building great products is not easy. What can we do as designers and product leaders to increase the batting average of the products we contribute to? An answer lies in the way artists and composers have worked for centuries to craft paintings and music. The motif is the smallest atomic unit which inspires everything else.

1. Crafting
Great
Products
@rosspw
Agile UX Design in Practice

2. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Great
products...
exceed user needs to the extent that design
quality directly contributes to business growth.

3. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
any key
metric
Great product design is an
organic driver of scale.

4. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
any key
metric
Great product design is an
organic driver of scale.

5. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Building Great Products
is really !@#$% difficult!
Same goes for... Startups. Games. Music.

6. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
11 out of 12
startups fail.
Source: http://blog.startupcompass.co/

7. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
What can we do as UX designers do to increase the batting
average of the products we contribute to?

8. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
The motif is the smallest atomic unit which inspires everything else.
Motif.

9. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Motif.
Guernica. The motif is the tragedy of war. From a simple
sentiment came a painting of deep complexity.

10. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Beethoven.

11. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Design perfection = can’t add or take away anything.
Beethoven achieved that in music through a focus on motif.
http://youtu.be/rRgXUFnfKIY?t=6s

12. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
The motif in the 5th symphony is transposed and transformed continuously.
But it all stems from the same atomic unit.

13. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
A motif is something iconic. So iconic you can put it on a pillow.

14. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
You know you’ve done something right,
when your product is made into a pillow.

15. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Great
product
design
stems
from
a
motif.
What does this mean for UX?

16. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Vine’s motif = 6 second videos.
The Sign in screen? a 6 second video.

17. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
iOS’s home screen = swipe and tap
Missing features (cut and paste).
It was focused, it was prioritized.

18. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Twitter’s motif = the tweet

19. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
if you’ve ever tried to send a DM, you’ve noticed DMs suck in comparison.

20. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
UX Designers are
often asked to
de-prioritize
& un-focus.

21. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Annotate every detail.
Consider every edge case.
“wireframe monkey”

22. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
End up in the weeds of UI specs. It’s easy to lose a singular focus here.

23. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Agile = great ways of working in teams & tools for process management
Oh, wait, I know!!
Let’s be lean and agile!

24. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
But in each sprint, the big picture is lost.

25. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Behind every great
product is someone who
who championed the
Motif.
Great design owes its sense of inevitability to this.

26. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Motif
is like MVP, but
even more focused.
A screen or an interaction, not a complete product.

27. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Motif
Feature creep is the opposite of

28. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Every product has a motif. Some do it better than others.
+ Facebook = status post.
+ Amazon.com = product search.
+ Vine = 6 second clip.
+ iPhone = swipe.tap.
- LinkedIn = profile.

29. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
LinkedIn Profile ResumUp.com

30. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Motif
spans user types.

31. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Motif
is the marketing.

32. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
As UX Designers,
we’re the owners
of the motif.

33. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Anytime we design a
screen, feature, or
system, the motif
should inform us.

34. ROSS/PW.com@rosspw
Building Great Products
Own
the
Motif.

35. Thank you.
@rosspw