Talking Digital Product Design with Patrick Drake

This week, Patrick Drake, a product designer for Dealerware, an automotive tech company located in Austin, discusses how you can’t separate UI from UX because they inherently enhance each other towards a product’s overall goals. He discusses why demonstrating sound problem solving in your work and the ability to walk someone through your thought process is the most effective skill a designer can develop. Patrick shares his process for usability testing, downplaying biometric eye tracking in favor of fast, high-fidelity prototypes because you don’t have to guess what someone is thinking after a biometrics test. We talk about using parallel work examples to get a job doing something new and how sending perfect work isn’t as important as just showing some level of competency when starting out. Lastly Patrick compares the autonomy and depth within an in-house design role vs the fast turnaround of project based freelance work at a design agency - it’s all about the iterative self-sustaining loop of finding and improving novel problems.
SHOW NOTES

• Dovetail - A User Research Platform
• Johnathan Stark - Freelance Mentor
• Articulating Design Decisions, by Tom Greene