Commerce Talks EP3: Ron Sparks

Guest Bio

Ron Sparks | Lead Mobile Product Design

As a key member of the product design team, Ron is tasked with the difficult challenge of turning innovative features into a reality, with a well structured & clean interface that enables rapid training and supports a range of functionality seamlessly. Ron has an extensive background in design, he helped to design and deploy self checkout UX/UI in Japan, worked for Nike & eBay prior to joining Teamwork Commerce. He currently blogs around the creative process and is an advocate for customer centric user experiences.

Overview

Product Design Is Complicated

Designing user experiences is a significant challenge embracing many considerations, for technology companies designers have to focus on creating user experiences that are simple to use and easy to engage with. In the context of Teamwork Commerce these user experiences have to support the goal of the platform: being a seamless part of the retail experience.

Innovation

User experience, design and growth are all individual factors and must be considered tangentially as well as separately, not every experience has to be customer centric. But, all user experiences must be engaging, seamless and supportive of the goal of the retail experience. Design needs to be flexible and support the retail experience.

You V. The Customer

While it may seem that an experience should be designed from your vision, it is also essential to realize your desire is not the same as the customer’s. Impulsively designers will work to show the value of the backend & it’s complexity to evaluate the experience. But, customers just want the value. A key concept in writing is show, don’t tell. The efficacy of a user experience is truly evaluated by the customer being seamlessly able to complete their desire without being slowed down by the interface.

Ron has a blog centered on his design ethos as well as trends in the world of user experience design. If you would like to read more about his approach: http://ron-sparks.com/