How to Design Better Digital Products in Sports [REPLAY]

So maybe I'll go back to this big picture question.

How do you define good design? What's a definition of good design?

I would call it clarity under constraint.

And what I mean by that is design basically needs to reduce friction and we need to build trust and make the next fan action as obvious and predictable as possible.

And earlier in my career, like we talked, a lot of it was really about the veneer.

You know, what does it look like? Does it have all this motion and interactions? And now it's a lot less about that.

Now it's more about a whole system.

It's product, it's content, it's data, it's the operations and support that all have to kind of line up.

And if one of those breaks, the entire experience breaks.

The other thing to consider is in 26, trust is not a soft concept because it shows up as, do fans understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and can they control it? Otherwise, do they feel like they're in control of it? So design that looks great visually but behaves in unexpected ways I think it's just an expensive disappointment across the board.

So that's really the way I try to think about design and using that as a targeted tool to start affecting business outcomes and give fans what it is that they came to engage with us for.

I am familiar with...

the type of design that you're a fan of and the type of companies that promote the kind of design that you're a fan of.

Maybe talk about that a little bit.

Who are the companies that you feel lead in that space and inspire you and your team to do great work?

It's interesting.

I mean, there are quite a few different companies out there.

And obviously, as a designer, this is going to be a cliche statement, but Apple has done an amazing job.

And especially with new and emerging products at the time anyway, like the iPhone and the iPad.

And the ability to bridge the gap and eliminate the learning curve.

I always go back to...

It was a video on YouTube that was published where they handed a two-year-old or a one-year-old an iPad without any instruction, and they were able to just use the product immediately.

So I think eliminating that level of friction and the guesswork and using heuristics that are kind of associated with real-world things that you've used in the past, anybody that does that kind of design... is an A-plus in my book.

Some of the other folks, Dyson is another great company that does it.

Anything that Dieter Rams has done, which has basically influenced Johnny Ive at Apple, anybody that shows enough restraint to remove the superficial things and just leave the essentials, because that's a very difficult thing to do, they typically create products that withstand the test of time.

So maybe I'll go back to this big picture question.

How do you define good design? What's a definition of good design?

I would call it clarity under constraint.

And what I mean by that is design basically needs to reduce friction and we need to build trust and make the next fan action as obvious and predictable as possible.

And earlier in my career, like we talked, a lot of it was really about the veneer.

You know, what does it look like? Does it have all this motion and interactions? And now it's a lot less about that.

Now it's more about a whole system.

It's product, it's content, it's data, it's the operations and support that all have to kind of line up.

And if one of those breaks, the entire experience breaks.

The other thing to consider is in 26, trust is not a soft concept because it shows up as, do fans understand what you're doing, why you're doing it, and can they control it? Otherwise, do they feel like they're in control of it? So design that looks great visually but behaves in unexpected ways I think it's just an expensive disappointment across the board.

So that's really the way I try to think about design and using that as a targeted tool to start affecting business outcomes and give fans what it is that they came to engage with us for.

I am familiar with...

the type of design that you're a fan of and the type of companies that promote the kind of design that you're a fan of.

Maybe talk about that a little bit.

Who are the companies that you feel lead in that space and inspire you and your team to do great work?

It's interesting.

I mean, there are quite a few different companies out there.

And obviously, as a designer, this is going to be a cliche statement, but Apple has done an amazing job.

And especially with new and emerging products at the time anyway, like the iPhone and the iPad.

And the ability to bridge the gap and eliminate the learning curve.

I always go back to...

It was a video on YouTube that was published where they handed a two-year-old or a one-year-old an iPad without any instruction, and they were able to just use the product immediately.

So I think eliminating that level of friction and the guesswork and using heuristics that are kind of associated with real-world things that you've used in the past, anybody that does that kind of design... is an A-plus in my book.

Some of the other folks, Dyson is another great company that does it.

Anything that Dieter Rams has done, which has basically influenced Johnny Ive at Apple, anybody that shows enough restraint to remove the superficial things and just leave the essentials, because that's a very difficult thing to do, they typically create products that withstand the test of time.