Day of Design: Alexander Reyna

The first Day of Design speaker I attended was Alexander Reyna who is a Creative Director for Major League Baseball. Initially, I wasn't really sure what to expect from this talk, however I actually found it to be the most fascinating of the two I attended. Reyna first spoke about his background in the industry, about 25 years, which he boiled down to making stuff, tinkering, motion, interactivity, art, and curiosity. He then went on to speak about what he does as the Creative Director for MLB. The goal for MLB is to make the future and to drive innovation in the field of baseball. For Reyna, this means pushing the user experience and interaction. Some of his experience in this field has dealt with creating user experiences at all intersections of media. One example he gave that he said was a huge breakthrough was the creation of instant, 3D play-by-play moments on live TV. This allowed for the viewers of the game on TV to get in depth statistics about the play that was happening right then. This was a big example of what kind of experiences they were trying to push for. After speaking about some of his career examples, Alexander Reyna went into talking about his process and some simple rules he wanted to share with us as we progressed into the field. His process was very simple, being sketch, feedback, wireframe, build, and repeat. I found this to be interesting because it is very similar, if not exactly, what we are doing and have done here in school. It was nice to know that what we were learning was applicable to "the real world".  He also spoke a lot about personas and how important they were when developing a product or experience. Hearing this was also reassuring for the same reasons, and I also found it interesting how in-depth he went with them. One of his examples was for this game that had to deal with dogs that was aimed at a younger female audience. He said that while they consider age, gender, likes, dislikes, they also think about the users family life, their parents, what types of devices they have access to and for how long, those kind of things. Some of the things he listed I had never thought about, but now that he mentioned them, I see why they could be important and definitely why they are helpful. Finally, Reyna spoke about five rules that he has come across in his time in the field that he lives by. His first one was to aim for simplicity, because people should just get good design. The next one was that honesty is obvious and that UX doesn't hide the truth. He said that designers needed to avoid dark patterns and gave us a website that could help us better understand what he meant by that. Looking at the website helped me better understand what he meant by this and simply put, a dark pattern is something that tricks the user into doing something they may not want to do. His third rule was that users who trust, stay. This one was pretty self explanatory and really extends to all facets of business. His fourth rule was that consistency equals comfort, meaning that a consistent design makes a user comfortable. His final rule was to create delight by making products that work right. This rule I really liked because ultimately, that's what most designers are trying to do, but sometimes it can get lost in the process. Overall, I found Alexander Reyna's talk to be really interesting and also reassuring. Perhaps the best part for me was when he talked about being involved in the game design industry because that is where I want to be some day. It was a great experience hearing from someone in the field and knowing that there are plenty of opportunities out there for us in all fields.