SENIOR UI/UX DESIGNER, JACK WATSON DESIGN, CHICAGO IL
I’ve been fortunate to have a 15 year career centered around education as a multidisciplinary designer. I started out as a medical illustrator at an agency working in higher education publishing and with hospitals, spent some time as an animator in that space as well, and eventually landed in UI/UX. As a freelancer, I’ve worked with many small to medium-sized businesses, both new and established, to help them tell their story and reach their audience with accessibility as a part of the process — from project discovery, to strategy, to final deliverables. For the past 5 years, my unique skills and experience have helped me to guide and teach other creatives as a community expert, mentor, and moderator in the official Adobe product Discords, through my personal live streams, and as a host on Adobe Live including the Adobe Illustrator Creative Challenges and Pro Tips. Additionally, I’ve been a part of a small group of incredible individuals called the Art Squad, helping to organize weekly virtual meetings and occasional collaborative projects together during the pandemic.
TELL US HOW AND WHY YOU BECAME INVOLVED IN SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COMMUNICATIONS, AND SHARE ANY THOUGHTS ON WHY DESIGN CAN BE AN ESPECIALLY EFFECTIVE TOOL?
I became interested during college in patient education and producing content for higher education, and that became my first job. Some of my most memorable projects were infographics, which require distilling complex medical or scientific information using graphics and straightforward text to help put a patient’s mind at ease, or explain a process to students in a way that empowers them. I would move on to work in UI/UX design, and my proudest project in that space has to be Positive Peers, a social app for HIV+ youth, which I had the honor of redesigning from the ground up in conjunction with MetroHealth and the agency I worked with at the time.
Then as a freelancer I worked with the LGBT Center of Cleveland creating product designs they still use today for events. I’m really passionate about storytelling in design, and whether you’re in illustration, graphic design, UI/UX design, you’re always telling the client’s story in a way that resonates with their audience. It’s really the ultimate goal, and so in that regard I can’t think of a more effective tool.
GIVEN THE CONFLUENCE OF EVENTS AND CHALLENGES OUR SOCIETY NOW FACES, DOES THIS MOMENT IN TIME PRESENT ANY SPECIAL OPPORTUNITIES, URGENCIES, OBSTACLES TO DESIGNING FOR GOOD?
There’s certainly a lot of challenges for designers today. I think authenticity is going to be very important as we move forward. I’m of the mindset that AI image generation is here, and it’s not going anywhere. So we have to find a way to navigate that, and one way is through having an authentic and un compromising voice and style. On a more positive note, accessibility is starting to be at the forefront of conversations with clients, where it should always be. There are small steps we can integrate into our process that can make a big difference to opening up our work to a wider audience, such as adding alt text, focusing on color contrast, and limiting text styles and using them intentionally.
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