Interview with Vitor Lourenco: Designer of Twitter

Today we're proud to present our interview with Vitor Lourenco.

I believe that a good interface is the one that fades gracefully, allowing content to be in the very front row.

Vitor, it's quite exciting to have this interview with you. What inspired you to get involved in design? You must have gotten interested in this field at a very young age. I got interested in web design when I was 12, but I never planned to pursue it as a career. It was something that happened for fun, and suddenly started to generate a great income while bringing happiness to my life. The first websites I created were related to gaming and animé, some passions I had at that time. On your website you describe yourself not simply as a 'Web Designer' but rather a 'User Experience Designer'. Can you explain what is a 'User Experience Designer'? I often change these titles—and haven’t found the perfect one yet. At the time I put that on my website, I was concerned about all the aspects that involve a great user experience on the web, and I thought I could shape that. Turns out, you can’t really design an experience—it’s something that happens on the user end, where many variables are out of the designer’s reach and control. Right now, I’m calling myself a Product/UI designer, since I spent most of my time creating and polishing this layer of a user’s experience. A constant theme that you carry on your website is 'simplicity'. Why do you prefer this approach over one that might be more graphical? I believe that a good interface is the one that fades gracefully, allowing content to be in the very front row. As a designer, you must always remember that, in most cases, your users aren’t there to appreciate your mad visual skills, but to accomplish a task that is important for them in some way. I love a quote from Alan Cooper that says: "No matter how cool your interface is, less of it would be better." Twitter: interface + visual + markup We came across FoodFeed.us, one of your many personal projects. What is the idea and inspiration behind this project? FoodFeed is something I created in a weekend just to play with the Twitter API. It’s clearly not a useful thing, and now it’s functionality has been replaced by Twitter Search, but it gave me some visibility at that time (that’s how the Twitter team got to know my work). You're best known for having worked on one of the largest websites in the world, Twitter. Can you tell us about the steps you took to transform this already simple website to the more elegant, intuitive style so many people have come to know and love? I worked with Twitter’s engineering team to simplify the application UI even more, by following some of John Maeda’s simplicity concepts: shrink, hide and embody. Therefore, the application didn’t loose any of it’s features, but they were better grouped and incorporated on the site, by introducing a unified sidebar with a vertical tabbed navigation. In terms of visual design, we refined the typography, button styles and fixed spacing and grid inconsistencies. On the front-end technical layer, we introduced AJAX for posting the updates and switching tabs, while improving the site’s performance by grouping images using CSS sprites. You've also worked on other social sites such as Yahoo! and the Orkut app. From your experience, what are the key aspects in design necessary for such sites to be successful? Each project has its own key aspects, and most of the time a project’s success is not only attached to its design. There are deeper concerns for a project to be successful, most of them related to solving a problem that users have. You always have to ask yourself if you’re solving an actual problem—then it’s a matter of executing it in the right way, and there’s no formula for that. GTD: interface + visual Web typography is the hot topic at most events and blogs these days. How much focus do you assign to typography in your web designs and how much influence do you think it has on a prosperous design? Typography is one of the most prominent elements in my designs. I really pay a lot of attention to it, and I do think that great designs are made of great typography and photography. They represent the content, and that should be the main interaction points on a website. In other words, get rid of unnecessary decoration and treat text as user interface. You're quite the all-round talent, possessing skills in UI design, visual design, usability, accessibility, client-side development (XHTML, CSS & Javascript). Do you think it's necessary for a designer to possess all these skills, or can a designer stick to design skills alone? These are basic requirements for a good web designer, and if you want to be successful, it will depend on how you’ve mastered them. "UI design" is not a science, and no one will never have 100% proficiency on it. It really depends on the media and contexts you’re dealing with. For that matter, it’s more important to have a solid cultural base and be able to put yourself in your user’s shoes all the time. In your opinion, what is the climate of design in your native Brazil, or wider Latin America? Is it fast-paced and expanding, or is there a need for more designers? There are some great Brazilian designers doing outstanding work all around the world—unfortunately the web design scene in Brazil is not that great, so a lot of people tend leave the country in favor of better opportunities in America and Europe. Futuro.vs: interface + visual + wordpress How do you think your fluency in both Portuguese and English helped you to expand your global reach? English has definitely helped me a lot. The best design books and references are available in this language, and I wouldn't know much about design if I haven’t read the right books. I’m glad my parents made some extra efforts to pay for my English classes when I was a child. Speaking of the 'right' books, can you share some of your favorites? Yes, my all-time favorites are:

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design - Alan Cooper Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition) - Jeffrey Zeldman Paul Rand - By Steven Heller Thinking with Type - Ellen Lupton

You're only 21 and have accomplished more than most designers probably will in their lifetime! What's next in your career? I still have a bunch of things to accomplish, but there’re no plans in my life—only the future will tell. I do want to start my own thing at some point, but I’ve only worked at great places so far. Right now, I’m really happy to be helping change the word at Twitter, 140 characters at a time. What advice would you give to young designers who are struggling to move to the next step in their career? I would tell them to create their own projects. Don’t wait for the perfect client to build stuff you would be proud of—high are the chances that this client will never appear. Go ahead and start creating something right now—you’ll learn a lot more and have much greater rewards. FoodFeed: entire project Holodum: interface + visual DesignFaves: interface + visual About the Author Interview by Damian Madray, creative director at Depthskins and Designers'Couch. When not busy with client projects Damian likes to spend his time on his favourite project, Designers'Couch.