I’m David Hall, a seasoned Irish product designer, focusing on user experience, creativity and how language and psychology work together to shape good design.
I head up design at C&R, where I design enterprise solutions for many of the largest and most interesting companies around, including the top 10 electronics manufacturers, top 3 sporting labels, coolest gaming company, largest furniture retailer and foremost maker of interlocking plastic bricks.
Writing
01
User experience
Microcopy: an essential guide to becoming a more literate designer
Designers should not be mere decorators, but have an understanding of language and microcopy, a crucial design skill, now more than ever.
Product design
Behavioural design: a lean guide to using psychology and motivation for product teams
Behavioural design uses behavioural science, psychology and motivation to guide how people use our products.
User experience
Our hero: Storymapping the user’s journey
This is the story of a novel and powerful way to visualise your user’s journey, and a traumatising childhood gaming experience.
Design history
The Barry Lyndon poster is a design classic, not designed by Saul Bass
The poster is an iconic masterpiece that contains interesting layers of inaccurate attribution.
Design history
Cardew’s Treatise: the greatest musical score ever designed
The ‘Mount Everest’ of graphical musical scores, Treatise still surprises with its invention and beauty. It is also one of the finest fuck yous to the musical establishment ever created.
Product design
Pilot error, Chapanis and the shape of things to come
How Alphonse Chapanis, a young psychologist, saved the lives of WWII pilots through clever design.
Design history
Graphic notation: a brief history of visualising music
Design and music intersect in many areas, yet one relatively obscure but creative area is in the design of graphic notation by composers.
User experience
Design principle: effective listening through reflective questioning
Listening is a vital UX skill we can all get better at, and a chatbot experiment from the 1960s teaches us how.
Product design
Design detail: crafting better shadows for interaction
Shadow doesn’t get as much love as other design elements, such as cool colour palettes or super sexy shapes, but it is vital in communicating interaction.