By Design: The Tenets of Good Design with Alex Helfers
With over 20 years of experience in the XD + technology space, Alex Helfers, EVP, head of connected experiences at Laughlin Constable, oversees all experience design and technology team products, services and client relationships at LC. His past clients cover a range of industries, from privately held brands to Fortune 500 clients. He has won many major industry awards, including Clios, One Show and Cannes shortlist. He’s a Dad of two, guitarist, artist and competitive swimmer.
LBB> Tell us about your current role and design specialism(s)?
Alex> I am the head of the connected experiences team at Laughlin Constable. “Connected experiences”, is our fusion of engineering and experience design, and my background is primarily in the experience design space (UX and UI design).
LBB> What drew you to design in the first place and how has your design career evolved?
Alex> I have always been artistic and have always appreciated design as a channel for creative and visual communication. I majored in graphic design and illustration in college, with a focus on new technology (the internet was just taking off at that point). I quickly found my place within the emerging field of web/experience design and since then have had opportunities to create digital work for a wide variety of global companies and organisations.
LBB> What aspects of design do you get really nerdy about personally?
Alex> Being an experience designer, I personally find it very interesting to reconcile a designer’s desire for clean communication and 'less is more' with the internet user’s desire for more content, more tools, and faster conversion. It’s a tricky balance that requires a constant multi-perspective approach to designing.
LBB> There are so many new design tools out - what tools do you like to use and why? (whether digital platforms or old fashioned pen and paper!)
Alex> I primarily use Figma but am happy to design in Sketch or Adobe XD if clients request it. I also use a variety of other tools within the Adobe Creative Suite, depending on what the project requires. And yes, sometimes hand sketches are helpful!
LBB> What are the most persistent misconceptions about your particular design specialism that you see across the advertising and marketing landscape?
Alex> One big misconception about experience design is that it’s the team that “just does wireframes” and isn’t capable of truly creative thinking and brand-level design. There are so many creative ways that a brand can come to life and be further defined, or even evolved, as part of a digital experience.
Conversely, there are so many ways a brand, and experience, can fall flat if it’s only thought about as a wireframe and a funnel for conversion. It’s part of the reason why experience design is so interesting - it’s never just about design for design’s sake. Design rationale needs to deftly balance numbers, data, and user needs, but also should rely heavily on fundamentals and best practices.
LBB> Accessible design is an increasingly prominent topic - from your experience what are the most challenging facets of accessible design? And what does best practice in accessible design in your particular design specialism look like?
Alex> From a visual design perspective, obtaining AA-level WCAG standards really isn’t difficult if you are approaching your work with the goal of delivering clear communication.
Meeting colour contrast standards, type readability standards, and ensuring iconography is understandable—all these things are tenets of good design.
Accessibility can get a little harder on the engineering side, where semantic order needs attention to ensure screen readers can properly read back and prioritise content for visually challenged users. And, on rare occasion, if a client requests AAA standards (often with government contract work), those projects can be challenging because of the far more restrictive limitations on colour usage at the AAA level.
LBB> What design controversies or challenges do you find trickiest to navigate or do you find yourself thinking about most frequently?
Alex> I’d say the biggest and most frequent challenge in experience design is working with a particular type of client who is only focused on data and conversion.
Of course, those things are an extremely important foundation, as conversion metrics are the reason many corporate digital experiences exist in the first place.
But the key to true digital evolution is balancing those data points with a more holistic understanding of what it takes to excite users and deliver value that competitors aren’t doing. It often takes a little bit of faith that we, as experienced designers and marketers, know how to deliver something that won’t just move the needle a little bit — it will have much more substantial impact, both for the immediate bottom line and for the larger and longer-term brand.
LBB> How do you think about the ethics of design?
Alex> We are hired by our clients to create solutions that provide maximum digital value for their customers. If our clients are in a line of work that is generally ethical (which all of them are), then there is rarely any sort of broad concern in the work we do.
Occasionally, we do grapple with smaller questions of, “what’s right for our customer” vs. “what’s right for the business" but typically those challenges are managed by delivering our strong perspective to the client team and working through a resolution.
Given the immense variance and power of the digital universe, it’s hard to put a finger on the best and most inspiring digital design solutions.
As far as great visual storytelling, I’ve seen some nice examples from the automotive space— Tesla, VW, others. Luxury brands like Tiffany and Louis Vuitton often feature product photography and video work that sets a sophisticated tone.
When it comes to functional experiences, I enjoy the sleek interfaces, animations and digital tools I find within the Netflix and AirBnB ecosystems (although I’m biased on the latter, I’m a STR owner on the side).
LBB> Which design projects throughout your career have been the most satisfying to work on and why?
Alex> I’ve had unique opportunities to work on a variety of award-winning and high-impact projects, and in hindsight I feel very lucky to have those experiences in my portfolio. From a value-add perspective, I was part of the team that created the digital software used to help deliver the initial rounds of COVID-19 vaccines across America, and I also designed several important features and functions within prior versions of the United Airlines mobile app.
From a more fun perspective, I got to work on a digital campaign for Oreo Cookies, featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, which was featured during the 2009 Super Bowl. They raced each other to see who could lick a DoubleStuf Oreo faster. We made a digital bobblehead of Peyton Manning that users could download. It was ridiculously fun, and I still can’t believe I got paid to work on it.
LBB> What’s going on at the moment in design that’s getting you particularly excited?
Alex> I am most excited about the rapidly evolving tools that make great design possible, and more intuitive, for designers to create digital experiences and digital value themselves.
While I’ll never contend that a team of talented creative people won’t deliver solutions that outpace what an individual can do, I will say that it’s truly inspiring what some people can do on their own with a laptop these days. And this doesn’t just apply to design, it applies to many facets of the creative universe.
LBB> Who are your design heroes and why?
Alex> While it’s completely warranted, I’m going to avoid a more commonplace answer to this question (Jony Ive, Apple Computer). If I had to go with a single person whose work I’ve always found inspiring, it’s Joseph Kosinski.
While he has found substantial fame in recent years for directing Hollywood blockbusters such as 'Top Gun 2', he got his start as an advertising film director who specialised in motion, CGI, and sleek digital environments.
Some of his early work is stunning. He ultimately brought that design influence to the big screen with 'Tron: Legacy' and then moved away from it with the realism of more of his recent work. But when I think about the tech-forward design sense of the kind of experience design work I do, his portfolio is one that inspires.
LBB> Thinking of people at the beginning of their career, what advice would you give them for navigating this constantly changing field?
Alex> One thing I’ll say is that the field of experience design has gotten a lot more complex and cluttered than it was when I started, over twenty years ago. There are a lot more tools, lots more data, and more people with a (partially) educated opinion about what defines good or bad digital design. As a result, it’s harder than ever to cut through the clutter and deliver work that is properly focused and not watered down by too many competing perspectives.
My advice to someone just starting out is that it’s more important than ever to gain a strong understanding of design fundamentals and best practices to inform their own perspective on what makes good design. Having this foundation will help inform better solutions and make those solutions easier to rationalise amongst crowded conversations. And yes - digital tools are important, too. This is a quickly evolving line of work that requires an aptitude for technical growth.
But don’t prioritise the 'tools in your toolbox' over the foundation of your design perspective.
