The Wilson Project Blog of UX/Front-End Developer Ivan Wilson

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What One UI Developer Learned at the Opera

(Originally published on CDG Interactive/Innate blog, edited by Jennifer Mayne Hoppe)

Images of the Met production of Shostakovich’s The Nose, produced by William Kentridge –
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A lot of people think of user interface (UI) developers as “tech guys,” but I see myself more as a designer. At its base, design is about solving problems. So I’m really a designer who solves problems through programming. Like any designer, I have to think creatively—and I often find inspiration from the wide world OUTSIDE of my cubicle. (Yes, despite appearances to the contrary, I can function away from the office from long periods of time, like a cubical lungfish…)

Take, for example, a recent Saturday I spent at The Metropolitan Opera. I watched a performance of an opera titled The Nose. Composed by Dmitri Shostakovich, in 1930, the opera is about an official who wakes up and find his own nose missing, only to find out that it has full life of its own (as well as higher status than he does). The music and the singing were well done, but was really got my attention was the production’s design.

The design was conceived by South African artist William Kentridge, who is well known for his work with stop animation from drawings and paper cutouts. In this production, Kentridge melds his own aesthetic with historically appropriate references from the 1930s. Specifically, the set design follows the artistic strain of Russia a movement was about breaking and re-interpreting of artistic conventions like the revolution that spawned it.

Kentridge enhanced the on-stage elements by projecting stop animations into the production. Projected onto the back of the set, the animations looked like early abstract shape animations of the same period in which the opera took place. Then Kentridge mixed the animations with live film and archive film footage. Rather than distracting from the action on stage, these elements truly enhanced the satirical nature of the opera.

And that’s what really good design does. It frames the content for maximum impact and engages your attention. Great design happens when someone examines a problem thoughtfully and creates a solution that fits so well, it seems like the only solution.

So now that I’m back “home” in my cube at Innate, I’m taking inspiration from my afternoon at The Met, and striving to find the most elegant, effective, and engaging solutions to the design and technical challenges that I’m working on.

Such is the life of a UI developer!