Suddenly, a UX designer is being advertised for! A much-anticipated miracle has finally happened!

[Meliora spero]

After 37 years Serif finally hires a UX designer? Canva motivated you? 

I can see that various customers here have tirelessly recommended and begged you over the years to recruit exactly this type of UX profile. You tried to hire devs with "an understanding of UX" (a massive underestimation of the specialty of UX professionals and a lack of understanding of the subject), but apparently, it took an acquisition for such a specialist to suddenly be recognized and sought after. This acquisition gives a much more positive impression, as it shows that the professionalism behind the development is being taken more seriously. By Canva.

Just look at the job posting - it shows the professionalism and serious work involved in a usability specialist's tasks. All of that has visibly been lacking in the development. So all the talk in the keynote about the requested features you've delivered, here's a newsflash: you only delivered this after being acquired despite nonstop feedback for years. Stubbornness that has been a pain for customers.

Thank you, Canva!

[bbrother]

11 hours ago, Aldus said:

Stubbornness that has been a pain for customers.

How many mistakes and frustration could have been saved for users if they had not been so stubborn and decided to hire someone with such skills much earlier.
Such a senior product designer will deal with gaps in specifications, which are the main source of misunderstandings, assumptions and conflicts that in turn lead to bugs.

In addition, I pray for one more miracle.
That they will provide the QA head @Patrick Connor with the necessary resources to:

• expand the testing team with experienced testers to test more intensively and thoroughly
• create a solid testing strategy.

So that the problems we are dealing with lately where caught before an update is pushed to the users.

[fde101]

18 minutes ago, bbrother said:

How many mistakes and frustration could have been saved for users if they had not been so stubborn and decided to hire someone with such skills much earlier.

How much more frustration may be caused if the new designer has ideas of his own and takes things in a completely different direction than users expect or wish for?

[Meliora spero]

3 minutes ago, fde101 said:

How much more frustration may be caused if the new designer has ideas of his own and takes things in a completely different direction than users expect or wish for?

No. No. No. Stop. You have no idea how such specialists work, and obviously not much about how project work is conducted either. UX specialists work completely differently; they are the ambassadors of all customers and must channel knowledge about user behavior, desires for functionality, and UI design into the development team and implement it as best and as consistently as possible across the entire product portfolio. They are your best friend as a customer, and they are standard in all professional and serious product development.

Take a break from the forum, go out and see how serious software development is done in the real world, and you will be pleasantly surprised. Feel free to bring Serif along.

[Frozen Death Knight]

Well, having your budget increase in the millions kind of allows you to hire more people with very specialised experience. I really doubt posts like these are what made Serif want to hire such a position, because running a team will naturally make you see what's missing. You can't however always act out on those things and need to make due with what resources and manpower you have. At least it's good that the money wíll be put into adding those missing puzzle pieces.

Also, pay attention to that this position is more than just doing UX design. It is also about integrating Serif and Affinity into the Canva culture and ecosystem. Affinity will likely change pretty radically as a brand going forth as it gets more integrated into Canva. We'll just have to wait and see how that change will look like.

[bbrother]

1 hour ago, Frozen Death Knight said:

Affinity will likely change pretty radically as a brand going forth as it gets more integrated into Canva. We'll just have to wait and see how that change will look like.

This job offer is a first sign of post-acquisition changes that tells the Affinity development process will be more user-centric.
As with everything we will have to wait to see the results but in my opinion this is move in a right direction that can really bring good things to the users.
My hope is that we will see more of these being undertaken in the near future. But next time it would be good if they covered areas such as testing and bug fixing.

[Meliora spero]

One thing is certain. All this chatter leads nowhere, all the talk over the years led everyone to Barbie World, Tik Tok presentations for kids and tweens, and more business bullshit. It's just a cycle in here, and the feedback Serif has taken in is nothing compared to what they've been avoiding.

I'm done with this circus. I haven't been able to shake off that keynote after the last release's poor algorithms and rushed premiere in all its incompleteness.

Let's see if this UX designer and Serif together can grow to deliver real products to ambitious people, or if the path leads through Canva now to young and children and wanna-be designers who need something nice done quickly. I'll let the results speak, not read more from random fans.

Ash said something about the acquisition feeling just right. I sure hope he didn't feel comfortable on stage yesterday at the children's birthday party on stage, did he imagine that nonsense in March 2024? I can certainly imagine Affinity heading towards a segment of the market that might have a skateboard or two.

I'll measure the quality of future releases from here on out. Serif and Canva need to deliver now. I need to work with competent software. Let's see if they can figure out how to make that.

And now I will enjoy not having to be disturbed by hundreds - yes, actually thousands - of posts from people who obviously don't know much about what they're talking about. But that doesn't hold them back.

[Frozen Death Knight]

1 hour ago, bbrother said:

This job offer is a first sign of post-acquisition changes that tells the Affinity development process will be more user-centric.
As with everything we will have to wait to see the results but in my opinion this is move in a right direction that can really bring good things to the users.
My hope is that we will see more of these being undertaken in the near future. But next time it would be good if they covered areas such as testing and bug fixing.

I think it's a good direction to take, yes. Having a dedicated UX designer to keep track of all our feedback and to steer development will reduce the amount of development time in the long run. Having a solid design document with up to date feedback along with a strong vision will make things more polished by not having to go back and redesign them later down the line.

A couple of examples would be the Links panel and the first iteration of UI workspace presets. Both solid features that are/were held back by its clunky UX. At least with the workspaces it was fixed during that same Beta, but because of its first design it took extra development time to go back and fix. It's gotten better over time, but a dedicated UX designer will be able to spot issues like that early to rectify them before any code has been written.

V2 has been fixing significantly more bugs than V1. As long as they keep hiring more developers and avoid releasing patches like 2.5 too early I think we're on the right track. I got to say though that was a bit disappointing to see 2.5 be released just for meeting a deadline for the Canva presentation event. It was clearly not ready. 

 

[PaoloT]

Last time Microsoft called for an UX expert, they came out with that monster called The Ribbon.

 

[Pšenda]

5 hours ago, PaoloT said:

Last time Microsoft called for an UX expert, they came out with that monster called The Ribbon.

And with about ten versions of the Start menu, which got worse and worse each time.

[Twolane]

I can't wait until the new hire redesigns the interface and the complaints start rolling in. Should be worth a page or two of postings at the very least.

[Affinityconfusesme]

It looks like they hired someone because the job posting was taken down off the site.👍

[fde101]

4 hours ago, Affinityconfusesme said:

It looks like they hired someone because the job posting was taken down off the site.👍

Either that or they gave up and stopped trying.

[Affinityconfusesme]

On 7/5/2024 at 10:21 PM, fde101 said:

Either that

I hope so.