In this episode, Wenzile Ngcobo speaks with Marissa Oerlemans, a Senior Designer at Syft Analytics. Marissa has designed some of Syft's most beloved features, such as the new and improved Cash Manager tool! She also has an interesting background, initially studying and working as an accountant and then transitioning into Information Design.

This is the episode for you if you've ever wondered:

• What design is really about and why accountants should pay more attention to it
• What goes into the design of your favorite apps
• Why good design is really about solving problems
• How even the most simple appearances mask complexity - or make the complex seem simple

Rapid fire recommendations

• Software: Figma and Excel
• Book: Anxious People by Fredrik Backman
• Most valuable lesson learnt about designing software: There's no one-size-fits-all solution. Sometimes, you need to deviate and come up with a different solution or approach that's best suited to the customer. Sometimes, you need to push the boundaries to find the best solution.
• Key takeaway: Design matters. Making things look pretty or look good is such a small part of design. Every brief a designer gets or every product they need to design is a problem that needs to be solved. Something that's especially difficult and inherent to design is that none of these problems ever has just one clear solution. So, before you can make anything pretty, you need to come up with the best possible solution to each problem.

References

Want to learn more about this topic? Here are some of the sources we used.

• Redesigning Finance: How good design builds trust in banking apps by Figma
• Why Life Can't Be Simpler by Farnam Street Media