Ryan Sael is a designer based in Jakarta, Indonesia—and the designer behind our latest totally-free downloadable resource for your tinkering pleasure in Studio, Sketch, and Photoshop, otherwise known as the Scratch UI kit.
Though he began his career as a software engineer, he’s now a UX designer by day at the startup Bridestory and a freelance designer by night. He puts in the extra hours because, “when you do what you like most, it never feels like working.”
We asked Ryan about his path and what he wanted you to know about his latest creation:
Ryan Sael, designer of Scratch UI kit
Inside Design: What design tools did you use to make the Scratch UI Kit?
Ryan: Usually I use Sketch, but lately I’ve begun to use Studio, which is an awesome tool, because these tools are great together. I make all this stuff in Sketch, and I can simply upload into Studio and it all just…works.
Inside Design: I see that you’re an active part of the online design community, especially on Dribbble and Twitter. What do you think the design community should talk more about?
“When you do what you love, it doesn’t really feel like work at all.”
Ryan Sael
Ryan: I come from a background where, as a software engineer, I realized that design is not about the visual. It’s about the experience.
We can think about how the thing looks good but we need to see what is received well and what drives people’s emotions through products. The design community should think more about what tools can be used for good storytelling. Storytelling is the most important part of the UX for any user who wants to use a digital product.
Inside Design: What is exciting to you about the future of UX and UI? What excites you when you think about where the industry is going?
Ryan: VR, AR, and audio design. It will be designing the right voice commands and eye tracking and some other forms of natural inputs that will be a challenge for designers, because it’s too hard to design for those on today’s design tools.
“Storytelling is the most important part of the UX for any user who wants to use a digital product.”
Inside Design: What food do you love that you made a nod to in the kit?
Ryan: Basically, I’m not a big foodie, but I really like potatoes, which is why in the search section you can see what can be made with potatoes, and then in the search results you have potatoes that looked quite good on Unsplash.
Inside Design: Ah, that’s why in the user profile bio it says “Potato Master.”
UX designer by day, freelance designer by night, potato master always
Ryan: Haha, yeah you saw that!
Inside Design: What’s something in Scratch that you’re proud of, that you don’t think people will pick up on right away?
See those icons?
Ryan: When I was in the middle of designing the kit, I decided to start experimenting with line icons. I’ve never designed icons before, so this was the first time that I had them as part of all the images to make up the composition.
Inside Design: What did you do before you were a UX designer?
Ryan: I started at a Singaporean agency as a software engineer producing VR stuff, with things like Occulus. But then I became very close with the designer, and then I started to get very interested in design, so I jumped in. Two years later, I found myself in another startup working on designing digital products, and now I’m the UX Lead at Bridestory, as well as a part-time freelancer at night. I do freelance at night because, when you do what you love, it doesn’t really feel like work at all.
