Nick Dika is a product designer who’s spent his career creating software for audio engineers and musicians. He started out in marketing at Cakewalk in the early aughts, but soon discovered his love for UX and interface design at iZotope. There he worked on industry-standard audio engineering tools including Ozone and RX, which won an Emmy award in 2013. In 2014 he went solo and released Photophore, an innovative synthesizer instrument for the iPad, which reached #1 in the Paid Music Apps category of the App Store.

Nick is currently Senior UI/UX Designer at Soundtoys in Burlington, Vermont where he’s contributed to TEC-Award-winning audio effects Little Plate, EchoBoy Jr. and the Soundtoys 5 collection.

When he’s not designing interfaces he’s probably either trying to talk himself out of buying another old Volvo, or deciding which section of Vermont’s Long Trail to hike with his wife and daughter this weekend.

Our everyday lives would have seemed like science fiction just a few years ago.

Computers are everywhere, constantly connected, and have become an essential part of our daily lives. However, the popularity of mobile devices with pocket-sized screens has created a trend toward minimal user interfaces that sometimes offer few visual cues to help us understand what they’re capable of. Even worse, we’re endlessly bombarded with visual distractions—stacks of reminders, endless likes and bouncing icons.

When we design graphical user interfaces, how can we aid people’s intuition while helping them navigate a minefield of distractions? In this talk, I’ll discuss how to use visual cues, motion, and context to help keep users in the moment and focused on their goals.