Meet Paavan, a designer and builder based in London. We loved catching up with our new friend and early-day Tally user, as he shared with us what he's currently building with Tally.
Speaking with him, we not only discovered that he's an absolute GOAT at what he does, but truly cares about the process, the integrity of the product, and how it sustains long after it's deliverable.
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How did you get into design?
So the way I got into design is kind of like a roundabout way. A long, long time ago, I did a degree in computer science and philosophy, which is like one of those mad degrees that only exist in British universities. And after that, I was looking for jobs and I joined a programming digital agency. And while I was there, I was like, “Actually, the thing I don't want to be doing is coding and doing lots of programming, what other people tell me to do. I want to be more involved in designing it”. And I was really lucky at that job to have a mentor who knew loads about UX and taught me everything on the job. So that's kind of how I like professionally became a UX designer.
But actually, now that I call myself a designer, I think back to like when I was a kid, and I was like, 11 or 12? And I was on Photoshop, making posters and little memes for my friends. And now, I tell my friends that I'm a designer. And they're like, “Yeah, obviously, it took you so long to realize that's what you should be doing”. I've been loving it since I was a kid, I guess.
How did you hear about Tally?
I think I've known about Tally for ages. I think I heard about Tally when I was looking for a way of doing a type form, style form, which was cheaper, and Typeform is really limited in the responses you can get. So, I came across Tally a few years ago and just always had it in the back of my mind in case I ever needed something like that, which was, you know, not like an ugly Google form or something like quick and internal, but for like a fun product idea or something I was building by myself and wasn't like tied to a company or something.
What’s your favorite Tally feature?
The design is amazing. I'm using Tally right now on a landing page for an app I'm working on, which is a writing software for Android phones. And what's really cool about Tally is it just integrates really nicely to a website builder I'm using. It's a platform called Card.
So it's quite a non-standard website builder. But Tally just gave me a simple one-click export and then simply “embed this code”. It just worked immediately right out the box; I didn’t need to configure anything. But the really cool thing I'm loving about it is it's got something called exit intent. I just saw this as an option and turned it on. What it is is if a user goes to close the tab or goes to switch to another tab, it pops the form up. And I think it's so nice cause it acts as a “Hey, just before you go onto this two-minute quick thing, we'll get you on the wait list for the beta.” And I've seen such an increase in respondents.
It's been really useful. The reason I had this form is both to collect users’ information for a wait list, but also to do a bit of product research and ask questions like, “Hey, if you were to use this app, how much would you pay? What kind of apps are you currently using? Are you using different writing software in different places?”
It's completely free. You can just drop it into this website and embed it and get all this really, really useful feedback without having to do any work. It just works.
What’s your biggest form ick?
I guess this is more than just forms, but really bad content design, really bad writing.
I think the way we ask questions and use words is part of the design experience itself. And I see so many designers who are just like, “Leave that to a copywriter or we'll just put some placeholder text,” and I think there's just so many good resources for how to ask certain questions in a certain way.
In the UK, we've got the government digital services, and they have like templates for how to ask people about specific types of things. I was looking at their guidance recently for how to ask about someone's gender versus someone's sex. And their guidelines are just incredible.
Any quick tips for form builders or designers when it comes to collecting the right kind of data?
I think my answer would be to just keep your questions as short and as simple as possible and answer questions in the best way for what you're trying to get or ask questions in the best way for what answers you're trying to get.
We enjoyed chatting with you, Paavan, and learning more about what you’re up to, as well as your journey and relationship with design and feedback. Thanks for sharing with us!
