Hello and welcome to the very first post in our new design series! We plan on posting periodic articles where you’ll hopefully get a better understanding of how and why we do the things we do regarding the look and feel of MotorsportReg. 

I’m Dan Broughan and I’ve been the Product Designer here at MSR since the summer of 2015. I’m based out of the midwest, so you can expect me to pop up at an event out there now and again. If you’re interested in learning more about me, I have a short bio here, or just ask any questions about myself or this blog series in the comments below.

What's this all about anyway?

The design industry is such a visual one that someone just has to look at your computer screen to see exactly what you’re working on. With almost every other profession, that’s not necessarily the case.

We’re visual people and we understand things far better when we can see it and touch it, which is probably the main reason I’ve had to wipe so many of other people's fingerprints off my screen over the years.

As we are a fully remote team scattered about the Internet, the fingerprints are solely those of my ever curious two year old son, so maybe it’s the nostalgia in me, but this series welcomes you to put your virtual fingerprints on my screen now.

There are so many aspects of design and interaction that we could cover, so this will not always be an "upcoming features" set of posts. The content will be driven by ideas we have for the series as well as any you may request, with the goal of giving you a better understanding of what we do, why we do it and how that can potentially help you.

Can this design series actually help me and my organization?

Short answer is yes. With us covering some very interesting design topics, sneak peeks of what's coming, along with topics you request, you’ll be getting the information you need regarding all things design from MSR. Aside from that, you’ll also receive information how the experiences for the organizers and attendees will be improving in the near future and the steps you can take to ensure that.

As our features page states, we’re staffed by track junkies. So everything we do is specifically tailored towards motorsport. Not only that, but at MotorsportReg we are keenly aware of the trends in the tech industry, so are consistently building towards the future. For example:

• Making sure you have a great mobile experience
• Researching each of our screens in painstaking detail to see how we can make them easier to use.
• Maybe it’s the track junkie in us that craves speed, but we’re focused on making sure each page and image loads as fast as it can.
• Maximizing the engagement of everyone who visits an event within MSR and the sharing components associated with that via social media.
• And much much more which we hope to share with you over the course of this series.

Enough already Dan, show some cool stuff

Granted this is an introduction post, but we still have something cool to show you. We have an exciting promotion feature to be launched very soon, which will see you have the ability to upload a logo for your organization and your event. At the core, we want to make sure that:

• Your organization and event is visually represented according to your preferences, giving each club, race track and sanctioning body a more customized presence.
• Anyone sharing your event or organization on Twitter or Facebook will include a relevant image you upload.

As you can see from the screenshot above, this project is already well underway so make sure to follow us on Twitter or Facebook to keep up to date on when this feature will be released. I'll go into more detail on this project in the next design post outlining the features and how best to avail of them.

Conclusion

We hope you’re as excited as we are to share in everything design and interaction here at MSR. We also hope that this series will not only offer you insight into why and how we do the things we do, but that it offers you ideas on how to make your experience with us even more fun.

We have interesting topics ahead, but if there’s anything specific you’d like me to touch on, please leave your thoughts below and we’ll try our best to accommodate it.

Cheers!