I’ve long believed product designers need to look broadly at the world around them for inspiration when considering their own work. Looking solely at other digital products, while still helpful, can provide limited views and narrow sources of inspiration.

Design is everywhere. Everything that has been made by humans has been designed in some way. From the tangible structures of chairs, laptops, buildings and bridges to the abstract interactions of software, rules governing our lives, the organizational structures of businesses and governments — all designed. Sometimes more consequential design happens in a doc or spreadsheet than in a Figma file. The purpose of this newsletter is to look at areas that have interested me, the design going on behind them, and how they’ve inspired me as a product designer.

A little bit about cocktails

The creativity, experimentation, and attention to detail that goes into a good cocktail shares a lot of aspects you’d expect to find in a sculptor or fashion designer. As a product designer, it’s inspiring to learn the art and design behind cocktails to inform my work. You may wonder what an alcoholic mixed drink has to do with designing software products, but I want to show you how the two are more closely related than you might think.

I like cocktails. Most designers I know, me included, are inherently makers at heart. The combination of mixing different ingredients with the right recipe and technique to create something entirely new appealed to me early on. Delving deeper into the world of mixology, I became enamored with the sense of creativity, experimentation, hospitality, and craftsmanship. It's also just generally a fun life-skill to have when making drinks for friends and family!

So how did I get into cocktails? Like many folks circa 2007, I first became interested in cocktails when I saw Don Draper on the series Mad Men order an Old Fashioned. "What the heck is an Old Fashioned?" It sounded so sophisticated and timeless.

Don Draper drinking an Old Fashioned

Interested to try my hand at it, my early attempts at home mixology yielded the kind of results you’d expect from an amateur, sometimes eminently drinkable, occasionally borderline swill. Venturing to cocktail bars where the gap between myself and the professionals was evident — to say the least.My interest was piqued and started me on a journey. Cocktails have come a long way and evolved quite a bit.

(I don't want this to be a history lesson on cocktails. However, I recommend the book Imbibe by David Wondrich, if you’re interested in an in-depth look at the history.)

For the purpose of this newsletter, we’re going to begin at the cocktail renaissance, which started around 2004 and lasted until 2019. It was influenced by previous food and beverage movements, including the Culinary Revolution, the rise of the craft beer industry, and the increasing popularity of the internet and social media. Dale DeGroff and Sasha Petraske were pioneers of the movement and opened bars in New York City, which led to a parallel movement on the West Coast. The movement brought about a return to traditional cocktails, using quality ingredients and was characterized by a "craft" approach to making drinks.

From Cocktails to Product Design

So, what do cocktails have to do with product design? Well, cocktails are both a product, a service and, well, designed. Both products and cocktails require a certain degree of creativity and expertise to craft an experience that is visually appealing, emotionally engaging, and able to transport the senses. Additionally, they require an eye for detail, a bit of experimentation, and an understanding of the people they're aiming to service. So how does one design a cocktail?

Designing the cocktail, a system for recipes

There are 3 elements to a cocktail — Ingredients, Technique, Recipe. All are important to deliver a great experience to patrons. While it may seem obvious, creating a recipe is the foundation for any cocktail. Without the right proportions, you can end up with something out of balance, overly sweet, and stinging from too much alcohol. You’ve probably experienced this if you've ever just started mixing alcohol with some juice, soda, or whatever was available.

The amount of recipes and types of cocktails is endless; it can be daunting to wrap one's head around all the different variations. What's the difference between an Old Fashioned and a Manhattan? What about a Margarita and a Daiquiri? Following others recipes, I could make some pretty great cocktails in the same way early career designers will copy and replicate work before gaining experience and knowledge. However, you need to gain a deeper understanding of the fundamentals if you want to do more than just replicate someone else's work.

One book in particular that made an impact on me was Cocktail Codex by Death & Co. Within it was something that felt familiar as a product designer: A system that aims to offer a template for all current and future cocktails. The system postulates that all cocktails revolve around six cocktails, which they call the Root Cocktails or Root Recipes: every cocktail is a variation of that. By breaking down the cocktails into fundamental flavor components, they're able to make a system designed for fundamental understanding and encouraging experimentation.

The components of a cocktail

Death & Co breaks down every cocktail into three components: The Core, the Balance, and the Seasoning. The core is the heart of the cocktail. The balance is, well, exactly what it sounds like — any ingredient that balances the cocktail. For example, the sweetness of sugar rounds out the sharp edges of the alcohol. As for the seasoning, it complements or contrasts with the core to add dimension and complexity.

Let's take an Old Fashioned, for example: its core is whiskey; its balance is the small amount of sugar; its seasoning is bitters. This is the root recipe or template that is made up from our flavor components. The system extends to six different templates with different proportions of the cocktail.

Experimentation and innovation

To create a new cocktail, you can simply replace one or all of the components of a root recipe. Death & Co has dubbed this the Mr. Potato Head approach to mixology. Once you have a root recipe, you can sub out any of these ingredients for something else and you'll have a new cocktail.

If you sub out the bitters for mint in an Old Fashioned, you have a Mint Julep! If you sub out the whiskey for champagne, you have the Champagne Cocktail, and onward.

The beauty of the Death & Co system is not that it helps you gain a fundamental understanding but encourages experimentation, creativity, and innovation. This is a design system. It is essentially the atomic design of the cocktail world. We make design systems for our products every day. Standalone components make up templates. Re-orient the components and you have a different design. Pretty neat! Reflecting on how our design systems of today, I often wonder how might they provide structure and guidance while encouraging experimentation and innovation?

The art and the craft

Having the right recipe, the right ingredients, and the right techniques are essential to a good cocktail, but the overall craft can elevate the entire experience. The Japanese approach to cocktails has long inspired many American bartenders. With help of the great book Art of the Japanese Cocktail by Masahrio Urushido, I can express what inspires me about his approach

The driving ethos behind their approach is a relentless quest for perfectionism and a meticulous care for every aspect of the cocktail experience. They hand-carve ice. They intentionally choose their ingredients. They garnish delicately. They put great time, care, and attention into something that is inherently ephemeral — It's a drink. You drink it. Ice melts. Garnish is tossed aside. Yet, for something that lasts such a short amount of time, the bartender infuses an exactitude and care you’d expect to find in a sculptor or carpenter.

Software itself is changing and ephemeral in its own right. Your MVP may last a week, or it may last six months, for example. Often, you may never know whether it's the former or the latter, but I take inspiration from the Japanese way of cocktails. In product design and the tech world, everything is about efficiency, agility, scalability. We can elevate our digital products if we put the same amount of care and craftsmanship in something that lasts a short while as you would for something you expect to last months or years.

Know your users, er… guests

And finally, a cocktail doesn't exist in a vacuum, it's meant to be drunk by people. A bartender needs to understand who their clientele is — from their regulars to their guests. With that comes understanding the mood of your guests, learning their habits and preferences to better anticipate their needs.

As Masahiro writes, “The Japanese have a deep sense of hospitality embedded in their culture, Omotenashi - selfless hospitality: Serving guests with one's full heart, subjugating one's ego, without putting on airs or being inauthentic.”

We talk about this often as designers: “You are not your user;” “You’re not designing for yourself.” A great illustration of this can be seen in this video below from another bartender who has inspired me — Jeffery Morganthaler.

It’s a fun watch, and he’s a great storyteller. To summarize: Jeffery and his bartenders learned how to make an Old Fashioned. They all knew what an Old Fashioned ought to be. When a guest asked for a Brandy Old Fashioned, they stuck with their recipe and simply swapped out the whiskey for brandy. Makes sense right? However, the Brandy Old Fashioned is a drink specific to Wisconsin and different from a traditional Old Fashioned. The bartender quickly realized the mistake and understood the importance of understanding his guest's needs to provide the best service and product. I love this story because it shows how understanding your guests, down to their regionality, can be crucial for the best product and service experience.

Brandy Old Fashioned Cocktail - The Morgenthaler Method - Small Screen

Human-centered product design revolves around a deep understanding of your users and their jobs-to-be done. Taking this a step further — perhaps if we reframed our view of users of our product as guests of our platform — would we go beyond the baseline of function and usable products to something more? I think so, let’s aim higher in our products.

The design of cocktails

The world of mixology has offered me a wealth of inspiration. From the systems that make up a recipe to the art and craftsmanship that goes into every drink for every patron. Carrying into our work, we can reflect on who and how we’re designing our products. Is it well-crafted regardless of the scope, no matter how short-lived or enduring, and who it's for. Design exists everywhere and inspiration can be found in unexpected places.

Some goodies

Cocktails I enjoy

Books to learn more

For starters…The Bar Book
For history… Imbibe
For home enthusiasts… Cocktail Codex

Cocktail bars I like

NYC

Austin Texas

Roosevelt Room

Portland Oregon

Pacific Standard (I actually haven’t been here yet, but Jeffery Morganthaler ran Clyde Common beforehand and has inspired me as a home enthusiast in so many ways, basically there’s no chance this place disappoints)

The Design of Cocktails