Posts tagged design

William Gibson narrative on the commoditization of design practices

I’ve been thinking a bit on the commoditization of common (user-centered) design practices. Overall, it’s a good thing that organizations more often think about their services with the customer in the forefront. Practice-wise, it clearly means we can push farther ahead.

I’m reading William Gibson’s Zero History novel, and enjoyed this exchanges between the wealthy and shady risk-taker Hubertus Bigend and main character Hollis Henry. 

“Designers are taught to invent characters, with narratives, who they then design products for or around. Standard procedure. They are similar procedures in branding, generally, in the invention of new products, new companies, of all kinds.”

“So it works?”

“Oh, it works,” he said, “but because it does, it’s become de facto. Once you have a way in which things are done, the edge migrates. Goes elsewhere.”

Let’s continue to go elsewhere, please.

(Oh, and I’ll bet the novel does take this point to nefarious places… but that’s not my point.)

Should there be a calorie symbol?

California recently passed a law requirement restaurants with more than 20 chains to post the calorie content of their food on menus and interior menu boards.

It’s a smart law, but it brings up an interesting issue: there’s no simple symbol for the calorie unit. This will clutter up boards and menus with “Cal.” listed all over the place. It seems like there’s a growing need for a calorie symbol. Here’s my rough suggestion:

From looking at other symbols like the at (@) or the pilcrow (¶), it seems important that the symbol be able to be handwritten as well as flexible for different typefaces. I thought the simple dot inside the upper case C implies eating or gestation.

Of course, we could fully adopt the International System and have to start all over with Joules.

Obama’s O: not the first idea

From the New York Times’ Campaign Stops blog, who interviewed Sol Sender, graphic designer of the Barack Obama ‘O’ logo:

Q: How many iterations did you go through before deciding on this “O”? Was it your first idea?

A: We actually presented seven or eight options in the first round, and the one that was ultimately chosen was among these. In terms of our internal process, though, I believe the logo — as we now know it — came out of a second round of design explorations. At any rate, it happened quite quickly, all things considered. The entire undertaking took less than two weeks.

Ideas are cheap. Have a lot of them.

This past week at CanUX I presented sketchboards, a low-fi technique that makes it possible for designers to explore and evaluate a range of interaction concepts. One thing we worked on was using a template that accommodates the sketching of 6 ideas. Here’s an example:

After some sketching on a problem, I asked the audience to tell me which sketch captured their best idea (the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, or sixth)? Admittedly, not everyone got to the fifth of sixth sketch, but the results still show the benefit of going beyond your first or second idea:

Note that no one thought their first idea was the best.

Sketchboards at CanUX

I’m lucky to have the pleasure of spending several days at CanUX in Banff, Alberta, plus getting the chance to present the skethboards method with the great folks at the conference. Here’s a sample of what I’m sharing:

• the slides (PDF)
• the templates (PPT)
• and a rough iphone template (PDF)

And here’s a quick list of the references I might be dropping during the session:

• The sketchboards essay, video, and sample sketches: Sketchboards: Discover Better + Faster UX Solutions
• Leah Buley on How to Be a UX Team of One
• and Sarah Nelson’s essay on design criteria, Making Research Actionable: An Introduction to Design Criteria

CanUX has been a great event, with interesting and very practical content, and some super scenery. Check it out in 2009.

open sourcing prosthetics

We have open source browsers, operating systems, and other digital solutions, but it’s heartening to see open source also make it into physical products. October’sScientific American covers the Open Prosthetics Project, a clearinghouse for free new designs for better prosthetics. (Just think of groups of people swapping and checking in CAD files instead of pieces of code.)

All started by Jonathan Kuniholm—himself an amputee from the Iraq War—and his North Carolina firm Tackle Design, the project has generated numerous improvements to the classic prosthetic arm, fixing common failure points partially by working with test patients who take their prosthetic arms to extremes.

Also see the article in Wired, the BusinessWeek post, and the podcast with Red Hat Magazine. And note the Project’s interest in Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing Innovation, the same dude that’s nuts for another open source approach to physical products, Threadless.

The problem for the Open Prosthetics Project is now an economic one. Through open source they’ve eliminated the cost of design and development, but they still battle the cost of manufacturing an improved design. There’s the challenge for physical product open source systems: after design and development, they still have to manufacture and distribute, something the digital world takes for granted.

designers should talk about failure

There are thousands of case studies where design leads to success. But what about the cases where design leads to failure? These cases get swept under the rug and never talked about. So we never learn.

I was inspired by this when reading Jonathan Baldwin’s post about designers needing to take responsibility for the fault of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. Imagine what might be learned if the design discipline treated this case like engineers treat a bridge collapse. By revealing failures and causes, a discipline can actually gain public trust.

For my part, I enjoy talking about failure. It’s a part of what I teach during theDesign Strategy day for UX Intensive. I used a case of failure in my talk aboutStrategic Experience Design. And one of my favorite case studies of design gone wrong is Pallotta Teamworks (full case study, 1.5Mb PDF).

Researching the designers: Where Stuff Comes From

I’ve been diving back into a book I set aside a while back — Where Stuff Comes From by sociologist Harvey Molotch. It’s insightful because it’s a review of the design industry from the view of an outsider. His review of “how things come to be” dispassionately confirms many things you knew to be true but may not have heard said so simply. Some excerpts from just the first 3 chapters:

• “Most [designers] tell [clients] of past success in developing profitable goods, sometimes involving vast profit. When they are given maximum responsibility and autonomy, designers argue, such outcomes are more likely” [page 28]. What I find heartening about this is that much of my recent work has gone against the idea of gaining maximum responsibility and autonomy. I’ve been wanting to open up the design process and get more non-designers involved. It can get more messy, but the buy-in and momentum can become much stronger.
• “Rather than doing one thing really well, their special asset, designers often claim, is the capacity to combine across realms. They describe themselves as ‘problem solvers,’ ‘facilitators,’ and ‘generalists’” [page 30]. Molotch then connects this thought to some of Edward Debono’s thoughts on lateral thinking. I agree that some designers are possibly better practiced at this approach, but it’s certainly not something exclusive to design.
• “Designers say they have the ability to make things cool. “Too get cool, designers use intuition (a trait they feel blessed to possess)…”[page 31]. Sadly, this is perhaps one of the worst reasons to work with a designer and one of the biggest abstractions of what design could add, yet it’s probably one of the biggest motivators for people to work with designers. TakeSteve Jobs who told Segway creator Dean Kamen to hire a design firm to redesign the Segway before its introduction: “There are design firms out there that could come up with things we’ve never thought of,” Jobs continued, “things that would make you shit in your pants.”
• “…the referral system creates a category of design office, one that goes on–and here I speculate–to provide a kind of stamp to a large range of products that have all been designed by the same office”[page 35]. Interesting how the supply of projects can define who you are as a firm. A good reason to occasionally say no to some projects.
• “Among designers, there is little ambiguity as to who should get the credit for a modern product. They should.” [page 47]. Ha. Ego is a big part of thinking you can design something that others will want to use — but this much ego?

But here’s my favorite rationale for why design hasn’t always gotten good funding and why Molotch sees how design is, but perhaps not what design could be:

“‘Men eat before they reason,’ Marx said–and that means well before they decorate.”

Designing with people

During a recent re-read of Henry Dreyfuss‘s seminal book Designing For People, I realized just how little the basic design process has changed since his practice began in the 1930′s:

• study the problem,
• talk about objectives and requirements with the stakeholders,
• study the current use and current market,
• understand the means of production or enabling technology,
• build conceptual prototyping followed by final models (testing them along the way),
• and finally the delivery of detailed design documentation.

Change in process
At the same time as I was perusing Dreyfuss’s book, Liz Danzico emailed and reminded me of a slide I showed at the 2006 IASummit. The slide was intended to convey how the common process seemed to be evolving recently in web-based design (the “common” design process doesn’t map one-for-one with the bulleted process above, but there’s obviously big overlaps)…

I think this slide speaks to at least three changes. First, iteration is possible even after the “product goes to market” as a beta. Second, design decision are made during building, much more like architecture and less like mass-produced product design. Third, the designer is creating a platform for further tailoring and extension by users (through simple rules and interactions).

Change in drivers
These are just some of the process changes going on, but they’re symptomatic of deeper changes in economics and infrastructure.

• Lower risk of going to market — there’s comparatively less cost and less risk than in Dreyfuss’s world to creating something reasonable that can be produced and released to customers. Networks make customer feedback and re-deployment instantaneous. No more building a solution, crossing your fingers, and waiting for sales reports. More than ever people play a real-time democratic role in “voting” for which products and services best fit their need through choosing to buy/use them, or not.
• Networks mean groups mean co-design — The magic of networks is in the exponential value each new “node,” i.e. person, adds to it. Networks are inherently about groups and peoples. Groups form themselves; designers can’t form them. The formation of groups, their communications, and their identities are all out of the hands of the designer. Designers and developers can create the stage, but groups have to put on the show and therefore a more active participant in the process than ever before.