The design process debate

I must confess that I have strong opinions about “design process” and I'm biased by my understanding of design. Some of you might disagree with me.

Process is so boring!
Process word reminds me of ‘industrial process’ or ‘manufacturing process’. The mental image I get is that of a conveyor belt where a product (which is manufactured) is moving from one person to another. And each one is fixing their own piece without knowing the relevance and the larger picture. Process comes in when to mass-produce items – when the research I being done and all parameters understood.

Also when we know the outcome of the product – manufacturing process where the outcome is predicted. If you use an iron metallurgical process you know that you will get iron of a specific quality out of a process. You can manipulate the process parameters to change the outcome slightly.

Design as research
But what about Design? I don’t see design as an industrial product one where the solution can be predicted or reused (without modification). I don’t see design to be close to industrial/manufacturing process, then where does it lie?
Looking at pattern design process – where specific patterns are to be used. Isn’t this another way of mass production? Yes I know for large enterprise it’s difficult to think out of those due to practical issues. But isn’t this is another conveyer belt? Where a designer is expected to fit in specific “item” (from a selected few) without knowing the complete problem. So the thinking is subject to ‘validation of what fits well’ than what is the solution.

Design as problem solver
I’m a strong believer of design as a problem solver. I see design closer to Research than to manufacturing/production. So how do we think about design then? Does following a process ensure an innovative solution?
I guess not. Innovation is closely tied up with how well the designer understands the ‘problem’. And process doesn’t highlight the problem – it’s just a ‘way’, not a ‘destination’.

Can’t we dump the process?
Is there a better way to look at the process or should we just change our approach to thinking about process? I guess the real value is in knowing the ‘problem’ in its all dimensions. If you have this approach you don’t need a process; all you need an attitude – to solve the design problem to its fullest.

Innovation comes from idea and intellect. Nurture talent not process as your primary objective.

Consulting Design & Product Design

Lets talk about two different models of design – consulting and products. They are essentially involve different levels of involvement, thinking and approach. The more I have interacted with designers from consulting firm the more I’m appreciating the product design (this is my personal view).
One basic difference that I see in product is the ‘sense of ownership’. Don’t take that word lightly but it really shapes up the way you think about products/design.


Tracking design
Generally when we talk of design we essentially talk of the process of design – doing research -> brainstorm -> design -> launch. And then it ends. We never talk about what happens next.
While what goes up next is really important; this is where only the product designer get the ‘opportunity’ to work. We all put in biases – make assumptions; after launch is when you get you insights; things that work or don’t. And there is no there way to know it other than post launch (or a bucket launch) research.
There will be cases where you don’t know what is going on. That’s the most challenging part of design. Use both qualitative (User Research) and Quantitative (Data) to track design. This is the best design education you will get – to see your design fail!


Design for future
As a product designer you need to innovate. The product needs to be ‘competitive’, its not a solution to a problem (unlike consulting). It needs a ‘placement’ in the market place. To have an identity and uniqueness as an aspect of design, really makes it interesting (especially if you have Google as your competitor ;)
The product needs to be bult for the future – when it gets launched; it has a shelf life. It needs to stay there for that period of time - gaining and not loosing its customers/consumers, be relevant, be competitive and be useful.


Scalability
“Its your mess and you need to solve it”. Its very important to foresee the future of your product from a UI point of you. What if there are more feature add/a new tab/a new action. If you don’t think about it now, eventually you have to in future. So better be now than land up in a situation where your UI can’t be scaled. Personally I have seen a lot to redesign project taken just because the earlier UI was not able to scale – add new requirement.
Don’t just think about design as it is; think of scale. Is it the difference between a good design vs a great design? May be :)


Experience
User experience in products goes beyond the UI. It starts from marketing to packaging to instructions to support. Design is a strategic – and it goes beyond.


Selling design
If you are a product designer you not only have to sell your design to the stake holders (which itself is a pain), but also to you consumers. A better understanding of your user; along with market, competition etc is handy. What it essentially means is - ‘you need to be more aware of your product, user and market’.
And this requires time, effort and a lot of experience in that domain.


What next?
‘Now that I have launched a product - what next?’. As a designer you have to find an answer or help others find an answer. What is the next best feature that will be really important to your users/product.
This sounds like ‘tracking design’? Well the difference is this is larger strategic question. You not need to find problems with design (tracking design) but also think of the future development (of the product not only just UI).

So, ‘personally’ I find product design to be more challenging and exciting.

Flow!

It was awesome to see this video on TED. I read Csikszentmihalyi's research papers on Flow when I was working on my research on online shopping. I actually used this in the online shopping model that we built - which helped us in understanding all the aspects of shopping and the experience.

I have found the Flow Theory to be highly relevant in user experience design. It is a good way to measure a "very compelling and engaging experience". If a user gets immersed in your design - that is the highest level of experience. And this can be applied to all levels of design - be it a complete application/site or a small component.

Also it a good way to design - 'think of the experience (design) as a flow'. I recommend Flow Theory to all designers. It is a really useful read.

Anyways, listen to this video. Its an amazing feeling to "see" the person you have read and admired.

Breaking Boundaries

Having moved from so many project I have started realizing the advantages in doing the same. Every domain or say a business vertical works very differently. The design approach and also the mind set is very different.

For example, Online Video site might have very different approach to design; say like engagement or time spent or videos viewed might be important. How much time user spends on your site may well be a parameter of success. While for a portal the success and approach might be to divert the user to a content or application. For Search, more time spent is disastrous. Social Networking might say number of Unique Users they get, or no. of logins per account or virality of their application is what defines the design and success approach.
What I have seen is that these all verticals (if you call them) have their fixed mindsets. There are somewhat clear approaches defined by (whom?) – Competition. What goes on becomes a norm (without analysis) and all of us follow it.


Breaking boundaries

Competitor analysis becomes an important part of our design research and it also sets up the path to design. We mindlessly follow what others are trying to do and what defines its success.

Its useful to break away from this and see the design problem in a new light, what if I apply Online Video design approach in Social Network? The solution might be drastically different. I guess its really important to broaden our boundaries about design concepts and explore unrelated products to see if they could add any value to us. Otherwise we keep our thinking limited to already known parameters and concepts.


Move Horizontal for freshness and Vertical for quality

It’s a different approach to drilling deeper. It’s more of moving horizontally. Look for whats buzzing with user (which is unrelated to your product) and then see if there is any thing that you can borrow or get inspiration – or that allows you to think differently.

This is what I learnt from moving across teams and products.

Awesome! what it means to be human?

Memory, spaces and a dream

I had a dream yesterday which made me to think about it all through the day today. It sort of open a new way to look at ‘spaces’. Though it started by a physical space but it could be translated to virtual spaces as well. Let me just tell you my dream first:

The Dream

I was dreaming that I had gone to my old school IIT Roorkee and I’m strolling around the campus. But the campus has changed a lot since I studied there. Then I go to the Library and it looks to be ‘modified’; modified in a way that some portion is the older one – one I can related to- and the other is ‘new’ part which I haven’t seen before.

The Library

When I woke up I kept thinking about this Library. All though my dream I was trying hard to “evoke” my memory about the good (& bad) times I have spent in that campus. That Library became the climax. I was seeing two part in a space one which I able to recognize and identify with; one which was giving me “happiness” as I was feeling nostalgic being there. While the other totally alien; one I’m not able to relate to – one that gives me a feeling that I not been here before.

Change dilutes recall (?)

This reminded me of old times when old alumnus used to visit the campus with their families trying to related to the “new” looking campus. It has evolved from their times and they used to find it difficult to evoke their “old time memories”. So I guess we can say that change can dilute the recall. If there are more unfamiliar “looking” things then it would be difficult to related to that space (I guess both physical and virtual).

Lets think

Memories can have a physical space associated with it. When you visit that place it evokes old memories about that place – these memories could either be related to an

• ‘Event’ – eg. I got married in this church.
• ‘Interaction with the space - Active’ – eg. I used to sit here, this was my favorite spot.
• ‘Interaction with the space - Passive’ – eg. There used to be a clock here in our times.
• ‘Socialize’ – eg. Our gang used to come here during the break. (There could be more. But this is what I could think of. )
  

Now these memories give us ‘pleasure or happiness’. It allows us to relive the past – be it good or bad.

What is crucial here is a time gap – “detachment”. You need to move away from the space for a period of time. how much time? Well I guess it ‘might’ depend on :

• Individual,
• Usage of the space,
• importance of the space,
• time spend in that space
• user’s acquaintance with that space.
  

Roll back in time: Product Strategy opportunity for retention segment (?)

Now that I know all of us have associations with the physical spaces is there an opportunity for us to build a product strategy around this? We know most companies are trying hard to retain their users; so can this be in any way help us in building a strategy or design to retain them?

Can a “retro” feel bring some excitement on users getting bored with your social network site. Take them back in time when they had ‘fun’; make them excited again?

Or should a dormant Email account get activated to the an old UI – one which that user was familiar with?

Or does it also indicate that redesigning you site might not go well with your most frequent users? Is this a reason why Google hasn’t done any drastic changes on their search results page?

I guess there is a lot to research & experiment upon to get some sense of how a physical space and virtual space is related emotionally or rather psychologically. But I do see some connections in the way we need to think about product strategy and design (UI). The whole approach to Redesign could change for products which have regular users for a very long time if people associate with virtual spaces

Micro-Macro detailed design

Working with different products I see some differences in the level of detail each one goes to. Look at two contrasting examples: Search Results page vs. Product Promotional Page. Search Results page is the highest level of detail (Micro Details); all aspects of design are detailed to the core; be it interactions, information – how much; how long; what to show, visual design, design research/usability – usage, eye tracking, semantics, etc. All aspects that are possible generally are thoroughly considered to build a design.

One the other hand we have Product Promotional Pages – high on experience; informative but not so thoroughly evaluated, less interaction, less complexity in Information architecture etc. So generally if you are designing this you don’t get through a thorough screening of the design (Macro details).

I kept thinking why do we have such variation? And I thought may be there are three basic reasons:

Impact on business
Products that are very high on business impact are very ‘cautious’. Any changes or design issues could affect the company drastically. So every company get very careful in designing and every element of design are reviewed to make sure the effect is positive. Thus more details in designing.

Impact to user or habit forming
Traffic on site and usage is another important reason for a detailed design. Products like Search, Calendar or even some online enterprise software need to build a habit in users. They need to be learnt and should be easy. One advantage of habit forming is to build a loyalty around that product – like Google Search. To build a habit you need to have a compelling product; thus need a well thought out design.

Competition Landscape
Fierce competition could also lead to detailed design approach. Competition is fighting for both the above parameters – Business and Traffic/Users. Thus if you have a competition it makes you more cautious in design.

Impact Matrix
Micro Detailed design or more detailed design requires a lot of resources and time. The decision making is slow and thorough; thus it takes more thinking, iterations, approvals and research. It all comes down to the question of how many resources (in terms of time, money, people etc) versus the impact. And I guess we evaluate the the above three parameters we could make a rough guess about this. We could make a matrix to evaluate the impact.

Let make it for search results page.

Impact | Importance
Business | High
User | High
Competition | High

For Product Promotional (micro sites) site
Impact | Importance
Business | Low
User | Low
Competition | Low

For Yahoo! Front Page
Impact | Importance
Business | High
User | High
Competition | Moderate to High (mostly indirect competition)

As a next step we could built out some concrete evaluation parameters to figure out High, Moderate or Low importance.

Suggestions are welcome :)

In search of Universal Design. But does it exist?

Few days back I met my old friend as usual we started a discussion. It was quite an interesting topic – Localization of design. The debate started on a point saying – can there be a single design which works for all regions/countries/cultures?

The inner feeling say ‘obviously no’ but then look around us, ipods, cell phone or a TV. Why is it that ipod has been successful in most cultures? Why do cell phones have same interactions regardless of the culture/region? There is something about these which goes beyond the boundaries of cultural understanding? Go to US, UK, Korea, India or any other place you would find people using ipods or cellphone pretty much the same way.

I guess there are basically two reasons –

New learning (?)
Gadgets or technology needs to be ‘learnt’. Thus regardless of cultural understanding everyone has to learn it the pretty much the same way. This goes beyond cultural understanding – Can we say, “gadgets/technology unify the human race?” It’s premature to say but in some ways it may binds us all together with a common ‘language - a behavioral language of technology’. When I go to another culture I may be alien but I would still know how to use a iphone or a TV or say Yahoo! page. Language and to a less extent icons could be cultural; icons could still be learnt quickly. Apart from that interactions and behaviors are universal, I feel. So this ‘new learning’ may allow us to transcend the cultural barrier.

Basic Human Psychology (?)
Another thing might be an inner common human psychology which is beyond the cultural understanding. Do we all like Apple feel? Why do we? Is it because it in some ways uses elements that we as human beings like – say wet table feel, continuity in interactions, smooth edges etc.? Are there elements that we see all around us in offline world that we like? I guess if we could translate elements that we like in offline world into products we design it ‘may’ create similar effects in us as humans -going beyond cultures.

Sorry for a badly written post.

“Gut Feeling” & design

I was having a conversation with one of my design colleague. He was telling me about a design discussion he had with a Product Manager. The story is very interesting – they had a conflicting views about a UI issues. The discussion later on went to –

Designer: …because I think this is a better way to do it; its my gut feeling.
PM: …but this also my gut feeling; why should I go with your gut feeling and why not mine”.

Well there isn’t much that you can do to help anyone here. But this kept me thinking – the PM is not totally wrong (is he?). If we are fighting for design without any data; what can you do to convince the product teams? Or is there more to a “gut feel”?

Personally, “I feel” the designer was right in suggesting a design; but without any valid proof it’s difficult to make an argument. The best situation is to do some test; get some data and then prove. But data is not always available. We make a lot of decisions on our “feeling”.

So why should people listen to our gut feels and not their own?
I see the difference lies in ‘experience’. We constantly build our mental database about things that worked or not. So rather plain ‘gut feeling’ we try to make “intelligent guesses”.

User research is a great way to build user behavior repository. Not only does it gives you data but also help you build the ‘user’s behavior and understanding’. How much can you push your design, how simple should you be in UIs or in communication etc. You could "benchmark the level of complexity" that a user can easily use/understand through user research (even observing a study can teach you a lot).

So my suggestion would be – next time when you are having an argument rather than saying ‘my gut feeling’ state ‘examples’ or take your team to the user. But never make it a clash of the ‘egos’. Because it’s not only you (or other) who looses, but also the ‘end user’.

Don’t deprive end user of a good product.

Services mindset in product design

IT industry in India is inherently a services industry. The mindset is to provide a service and move out of the project. This approach to ‘projects’ seeps into the product companies as well.

The fundamental difference in services is same as the difference between a concept of a ‘project’ vs ‘product’. Project gets over after a deadline but a product keeps living on.

Product design

One bad thing about a product is that if you don’t address an issue in a release you have to readdress it in the next -‘Its all your responsibility; its all your mess’. So you need to be careful; and need a sense of responsibility in what you make. Secondly, you need to have a clear larger vision of your product (I know you can argue; but there should be some vision). How will this step going to effect the course of the future. If you change your deign approach after a release; then there is a lot of mess that you need to sweep out. It will all go back to the drawing boards from a design point of view.

Most importantly you need to be ‘constantly’ aware of the market; knowledge is supreme. To be ahead you need to innovate. So the more aware you are the more you can innovate.

Product lives on thus it requires more sense of responsibility; more engagement; larger longer vision and a sense of ownership.

Working and talking to industry people I feel this sensitivity to product is missing in India. Everyone focuses on – ‘just release it’ without thinking the mess that we will create with it. I guess our market needs more maturity in terms of dealing with products & not to think of them as ‘projects’.

Product doesn’t end in release; it stays back with you, to give you either sweet dreams or nightmares. The choice is yours.

The Best Designer of all times!

Truely awesome. No one can beat 'nature' when it comes to design. Keep talking of "delight"; "surprise element"...but you can never beat this...watch the video.