Ghost in the Pixel

Here’s some useful, noteworthy interviews with several fairly prominent thought leaders who are practicing designers, pushing the boundaries of interaction design thought & action:

One with Dave Malouf of SCAD, on the new IxD online ‘zine,
Johnny Holland.

Here’s one with Dan Saffer for AIGA .

And yet another one with Dan Saffer here :-)

Found one with Kim Goodwin, of Cooper, also author of an upcoming book on interaction design principles/practices.

And here’s an interview with Yahoo’s Luke Wroblewski.

Another one with LukeW on web form design issues.

Good interview with Jon Kolko on interaction design issues here.

The recent issue of Innovation, published by IDSA, features a fascinating debate pitting two design educators from very different institutions: Cranbook and IIT’s Institute of Design. The overall discussion hinges on “Design vs. Innovation” as its theme, and the differing viewpoints held by these spokespersons and their respective schools. This in fact serves as a follow-up to a debate done twenty years ago featuring Charles Owen (defender of scientific, rational methods approach from IIT/ID) and Michael McCoy (promoter of the experimentalist, visual semantics platform of Cranbrook). The debate of course continues into the 21st century, with many of the same issues, from the role of making, to teaching business leaders design, and the value of form vs. strategy.

But the one point that really got me excited is the question about the “role of intuition in design”. Hmmm! So what does each say?

Scott Klinker (Cranbrook), in referencing Charles Eames’ famous diagram of competing concerns, says “the designer can work with conviction at the overlap of these concerns. That is called informed intuition.” Continuing, Klinker says “Designers lead the public imagination with new proposals. Designers provide visions of what could be. Informed design experiments make sense of modern change and are risky, because they propose new behaviors, not just cater to observed, existing ones.”

So how about Jeremy Alexis (IIT/ID), what does he say? Disappointingly he ignores the question and does not suggest a role for intuition in ID’s rationalist methods-driven approach. Instead he delivers a sad, trite rant about “star designers” who only “design for themselves”, kinda like the Republicans’ tired old smear of Democrats as “tax and spend liberals”. Yawn. And since when was intuition suddenly equated to selfish egotism and celebrity vanity? Why the hostility against intuition? Wasn’t it Einstein who famously said “Imagination is more important than knowledge”? Hmm. Are you a Vulcan, Mr. Alexis?

Alexis explains, “When we create processes and methods that de-emphasize intuition, we will create fewer star designers. Instead we will create more designers that can operate in a competitive, profit-driven environment alongside marketing and finance. With more processes and methods, our work becomes easier to plan for and thus easier for mangers to accept.”

OK. So, from Alexis’ viewpoint it’s all about process management and making managers happy, rather than, oh I don’t know, maybe creating rewarding, engaging, memorable products & services and thus elevating customer appeal and repeat purchase, thereby driving up market share, brand value and profits? Would the ID’s heavily rationalist methods produce an iPhone, or a Wii, or Dyson or a Tivo? Doubtful. However, to be fair, the ID’s focus lately has been about training folks on re-inventing business processes and shaping new market strategies, rather than designing a new product per se. Tackling issues of social and environmental nature have also taken center-stage at the ID, which is commendable in many ways, deserving great applause!

And yet I still wonder why not a place for intuition in addressing such problems and more understanding of how to cultivate that admittedly mysterious sense for what is novel, poignant, delightful, or even whimsical. As I described earlier, I’m clearly more in Klinker’s camp, although sympathetic to Alexis’ point. It is undeniably a balance, but in my view there is a necessary role for intuition in that delicate phase just after exploratory research, during initial sketching/concepting, anticipating what’s next. While the design field overall is moving quickly towards addressing very complex problems, I still believe that one of the extraordinary qualities that we bring to the table as designers is a sense for that which is life enhancing and pleasurable and profound. And no method or formula can predictably produce that.

So where do novel design ideas come from? Indeed there are many sources of inspiration for creative ideas, both material (like books, films, products, or nature) and immaterial (values, beliefs, attitudes, philosophic assumptions, and cultural origins).

Often however, the path towards the discovering of a novel solution begins with a simple yet vague feeling, something my former CMU Design prof Suguru Ishizaki termed as a “felt difficulty“. This is where you sense something is a bit off, somehow not quite right thus not providing the optimal experience. Maybe it’s the controls, or the messaging, or the interaction, etc. But something needs to be corrected, perhaps re-invented… Maybe a new product or interface or service would solve things, delivering previously unmet potential and expectations.

From this “felt difficulty” then arises the principal question you’re trying to answer. Just as Trinity said to Neo in the club scene in The Matrix, “It’s the question that drives us.” What is it you’re striving to answer and seek out with improving upon the original felt difficulty? The question maybe something about the customer experience, the market, the features, the technology, etc. But what is that ONE question? (For ex: How can the user access music easily)

Once after identifying the question, then you need to identify the driving problem. What’s the consequence and level of impact/intensity of ramification of not solving the problem? Is it urgent enough to warrant significant design effort, etc. (For ex: the problems is about navigation and utility, which drives the product’s overall user experience value and customer market potential for sales, the consequence of not resolving this problem is user frustration and loss of sales)

Finally, to help establish and shape the overall design motif, metaphor, language/style, it’s worth spending time to consider the overall theme and values…in a sense, what is the humanistic value proposition of the product design solution. Is it a sense of beauty, trust, freedom, human dignity, expressive potential, etc. Identifying this will help you determine the emotive qualities and materials to support them: the text, fonts, colors, imagery, visual style, and so on. (for ex: joy/whimsy and elegant simplicity, with freedom of interaction)

This basic framework can help begin to shape a journey of critical discovery and realization about the design motives/goals/purpose that leads to novel, powerful solutions.