Category: General Stuff

Steve Jobs is not dead, as of this writing. He has resigned as Apple CEO but still serves as Chairman of the Board. He remains a larger-than-life figure that symbolizes, embodies, and exemplifies the “design-driven executive”. And he’s my design hero. I’m guessing for other designers as well, though some may not want to admit it publicly since he’s such a non-UCD rule-breaker, and game-changer. (sorry, I had to say it ;-)

This is not a eulogy but a declaration to aspire.

Steve has proven that we can dream bold beautiful visions of a humanistic yet technologically ambitious future, and make it happen…with amazing profits. It’s what almost every designer strives to achieve, and he has done it–many times over.

He has proven it can be done, with not only superb, almost maddeningly obsessive design craftsmanship, but also brilliant (perhaps brutal) business savvy, generating billions of enviable dollars. Vividly gorgeous products and interfaces that can deliver the cash results Wall Street demands…nope, it’s not just lipstick. And any sucker who thinks it is, simply doesn’t get it. Steve Jobs, maybe more than anyone, has truly achieved the “integrative aesthetic experience”, as philosopher John Dewey described it, successfully. It can be done.

He has transformed how people regard design as something that positively shapes lifestyle and behavior, ushering novel eras of information, entertainment, communication, and yes even enterprise data, from the original Mac to iPod to iPhone to iPad. It can be done.

He has proven that designing the future doesn’t have to be some 20% “innovation exercise” shelved due to some ornery process or lack of user data, but can be an aggressively optimistic posture of making a “dent in the universe”…practically re-conceiving our lives, impacting literally decades and generations. Babies in strollers along University Avenue in Palo Alto today may never know what a keyboard or mouse is, because Steve dared to challenge longstanding assumptions and demand a better intuitive way. He proved it can be done…meaningfully and beautifully.

For every designer who seeks a powerful, luminous vision of a better tomorrow, with beautiful style and elegant functionality, Steve Jobs as Apple CEO has proven it can be done. There is hope: he has educated a few generations now, delivered fabulous examples (both good and bad–remember the G4 Cube or MobileMe?), ushered a forward way of thinking about technology that’s fresh, simplified, elegant, and enriches our lives. He has made computers “magical” and objects of desire. He has elevated our expectations to new heights when it comes to “hi-tech design”, as a tastemaker, a trend-setter, a businessman, a visionary and…a design leader. He has proven it can be done, successfully.

I often talk about how design can’t be “proven”, but rather a “demonstration” for a context–an admittedly academic subtlety ;-) But Steve Jobs has proven that a technology company executive, through the phenomenal force of their charisma, vision, and smarts can champion good design values, produce well-crafted products, and deliver stellar financial results. And millions of people, from schools to hospitals to banks, have reaped the benefits. He has proven that visionary design works.

That’s why Steve Jobs is my design hero. This is not a eulogy but a declaration to aspire. Let us all as designers strive to be so bold, so daring, so crazy, so vivid, so innovative to pursue a profoundly better way…and prove it can be done. After all, as Steve said, “only real artists ship”. So, thank you Steve for proving it can be done. Now it’s time for us to take that lesson to heart and make amazing happen.

Awhile back I saw this tweet from a UX consultant that struck a nerve: “I don’t trust designers who don’t want their designs a/b tested. They’re not interested in knowing if they were wrong.”

I responded quickly in the short staccato bursts afforded by 140 char limits while I was (at the time) jamming on some key designs needed by the Citrix CEO for his keynote the following day. Oops! Perhaps not the best time to engage in twitter arguments ;-) For a long time now I’ve wanted to elaborate beyond twitter why (I think) many designers (certainly myself and most of my closest peers) do not love A/B testing.

And believe me, it has nothing to do with a lack of interest in being proven wrong.

As a former UI design consultant for two of the most famously data-driven internet firms, Netflix and LinkedIn, I totally understand the arguments for A/B testing and its commercial value at mercilessly incremental levels of marginal revenue value, literally nickels & dimes across millions of clicks, etc. Yep, I get all that. Massive scales, long tail value chain, so forth. Tons of money! I get it.

However, as I responded via tweets, as a designer, I must defend and assert aesthetic integrity as much as I can, keeping in mind key business metrics and technical limits. And, quite frankly, the first victims of A/B testing are beauty, elegance, charm, and grace. Instead we get a unsightly pastiche of uneven incrementalism lacking any kind of holistic cohesiveness or suggestive of a bold, vivid, nuanced vision that inspires users. A perplexing mashup of visuals, behaviors, and IA/navigation that leaves one gasping for air. It is the implicit charter of a high-quality design team (armed with user researchers and content strategists!) to propose something a user may not be able to imagine, that is significantly better, since they are so conditioned by mediocre design in the mainstream. (Look up Paul Rand’s infamous quote)

So why don’t many designers like A/B testing? I think it’s mainly the following:

* A/B testing may only be as effective as the designs being tested, which may or may not be high quality solutions. Users are not always the best judge of high quality design. That’s why you hire expert designers of seasoned skills, experience, judgment, and yes the conviction to make a call as to what’s better overall.

* As is true with any usability test, you gotta question the motives behind the participants’ answers/reactions. Instead, biz/tech folks look at A/B test results as “the truth” rather than a data point to be debated. Healthy skepticism is always warranted in any testing. Uncovering the rationale for a metric is vital.

* A/B testing is typically used for tightly focused comparisons of granular elements of an interface, resulting in poor pastiches with results drawn from different tests.

*  How do you A/B test novel interaction models, conceptual paradigms, visual styles (by the way, visuals & interactions have a two-way rapport, they inform each other, can’t separate them–see Mike Kruzeniski’s talks) which may vary wildly from before? Would you A/B test the Wii or Dyson or Prius or iPhone? Against what???

* A/B testing locks you into just two comparative options, an exclusively binary (and thus limited) way of thinking. What about C or D or Z or some other alternatives? What if there are elements of A & B that could blend together to form another option? Avenues for generative design options are shut down by looking at only A and only B.

• Finally A/B testing can undermine a strong, unified, cohesive design vision by just “picking what the user says”. A designer (and team) should have an opinion at the table and be willing to defend it, not simply cave into a simplistic math test for interfaces.

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Ultimately, no A/B test proves a design “wrong”. Designs can’t be “proven” wrong, only demonstrated to be in need of more effective improvement or better iteration. Therein lies the real flaw of the original statement. This assumption that designs are either “right” or “wrong” is inaccurate. Instead designs are “better” or “worse” depending on the audience & context and purpose, not to mention business strategy as well. Designers (and researchers) seasoned in the craft of software understand this deeply.

A/B test results perpetuate a falsely comforting myth that designs can be graded like a math test, in which there’s a single right answer. Certainly this myth soothes the nerves of an anxious exec about to make a multi-million dollar bet on the company’s future :-) Wanna relieve anxiety? Take prozac. Wanna achieve top quality design results, then assert confidence in a rigorous creative process as promoted  (and well articulated) by Adam Richardson, Luke Williams, Jon Kolko,  and others…as well as in your design team. Because, if you hired top quality designers & researchers with a sensble PM and skilled Engin team, you more than likely have a pretty darn good product on your hands .

At end of the day, A/B testing should NOT be used as a litmus test of a design or a designer. It’s a single data point, that’s all. It can be compelling, no doubt. Its level of impact and value varies per product/company/market, however. And just like Roe v Wade which has become an unfair litmus test for Supreme Court candidates (as part of a greater political-media circus, a whole separate issue), using A/B testing in this way only polarizes things, and makes the vetting process of a design or designer unnecessarily difficult. And you risk dissuading top quality design talent from joining the team’s cause for good, beautiful, useful designs that improve the human condition. After all, isn’t that what we are all fighting for? A/B testing is simply one tool; not something to judge the character or quality of a professional (nor her work) striving to do what’s right with integrity.

 

A few days ago I published a few initial design truths as I see them, per my professional insights across a variety of contexts and projects. As promised, here is part 2 featuring a few additional thoughts…Enjoy!

All design is political : I don’t mean in the “conspiratorial backstabbing” sense, but that all design necessarily involves navigating & meditating socially constructed purposes/values/opinions from invested stakeholders of differing, often conflicting backgrounds (ie, engineering vs business vs human factors vs marketing). To put it bluntly, everyone at the table has an agenda, and it’s not just you. As a design leader, you must ascertain those agendas and navigate/mediate with persuasive skill a balanced approach with conviction. Hey, it’s not easy!

As Dick Buchanan once told our grad seminar class, “If you want to get away from politics, design is the last place to hide. It’s deeply political.” Limited budgets, tight resources, impossible constraints, shifting priorities, short schedules, and of course those persnickety customers ;-) Whew! Compounded with compromise and trade-offs, the political aspect of design can make it brutally difficult for many. The ability to argue, champion, evangelize, and reason is vital to thrive well. Not for the faint of heart!

An aside: Buchanan once described politics to me as “the subtle maneuvering of ideas to advance selfish or collective aims”, with an emphasis on rhetorical agility in influencing others to follow your lead, per Classical criteria for oratory brilliance (Socrates, Cicero, Marcus Aurelius, Augustus, etc.) It is a rhetorical concept: generic, archetypal, overarching, and adaptive to changing situations.

Every design project has implicit assumptions / dependencies / expectations : You gotta clarify implicitly held  team beliefs about users/markets/contexts/activities/goals. You must diligiently identify any technical or political/social dependencies that will enable your solution to be set up for support and success by other folks, esp execs. Finally, managing expectations laterally with teammates and upwards with directors/sponsors is vital towards securing design success. Yep, it’s all those “soft skills” in addition to your technical powers, to help drive a satisfying conclusion to a project. Often this requires the designer to play secondary but critical roles of advocate, educator, facilitator, coordinator, even “therapist” to some degree, with teams. Being that Yoda-like coach helping teams uncover their own latent motives and values is hugely valuable!

There is no one right way to design : Yes, it’s important to apply UCD ideals and HCI methods. But The fact is there are many approaches to designing. Dan Saffer articulated several approaches in his book Designing for Interaction, from user-centered design, activity-centered design, systems design, and even “genius design”. Folks talk about “data-driven design” as well, reliant upon extensive statistical studies for design decisions. The inherent pluralism of design practice, with values and methods of diverse backgrounds, makes this a broad field of numerous discussions and questions, ushering even more and better approaches. Again, that’s a good thing! No designer truly wants just ONE standard way to design–even the vehement defenders of UCD or Data-driven design. It would be frankly boring, and deny us the very cultural, aesthetic, methodical richness such diversity affords us, to enable unique and rich possibilities. And as I explained before, every seasoned designer applies multiple postures in designingsomething, given different problems & contexts.

Finally, all design comes down to one thing: influence. I recall one of my very first meetings with a design manager, shortly after starting at Oracle. He said to me, “Uday, you should focus on only one thing, and that’s influence.” I nodded obediently not truly grasping the totality of what he was saying. But a decade (and several projects / employers / clients) later I finally get it. Design is about change, at varying scale or intensity. To change a prior status quo, you must exert influence and persuasive ability upon those resistent (and of course, there’s a TON of folks who want to leave things well enough alone!) so they buy into the vision you are providing them. Yes, you showcase your nice comps, builds, prototypes, demos, etc. but the behavioral and emotional attitude (ie, hearts & minds) must be won over in other ways. Same goes for consumers roaming the aisles or surfing the web: every piece of design is a signal of influence, trying to convey how such a design can empower and behave positively.

Let’s face it, Steve Jobs makes Apple products seem that much better because he himself is a powerful force of influence, swaying our opinions through his uncanny knack for tapping into our desires, his charismatic persona, demand for excellence, and sharp insights that cut to an issue directly. It’s not manipulation per se, but instead what Barack Obama had once called “the charisma of confidence” in conveying your ambitious yet unfamiliar vision for how to improve the human condition. In short, design is a complex game of influence, perception, and confidence.

Now don’t get too excited :-) This isn’t meant to be a roundup of all the grand universal “rules of good design”–whatever those are! No cookbooks or recipes for some “quick & easy” design fixes (like taking a pill in The Matrix). Instead, these are some of my collected insights into the major commonalities that comprise any design situation, whether for software, services, devices, environments, etc. If you abstract away the mundane details of daily work, certain themes and threads emerge, as described below.

For newbies to design (eg, fresh outta school or newly switched from another field) these pithy phrases may seem somewhat cynical in their terse wording, but that’s not the intent. Instead, take these with grains of salt and feel them out in your design gigs and projects. Test them and see what discoveries you make in your design career! I’m betting many of these will ring true later if not sooner…

• No design is perfect : Even the simple, ordinary paper clip can be iteratively improved–soften the sharp edges, add texture to the slippery curves, color code the loop, have different shapes, etc. Every design is subject to improvements at varying scales (whether great leaps or minor tweaks) as the use cases, contexts, materials & technologies adjust over time–or new discoveries made. And as new designers across the globe, armed with fresh perspectives, join our diverse community, different and hopefully better ideas will be introduced. That’s a good thing and must be expected. There is no perfect design; anything can be improved which is a healthy attitude in this field.

But of course, you still gotta get the design “good enough” for shipping to your customers, which is a separate issue altogether. As Steve Jobs famously said, “Real artists ship”. So you can’t wait til perfection. How do you know if something is just right? Something “minimally viable” but supports the goals of the product purpose and aspirations of intended audience is a start…

• Every design involves compromises, trade-offs, constraints : This is just a hard fact of design practice, period. You can’t get everything 100% due to the social and political complexities of…working with people :-) The pragmatics of any design problem require understanding of and wrestling with constraints (technical, commercial, social, etc.), negotiating various trade-offs (since no design is perfect, see above) which then forces critical debates about what is most important (prioritizing content, functionality, features, so forth) to the product & user & business. This debate is what should lead to a well-guided strategy adapted over time. The ability to artfully compromise to achieve goals for all stakeholders is at the heart of any design. This is echoed in Eames’ classic Venn diagram .

• The criteria for a “good design” depends : Per the UCD standard canon, the trifecta of qualities that determine a “good design” is bound by useful, usable, desirable (per Liz Sanders & Dick Buchanan). Other qualities include feasible, viable, findable, per Larry Keeley, Tom Kelley, Peter Morville, etc. So what really makes for a good design? It all depends upon the purpose and situation driving the design effort. Sure, it has  to enable a user’s goals, make money for your company, efficiently apply a technology, but how does the design resonate with the specific deeper values & goals underlying the audience, the business, the market, and the designer’s vision? How does it improve the human condition in a way that supports the market while helping the environment, enabling a social benefit too? It’s more about the debate over essentially contested meanings associated with your brand and strategy, in addressing human needs, then a rote checklist of criteria items. That internal stakeholder debate should help illuminate the right criteria for your product and market.

However, far from being relativistic or “anything goes for whatever moment”, there are some core qualities. As Marty Neumeier says in his book The Designful Company, good design, at its essence, connects to human virtues, embodying the exact qualities we wish to see in our fellow human beings: generosity, courage, diligence, honesty, clarity, curiosity, wit. In contrast, bad design exhibits vices like fear, deceit, pettiness, confusion, apathy, waste, laziness.

• Designing without principles endangers the integrity of a design : Inevitably, because of the many compromises needed to balance conflicting priorities and demands, there’s a risk of a “watered down design” that makes nobody happy but achieves all the “checklist tasks”–design by committee, for example. It’s vital to assert and defend the integrity of a design vision by having conviction and “principled compromise”. You need design principles at the outset, as it’s what drives what you (AND the product team/company) believe in and ensures everyone stays on path, towards product excellence…how ever that is defined for your organization. Whether it’s whimsical, heartfelt stories for Pixar or sturdy yet smartly hip furniture for Haworth, principles ensure the likelihood of a strong, cohesive design vision emerging from the tough compromises. It’s also what helps ensure the benchmarks for successful criteria and post-mortem evaluation after ship. And such principles provide the architectonic framework for feature evolution and upcoming iterations in a thoughtful, coordinated manner. Mike Kruzeniski’s clear articulation of the Windows Phone 7 design principles is an excellent reference for this point.

More truths coming soon…!

Last week for 3 full, intense days I participated in the Stanford d.school “design thinking” bootcamp (along with 13 others from Citrix, including designers, managers, execs, from around the company). Just wanted to share a few initial thoughts as I reflect upon the activities we performed.

As everyone has acknowledged–and i concur– it was certainly exhilarating, intensive, productive, mind-blowing, enlightening, inspiring, frustrating, difficult, empowering, and any other contradictory superlative you want to throw at it ;-) Yes, it’s all of that, with some minor issues. Very grateful to undergo this workshop with my colleagues and meet others from many walks of life who sought something actionable to light the fire of “design thinking and doing” in their workplaces.

 

My key takeaways:

* The d.school’s flexible basic process of 5 steps is NOT a formula or recipe but instead a pathway of generating novel solutions, to break us out of the usual “left-brained” analytical mindset. The steps are Empathize > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test . You can bounce among them, iterate multiple times, as needed. Indeed the language can adjust per your culture’s and team’s needs. Do what makes sense, no need for fancy stuff.

* Evaluate ideas per 3 basic criteria: Successful, Delightful, Breakthrough. (Helpful after brainstorming, and putting a sticker to denote each idea)

* Identify a specifically shaped “point of view” to suss out novel opportunities and extremes of possibilities, and to force debate about what’s really important in the product/service you are creating.

* Brainstorming well needs a strong context definition and framing of a “point of view” and problem statement: Person needs/wants X in order to achieve Y which will provide Z benefit. Not just randomly throwing up ideas on a whiteboard and see what sticks. (BTW, Luke Williams at frogdesign demo’d this brilliantly with their trademark frogTHINK exercises to drive creative problem solving)

* You can achieve alot in just a short, acclerated comprssed timeframe! It’s all about quick, nimble creative thinking in the moment. The bias to action helps you lean forward constantly.

* Empathy and humanity are the drivers for doing what’s right and good in the world. Positive change emanates from that simple yet often hard to grasp premise. Gotta try to remember that in large, anonymous organizations rife with policies and templates, etc.

* Design isn’t about you, the designer, but about the community you serve: the users, providers, vendors, partners, suppliers, parents, neighbors, etc. Totally reminds me of Eames’ legendary diagram.

 

My own color commentary:

Now, admittedly I went through this bootcamp as an experienced hi-tech designer trained in a rich set of methods/approaches from CMU and through Valley mentors at various companies like Oracle and Adobe. I had to put all that away! So I did humor the process and just go with the flow, realizing that the purpose and point of view is truly oriented to break via “shock and awe” tactics the rest of the workshop participants, without a design background who have grown weary of neverending Excel/Powerpoint/Word docs and tedious meetings that devolve into petty politics. I totally got the value of the breakneck speed and crazy intensity, with very minimal discussion or reflection time, just run and act very purposefully with intention. Truly, like a bootcamp :-)

You are pushed beyond what you think are capable in very short timeframes, and rather unexpectedly to tap into latent abilities deadened by Powerpoints. It’s great to shock folks to wake up… but I’m not sure about the intellectual value which seemed tossed aside in zealous favor of “fast and furious” action. Is this 72 hour bootcamp the “fast food” equiv of a burger or donut?? Impromptu tasty satisfaction but what about long-lasting value?? Not much reflective analysis (or conceptual tools for deep analysis), ironically for something called “design thinking” ;-)

I do wonder how other participants will take the ideas and experiences back to their workplaces. And after 3-5 years from now, will they still be applying the same lessons? What value will have been achieved? WIll their opinions have evolved given the rigors of practical execution? Design is not for the weak, as I often mention. There’s always such tremendous organizational/cultural pressure to kill infectious ideas and powerful possibilities (see Machiavelli, The Prince). The forces that shape real execution, as Steve Jobs cites, demand that “real artists ship”. You gotta deliver and it’s often the devils in those implementation details, the gotchas, that separate the real change agents from the posers & dreamers. Not sure how much that message was conveyed in the wrap-up sessions.

I also had issue with their very liberal use of the word “prototyping” verging on buzzwordy jargon. Per d.school’s ideology, literally anything and everything that is hand-made is a prototype, including a blob of dough with a straw in it, or a sticky note sketch. Emphasis was on crude and raw, which I understand. But I didn’t care for the obvious disdain for hi-fidelity prototypes, continuing to spread the false myth that people don’t give feedback to highly precise demos. They clearly haven’t done real-world design at a hi-tech context which often demands very accurate visualizations to elicit critical opinions. Also repeated a few times was criticism of designers as “forces of authority”, which really does justly occur in many contexts. Designers must be forces of persuasion, given all the constraints and compromises endured. While design is overall collaborative, there needs to be a clear vision and voice driving a focused agenda. “Make it so!” as Picard would say.

Despite these relatively minor misgivings, the d.school bootcamp is perhaps the most vivid, potent expression of what it means to learn design by doing, truly living the experience in all its pain and glory. It’s certainly a very bold, powerful start…