Category: General Stuff

Recently on TechCrunch one of their bloggers/contributors was asked by a Stanford HCI class student to try out his “paper protoype” of an iPhone app. The TC guy posted a terse critical assessment of that encounter, questioning the value of soliciting feedback from random strangers for a paper prototype. The comments are certainly worth a read, especially the intense scorn and invective from HCI & UX professionals/researchers blasting the TC fellow. Wow, such heated passion!

Gotta admit it’s been amusing surveying what resulted from that event. My thoughts on this seemingly mild, but potentially watershed moment:

* I was quite surprised and admittedly excited that a popular method of prototyping UIs was mentioned on TechCrunch at all. Instead of simply geeking out over obscure techie details, the post actually showed what it’s like to engage with a paper prototype and hopefully educated millions! (OK, at least a few thousand ;-)

* And now people see firsthand what the core problem with paper prototyping is: it’s a highly drafty, sketchy, incomplete way of exploring ideas in a very rough manner, clearly unsuitable for showing random strangers without proper context. Yes, paper prototyping (PP) is ONE method, but only to very constrained limits of value extremely early in the design process. And even then, it should only be used amongst designers/researchers internally as part of their toolkit at the studio/office for sussing out issues and opportunities. It’s really a very crude, primitive sketching tool of sorts, not a primary evaluation tool for specific, tactical design decisions. The fact is PP was invented by a usability engineer, not a designer who understands that levels of articulation and fidelity equate to the level of feedback fidelity. Want actionable feedback? Show something hi-fi. (and TC folks are used to seeing fully coded up, hackathon-type of demos you an actually click and try) PP at best is for very lightweight, hi-level concept “feedback”–if that. Illustrating detailed application interactions requires way more than sketches on paper. You gotta at least do pixel mockups and get some behaviors animated…And in the form factor of a phone, in this case!

* The fact is, a design has to be experienced in its true, intended form to be truly helpful for feedback gathering, at every level: visual, interaction, and information design. To really grok the “truthiness” of what is trying to be communicated and how it is meant to be encountered, requires super hi-fidelity/accurate rendering, as near as possible to the final product. That’s why industrial designers build life-size prototypes and models, to fully dimensionalize the stimuli for feedback, away from the drafty flatland of paper sketches. Sketches are a necessary first step, as I always advocate, but its insufficient for illustrating more complex aspects/behaviors, and getting valuable actionable feedback from non-designers.

* And as I’ve said before, any data gathered must be taken with several grains of salt. It is all input to be debated and prioritized per project goals and the designer’s judgment, expertise & background , with the team together.

* Given the resulting firestorm–thru no fault of his own, of course– the Stanford HCI student may have learned a bigger lesson in all this, than he had ever expected! Truly a teachable moment.

I’ve posted previously about design thinking more than a couple times in the last few years, continuously struggling to understand just what it is that makes this phrase such a buzzword-worthy novelty among non-designers…and also connect it back to humanistic aims of rhetorically nuanced good design, as advocated by Dick Buchanan/CMU. Recently my thinking on this has taken another evolution, influenced by reading books like The Lords of Strategy, helping drive design leadership in a corporate context, and chatting with colleagues at places like Second Road and MSFT.

Here’s what I’ve concluded so far; nothing earth-shattering but good to capture and share to feed the fire ;-)

** Foremost, it’s clear “design thinking” has become the new “user experience”– a convenient, catch-all, shorthand phrase alleging a pro-design posture by non-designers that is mundane/generic in daily language yet somehow implies a substantive realm of intellectual & practical activity. Which it may be, if you sincerely, earnestly want to master and absorb design–and all its lovely quirks, imperfections, frustrations–into your values, people, actions, etc. I think that’s the rub, at the end of the day.

Design thinking has got to be more than a “mot du jour” among the business class jetset but a mode of being for a team striving to improve themselves and their products and customers.

** Design thinking is just applying routine “designerly” concepts of observing people/contexts (ethnography, people research), generating lots of options (brainstorming), stating an hypothesis or two or three (solution proposals), prototyping them somehow (paper, video, code, etc.), and iterating based upon feedback. That’s really it! Nothing too fancy, folks. And applying that across the board: finance, human resources, biz dev, operations, IT support, etc. Where anyone can feel empowered to brainstorm valuable options to solve relevant problems, and experiment with diverse solutions without being penalized. What a revelation! And for some companies and departments, it truly is…sadly.

** Design thinking has more to do with an attitude shift from “select and execute a decision” towards “what’s the problem, how can we frame the options properly, and iterate til we get it right”. It’s about adopting a mentality that “failure” (a highly inaccurate word, BTW) is perfectly fine and normal. Actually it’s not truly “failure”, but simply allowing yourself to “get it wrong on the first try”; failure inexplicably sounds sexier in pithy business article headlines ;-)

** Design thinking is NOT “designers can now do business strategy”. That is totally the wrong lesson to learn. And for any designer who thinks that she can suddenly run a business, I highly recommend reading The Lords of Strategy on the historic rise of strategy as a business and intellectual mode of thought. Really brings into brutal focus the tough issues of growth-matrices, labor experience curves, cost cutting microeconomics, and accounting standardization which I seriously doubt an designer without a relevant business/economics background (or raw eagerness/curiosity) can tackle formidably.

I challenge the typical product or service designer to go toe to toe with a seasoned biz execs or strategists from Bain, Boston Consulting, McKinsey, etc. Or HP or Dell or Wal-Mart or Boeing for that matter. Real hardcore business strategists are pretty fracking smart and driven. They may not account for the “human dimension” of empathy/imagination/iteration that designers bring to the table, but that’s where designers can help supplement, not substitute.

** Likewise, design thinking is NOT “business strategists can now do design” (as in product design or brand design or similar). Seasoned execs have a strong vision for a product, market, customer and the various elements that determine a viable business model: costs, risks, debts, sales, etc. which is awesome and can only be strengthened by an increased awareness of the observe/brainstorm/prototype/iterate cycle and how designerly thinking can help forecast opportunities and further evolve the business. But that doesn’t mean the exec is now ready to design a logo or interface just yet! ;-)

** At the end of the day, I consider “design thinking” a mental lubricant to loosen up non-design thought processes, pushing more open-minded, right-brained, synthetic problem solving that applies what designers have done for decades and thereby empower everyone, particularly designers, to have better collaborations with peers/superiors/partners.

** It’s also an attitude adjustment that all members of a company should focus and can contribute to design successes, not just “the designers”. It’s a conversation starter and team builder for all interested and engaged stakeholders…

Since I missed the original cut-off date for SXSW 2011 panel submissions due to my super crazy work schedule, I’ve started a very large head-start on next year’s submissions for the 2012 confab ;-) Just perusing the list of accepted panels for 2011, there’s quite a few very panels worthy of attending–at least based upon the fancy wordplay in the proposed titles. Indeed, sexy tantalizing risquee sounding titles have a way of seizing one’s attention, while the content is still a big question mark. Who knows how it will all go down? Hmm!

Nevertheless, here’s my proposed panels for 2012. Please get ready to vote for them when the Panel Voter re-opens in 12 months. Thanks!! ;-)

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* Dancing with the Executives: Lessons on working within executive-led design cycles

* Jedi Councils and Tiger Teams, oh my! Alternative models of unifying an interface design language

* I love the way you touch me! How multitouch makes the mobile enterprise fun, sexy and procreative ;-)

* Wicked innovation: The “black magic” of enabling a design culture through persuasion and propaganda