Ghost in the Pixel

One of the good challenges I face as a Principal Designer is helping non-designers across the company become aware of design, appreciate its power, and recognize their own potential to contribute to design in their own way. It’s not easy! How do you convince Terry The Finance Analyst or Sarah The HR Director that design is not just for tech geeks or fancy elitists? How do we encourage everyone at all levels, departments, and teams that design really does matter across the board in lots of cool, useful, interesting ways? Hmm! It’s quite a design problem ;-) Here are a few approaches we are taking…

* Connecting various roles/functions to design as problem-solving, helping people, and improving situations. This goes back to the classic Herb Simon definition– “Everyone designs who devise courses of action aimed to change existing situations into preferred ones.” From this POV, someone in facilities is actually shaping the design of the environment conducive to a co-worker’s productivity. Or someone in finance is designing reports that communicate the financial status each quarter to help the company directors decide future budgets.

*  Advocating our corporate design principles via fun propaganda :-) This includes badges, short fun videos, stickers and tattoos, and other sorts of swag that help propagate the values of simplicity, delight, humanism, innovation and so forth in lots of ways. Basically you gotta get this stuff everywhere to everyone! But in a fun, engaging way, leverage all channels, both digital (website, newsletter, videos) and physical pieces that are personal and memorable.

* Recruiting “catalysts” to help spread the message about design. This goes a long way towards building partners for downstream engagement, so start making those relationships now! Compel and enroll others who are interested, curious, or even puzzled, to become your design emissary and virally get the message out.

* Writing relevant articles for internal websites and newsletters that feature actual people, their photos, and quotes from them. We’re trying a mantra of “I design when…” to encourage people to think about their own actions that are “design” in everyday settings at work. There’s also a tangible outcome associated to it, not some theoretical concept or zany idea. Makes it more real and meaningful overall.

* And of course holding design workshops, inviting guest speakers, organizing book clubs…these all help get non-designers to realize the value of design and what a rich, powerful field of opportunity it is that they can relate to simply and directly.

The key thing amongst all of this is emphasizing the journey-like nature of design, especially for a large company, which requires just a little bit cultural adjustment ;-) It is certainly not an overnight shift, but takes a positive, patient commitment from everyone. As a design leader in the company I’m helping play a role in that transition, as a guide, mentor, advocate, and coordinator as well as communicator. Not easy to do, but the payoff is well worth it in the end…Towards achieving a progressive, designful company that’s better in every way.

 

It’s the ambitious fantasy of perhaps every designer, to be summoned by a super high-level authority person (like a company GM, SVP, or R&D Labs Head) to work on a “next gen” project: draft up some cool ideas, pitch them at the next staff review, deliver something exciting! And yes, while this part is quite cool and fun, a fabulous break from the tedious humdrum of tweaking pixels, doing “concept design” is a veritable challenge at many levels, even if you got full exec support. Gotta be careful what you are being led into! I’d wager that for most designers who say they wanna do “next gen” concept work, once they realize the journey and issues involved, they might back away with a few second thoughts :-) A concept project is not simply “fun and games” (unless you really are gamifying your concept ;-) but has serious impact upon business and tech strategy with real consequences upon schedules, resourcing, messaging, branding, etc.

Let’s take a look at what’s involved, and things to watch out for:

The Kickoff – design & research together!

It’s vital to hold a team kickoff discussion with design and research leads, to clarify assumptions, dependencies, and expectations. Also, gotta identify the audience and contexts. And, please do clarify the exact problem, opportunity, and/or hypothesis. Without this, you’ll be adrift for weeks amidst confusing email threads and communications breakdowns later on. Better yet, define a design brief to signal serious intent from key players involved that this is “for real”, not some academic exercise.

Political dynamics: Who’s involved (and not–and why?)

Ahh, so who’s involved anyway? And what levels of visibility? What’s the DACI model structure? Who’s the driver, defining the priority and expected results? Who is explicitly not involved, for what reasons? Some projects maybe  very sensitive due to merger/acquisition issues, disruptive technologies, cannibalizing pre-existing products, etc. Get this sorted out ASAP! But also try to get a pipeline set up for socializing the concepts later with relevant people, even if initially excluded. What are the triggers for folks to finally “be in the know”?

Process flexibility: Full UCD, or shortcuts?

This is where you’ve gotta exercise maximum flexibility as a designer and go with the flow. You may not be able to do a full UCD cycle of research, testing, iteration, etc. Be prepared to make shortcuts, but also try to insert time later for revisiting steps. This is primarily why, I think per my observations at places like Oracle, Adobe, Citrix you need very senior designers to lead concept projects. They can make the intuitive leaps leveraging past experience, judgment, pattern-making, etc. to arrive at better solutions faster, in case there’s little time (often the case, due to business or tech priorities).

Getting buy-in from others: Middle-managers, engineers, marketing.

Socializing the concepts is critical, with any inherent political sensitivity handled well, since this is where your concepts will run into friction and pushback. This is the beginning, frankly, of “making it real”. No longer a blue-sky fantastical vision demo’d in Flash, but the first attempts to get legitimate development traction behind it, which will likely upset existing projects in the pipeline. Empathy is paramount here, not just for users, but for folks who don’t like change: other people in your company (or your client, if you are consulting).

Dovetailing into current projects: Schedules, dependencies.

Once you are done socializing, you need to make sure you have the project schedules and tech / resource dependencies defined and articulated. By this point, the concept’s original mandate will have evolved per tangible logistics and quarterly business goals. Also, the pool of stakeholders has increased, as multiple teams and people on the periphery are brought into awareness about your concept. As concept lead you need to understand the bigger picture as much as possible to grok how they all fit nicely–if at all. Tap into the exec support who initially asked for your wild crazy ideas, informing them that this is now reality time, and you need their guidance for you (and the teams) to be successful.

Converting from “concept” to “shipping product”:  Details, details, details!

OK, now the concept is becoming a shipping, commercial product. OMG! No, it’s not freak-out time :-) However, you’ve got to understand that your role as concept lead is done. You are now a product designer, so you gotta shift into proper gear with pixel precise delivery, balancing edge cases, handling errors/warnings, drafting help text, flowing out first time vs next time experience…and the web channel, the mobile UI, marketing / branding decisions, etc. This is where the heart & soul of bringing a fuzzy concept to life resides, in the details–gotta sweat it! But remember, you should have by this time a dedicated, dependable team with you, all sold into the concept and prepared to execute on the implementation plans, flexing with the “devil in the details” problems along the way.

 

Look, I love concept projects as much as any designer, but in my role as Principal Designer, with an official job responsibility around “Emerging Technologies” I have to be critically conscious and diligent about what exactly each concept initiative entails and how they track into the product strategies and release schedules. Otherwise, a concept can quickly become a sore point, a boondoggle, a waste of everyone’s time–vaporware that goes poof! A design concept is successful when it elevates aspirations, demonstrates bonafide potential and gets productized for everyone’s benefit. Not just some fun entertainment on the side…which it may start out as, that’s true and good…but to fully reap the benefits, you have to make it real. Because, as Uncle Steve famously said, “Only real artists ship” ;-)

 

This has become somewhat of a mantra internally amongst the Citrix Product Design Team. It’s a fun phrase, but also a serious statement of the need for an increasingly scarce resource amid multiple project release cycles– Time! Yes, everyone and their neighbor begs for more time to get something done. But why exactly does good design in particular take time? Let’s try to identify the reasons, for those folks who may be somewhat unconvinced (ahem, stressed out coders and anxious product managers ;-) Hopefully this will lead to a productive conversation around the need for better scheduling and project management overall for everyone’s benefit, especially our users at the end of the day.

* Time for understanding a problem; from multiple angles: biz / tech / social / visual / etc. This involves gathering and processing information, shaping a mental model of the context and audience as well. Learning about the audience’s goals and attributes.

* Time for generating lots and lots and lots of solutions: sketches, pixel comps, and prototypes. Yes, designers can (and often do) speed up this area, but work becomes sloppy with opportunities and insights missed in the heated rush for some artificially imposed, ASAP-style deadlines.

* Time for creating precise, pixel accurate comps. Quality is key! Quality takes time. This includes fonts, grids, colors, images, etc. Diligence, judicious choices, practicing restraint, continual quality checks…all of that takes necessary time.

* Time for reflecting upon solutions to appropriately judge/evaluate which have bonafide merit. Rushing to judgment can be a mistake in the middle of the night, especially when in the morning’s hazy light that it’s clear a better solution exists. It maybe clear that last night’s rushed option is deeply flawed…

* Time for re-evaluation after the intial cut of designs, to re-interpret their value and socialize with folks. It takes valuable time to make sure relevant stakeholders understand and support design decisions accordingly.

* Time for conducting thorough user studies and truly digesting, processing the feedback, not just “court reporting” what some users have said, but actually assessing / distilling / synthesizing. And making proper judgment calls thereafter for the design.

* Time for re-visiting the solutions and adjusting, again with care & diligence to ensure the highest quality results are borne out for final production.

So yes–it takes valuable time to deliver a high-quality, well-developed design solution that is thorough, significant, and strongly defensible from any angle. The good news is this time can be compressed via talented smart designers, strong collaboration, rapid prototyping, and guerilla user studies. Yet the time for reflection, quality control, and diligence of craftsmanship cannot and should not be ignored or short-shrifted. To do so only imperils the integrity of the design solution, and implies a lack of interest in doing good design. Good design is an imperative that takes balance and compromise, back by strong principles of craft and quality. If the time frame isn’t working for your project (i.e., tomorrow ;-), then please have an honest conversation with the designer, and work out how to achieve what everyone wants: a beautiful, functional, amazing product users will love. Who doesn’t want that? It might take several versions but let’s make sure the path is set with mutual agreement.

Today I had a fabulous time presenting to approx 200 attendees at the Silicon Valley CodeCamp at Foothill College, about fundamentals of good UI design, and then also about partnering with designers to deliver great products. Thanks to all who attended, and your questions/debates! :-)

As promised I’ve posted the (sanitized) slides; I had to remove some stuff from my past clients / projects… Please see below:

(FYI, for some reason, Google Chrome doesn’t read the PDF; have to right-click and save, or use Firefox and do same thing, right-click and save the file…sorry!)

** Fundamentals of Good UI Design PDF (23 MB)

** Partnering with a Designer PDF (13 MB)

That’s what I wanted to hear when I heard the sad news. Just one more thing. That he’s not really gone. That it was just a bad hoax or incorrectly tweeted news item. Just one more tiny, fragile, ever-so-delicate hope that he did have decades more, as he reflected upon in his memorable Stanford address, to continue innovating not just “cool tech”, but upon our daily lifestyles, cultural attitudes toward technology, business models and media ecosystems. Just one more chance to push the conventional boundaries of possibility and inspire and educate us about how to breathe joy, delight, and humanity into the technologies we use. Just one more moment to hear a rousing, superlative-rich exultation of a new digital wonder beautifully and elegantly designed “for the rest of us”. Just one more spark to ignite our own desires and passions and ideas to create a better world for generations, by truly bridging the disparate but essential worlds of liberal arts & technology, as he had proven many times over. Just one more glimpse… to see this gifted visionary signal the promise of something that we will love, that we didn’t even know we needed, defying expectations and inspiring us to rise to a new challenge. And he kept raising that bar so damn high ;-)

Alas, there will no longer be “one more thing”…

Except this – One more thing, Uncle Steve. Thank you. For everything.