Ghost in the Pixel

Every design has three fundamental facets that serve as a framework of analysis when identifying opportunities to evolve the design further, or extend it into families or standards for related designs.

What is inherent: This pertains to the product’s DNA that define its character/persona/voice and its reason for existence. Strongly correlated to product/company brand. Concerns its purpose and core functionality, expressed in successive layers of materials & interactions within the product. These are the qualities and natures.

What is emergent: This is the value that emerges in usage by the intended audience within a given context. The benefits, consequences, emotional/psychological impacts, the resultant quality of experience. These are the values and principles.

What is persistent: The material attributes of the product (visual, structural, formal) that persist across the family line or successive evolutions. These are practical and durable.

To properly take flight and thrive in the upper levels of product/user experience excellence atmosphere, a design needs a significant amount of runway (to use a very extended airplane metaphor :-)…What do I mean by this? Simply put, there’s need to be thorough time, discussion, collaboration, and exploration of possible solutions before settling on “the design solution” to be implemented. Too often PMs and Devs simply want a quick easy fix to solve some bug and then push it out per some pre-determined timeline, thus ignoring the need for proper design engagement and iteration.

That “runway” is the social and chronological space for the design to coalesce into a form worth lifting off. Time is key element, setting up a wide boundary for opportunities of exploration. But also there needs to be social/collab space of discussion, interpretation, identification, iteration, review/feedback, etc.

And within corp environs featuring multiple products, this runway may require discussions with other designers, evaluation of patterns/standards, ensuring consistency of visual and behavioral approaches, with outlets for inventing new standards if necessary.

To get a design properly airborne, there needs to be a sufficiently long runway to get it up to speed properly so it can thrive in production and implementation. Otherwise, the risk is a design that hits some bumpy turbulence with broken visuals, unaccounted or clumsy interactions, missing features/paths/flows, and lots of bugs unnecessarily filed and triaged (which translate into future patches/updates that jam up schedules, etc.).

Ask a Prod Manager or Engineer when a “design is due” and the response is usually “yesterday” or “tomorrow”, with little hint of sarcasm. The fact is, that is utterly useless info and counterproductive to deep multi-disciplinary collaboration towards solving problems in a meaningful way that actually matters. Indeed, such a glib approach to time is a grim sign of professional disrespect and ignorance of what it is that designers need and value most: TIME!

It takes time to sufficiently gather the core business & technical requirements, and extrapolate priorities for further investigation and define prelim research and design studies.

It takes time to frame the problem, generate initial concepts, explore directions and iterate accordingly, with feedback.

It takes time to gather that feedback and review and respond accordingly. With multiple rounds if needed, per problem scope.

It takes time to reflect upon designs created, in whatever level of fidelity, to step away and revisit with a fresh eye/mind the next day…This is especially true for visual hi-fi solutions whose nuances and subtleties across screens/devices can have serious consequences downstream with graphics production.

Because it takes time, Design as a process phase and professional activity has to be properly accounted for in a product development schedule, plain and simple. A schedule has a sense of expected duration, with key moments of review/delivery/feedback itemized, an overall movement towards completion. It is in effect a narrative of the process, with multiple moving pieces/players coordinating against that narrative. Without a scheduled-in place for design, it will be dismissed as mere cosmetic lipstickery, with styles/graphics slapped on as an afterthought, without addressing flow/interaction/architecture/service issues. And if not enough time is properly allotted, that is exactly what will happen, like it or not. Design in effect becomes a meager farce, not the enabler of positive change. And believe me, no designer worth her salt wants to do that, but will be forced to if necessary, sadly. “Tomorrow” is not a schedule, but proactively coordinating a planned way to engage with designers can help PMs and Devs achieve a well-developed product that serves tomorrow’s needs.

Recently this past spring the Bay Area held the annual running of the “Escape from Alcatraz” Ironman Triathlon, which some good friends performed and successfully completed. It’s an incredible, arduous experience from the looks of it (and NO, I have zero intention of running it! :-)

But I couldn’t help notice the parallels between that intense competition and the multi-layered tasks of an interaction designer for digital products/services. While those triathletes had to master (and rigorously, strenuously train for weeks! whew) the serial sequence of swimming, bicycling, and then running…a successful software designer should ideally flex their muscles in information architecture (navigation/organization/data modeling), interaction design (behaviors, affordances, feedback loops, flow/states/errors, etc.) and visual design (expressive rendering of content/functionality with color/type/grids/graphics). And perhaps in the order as well. The IA provides the logical underpinnings, thus and is often the toughest to shape and command–stormy seas at work, with politics, functional silos, vague notions of user goals. (Real triathletes will see the parallel to the notorious “sand ladder”, as the brutal transition from abstract models to tough gritty UI issues). The interaction/flow fleshes out the product, which takes some pacing and timing as you struggle to climb up and around thorny sequence and behavior issues. Finally, in the final stretch is the visual style to round out the aesthetics, information display, and communication aspects.

And of course, all this maps to the rhetorical trinity of logos/pathos/ethos and other popular interpretations of designer triads of skills/focus. To perform well (and sustain a level of vigor, passion, drive) designers must constantly train and practice in those three core areas (in addition to business and technology and social/cultural areas–yet another triad of skills needed!)…Are designers really decathletes?? So many skills and knowledge bases needed! But let’s start with three.

What is innovation? Lots of things, of course. In one sense, an innovation is really the emergent perceived outcome as captured by three simple phrases your customer should be uttering after a positive encounter with your product/service/system:

1. “Wow”— The well-designed encounter is stimulating, exciting, dramatically new & different, engaging and compelling in some sensual, phenomenal way (visually, aurally, behaviorally, etc.)

2. “Thank You”— The product/service provided some convenience, removing some pain from prior encounters with clumsier solutions. There’s a heartfelt sense of gratitude. Thanks for being so easy, intuitive, meaningful to me and my life, helping me do what i want…instead of making me fight you and getting frustrated or angrily defeated in the process.

3. “Of course” — The innovation does something in a way that, when your customer thinks of it, really isn’t all that crazy or radical…in fact, it’s just common sense! It feels sensible, natural, and perfectly appropriate. Duh, of course the interaction should be like that. How simple, elegant and clever all at once. But it just fits.

If you can get your customer to say these three phrases (whether out-loud or implicitly to themselves) reflecting genuine emotional and thoughtful engagement, then it’s probably fair to say your innovation has hit the mark!