A Project Guide to UX Design: For user experience designers in the field or in the making by Russ Unger, Carolyn Chandler
My latest post entitled “Should Entrepreneurs Hire a UX Designer” is up on the New York Entrepreneur Week site. In it, I talk to entrepreneurs about what a User Experience Designer is and if they should make the investment to hire one. Be sure to go check it out!
There were several talks at Interaction 10 that really stood out to me. These talks spoke to me and began to change the views that I have on my profession as well as the views I have on the goals behind what we do as UX Designers. One such talk was the keynote speech from Ezio Manzini, Politecnico di Milano, DIS-Indaco/DESIS Network, on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability. Before I began to write this morning, I took a moment to sit down and reflect on why and how this talk affected me so much.
I should note that there were many great points that Ezio touched on during his keynote that I won’t mention here. I simply wanted to talk about the ones that touched me the most. First, Ezio talked about designing for what’s “next”. Instead of thinking about and designing for what may be happening 5 years from now, his team thinks about designing for tomorrow. This is especially relevant when talking about social networks and sustainability, but I couldn’t help but reflect on bringing this into web practices. I’m usually hoping to get work on building the next great innovation or idea. This rarely happens. I also spend a lot of time trying to figure out the “end state” or “strategy” in order to design for a current project. However, after listening to Ezio, I realized that I don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about what’s next. Trust me, I’m a huge evangelist for strategy, but do we really ever see these strategies become reality? Perhaps having the strategy become reality was never the intention, and the strategy really is a compass that we can design for. I’m not sure about anyone else, but this was a mind shift for me. From here on out I’m going to be much more aware that the strategy or end state will 99% of the time never be fulfilled. Instead, I’m going to try to think about how I can design for the next state instead of the end state.
Second, Ezio mentioned that his goal was to design for two things: 1) Needs to be satisfied and 2) Capabilities to be enhanced. This blew me away! Designing for needs to be satisfied really means looking at what people need and designing to it. It doesn’t mean looking at the product/service you’ve been tasked to build then doing user research to see how people will use it or how they use similar things today, but it means first looking at and discover peoples‘ needs, what gaps they have, then creating and designing a product and service around those needs. Designing for capabilities to be enhanced means looking at capabilities that people already have (a good example is renting movies in a store) then thinking about how to enhance those capabilities (renting online with netflix). One can easily see how both of these ideas center around designing for what’s next. Ezio isn’t talking about thinking how people will communicate 10 years from now then designing a brand new product that may or may not work depending on user acceptance and behavior. He’s not talking about coming up with the next huge innovation or idea. He’s talking about looking at what the needs are today, what the capabilities are today, and filling and enhancing these for tomorrow. And tomorrow means literally tomorrow, not sometime in the distant future. Don’t get me wrong, I believe the future thinking work and development is very important, but I believe that we focus way to much on that in our field. That is the fun stuff after all. That is what makes us excited and makes us feel creative and innovative. But think about designing something that makes it easier for people to do what they already do. It might not be the most innovative thing, but it is definitely creative work.
Lastly, Ezio talked about designing enabling systems. Systems that enable people to do the things they can’t today or enable people to do things that they already do today better tomorrow.
I think that this talk effected me so much because of the simplicity of it. This message is one that we’ve heard a great deal, and I’m sure that some of us are already going by it in our day to day work. But, are we really embracing it as we do the newest, coolest technologies? Are we really thinking about these items each and every time we design and ensuring that we aren’t just designing for design’s sake? I know that I haven’t been. Maybe it’s just me, and maybe that’s why these ideas touched me so much. But I have a feeling I’m not alone. Next time you are designing, I challenge you to think about what Ezio is telling us about his work, and applying it to your own. Think about how to design for what’s next, and by what people need or how to enhance capabilities that people already have. Think about designing enabling systems.
To see the talk be sure to check IxDA.org for the event videos which should be posted this week!
Great news all! I’ve started writing for New York Entrepreneur Week as a guest blogger. My topics are going to be focused around explaining and promoting User Experience to entrepreneurs of all kinds. My first post, Two Careers That Didn’t Exist 10 Years Ago, is already up. Be sure to take a read and let me know what you think. Also if you have any ideas regarding topics to write about I’d love to hear them. You can look for my postings on NYEW.org about every two weeks. Enjoy!
As I mentioned in my last post, I had the opportunity to travel to Interaction 10 last week which took place in beautiful Savannah, Georgia. (PS you can sign up for Interaction 11 now and save $250 bucks! Interaction 11 site) This was my very first UX conference, and I loved it. The conference itself was extremely well put together. The talks were a perfect length, the spaces & locations that were used were fantastic and the food out of this world. The speakers and workshops were full of insightful ideas that had me really reflecting on my practice as an interaction designer, and how to make it better.
As I was listening and engaging, I couldn’t help but reflect on the concept of a conference overall. I kept thinking about how we were at a conference talking about interaction design and user experience, about creating meaning and facilitating delightful experiences, but yet we were all sitting in a room, listening to someone’s point of view on these topics… and hopefully providing feedback to them afterwards. I kept asking myself “Is this the best way to create meaning for us as UX practioners? Is this the best way to facilitate delight in our learning experience?”.
Please don’t get me wrong. Interaction 10 was one of the best experiences I’ve had and this post is in no way trying to convey anything negative about it (or else I wouldn’t be promoting Interaction 11). What this post is meant to do is to get us thinking about the concept of conferences overall and if they are the best or only way to increase the knowledge and talent of the UX community while at the same time providing meaning and facilitating delight.
During my time in Savannah I started thinking about how conferences started in the first place. I got some general thoughts on this, but to be honest I don’t have any written proof of the history of the events. I did do some research on Business Conferences vs. Academic Conferences which did help to frame the idea for me better, but I’m still hung up on the question… is this the best way for us to learn? Just because businesses and academia put on these events, should our community rely on them? We are different afterall… right? I’m not saying conferences should go away, but just asking what part of our growth as practioners do they facilitate? There are different ways that we learn and grow, and I’m sure conferences fill some need (or they wouldn’t exist).
In talking to my friend who is a professional counselor, he mentioned that counseling conferences are very different. Why? Because, as he put it, they have to focus on how they work with and predict behaviors of other people. That stopped me in my tracks because frankly, we do that too! He explained that counseling conferences were much more hands on and group oriented (probably similar to the workshops that we’ve seen), and focus on teaching methods for getting results. Perhaps this isn’t exactly what we’d want to do, however it does shed some light on a different way. Afterall, does it make sense to have a group of people who are conceptual and visually based to sit in a room and absorb information without interacting?
So I’m asking all of you your opinions on the topic. How do you think conferences help us in our practice? How are they structured to create meaning for us? And mostly do you think that there is potentially a different way to instruct and help the “different” kind of professionals that we are?
Can’t wait to hear what you’ve got!
I’m extremely excited today, because tomorrow I’ll be getting on a plane to Savannah, Georgia for IxDA’s annual conference: Interaction 10. My excitement stems from several sources. First, as a local leader for the NYC chapter of IxDA, I’m fully committed to supporting and evangelizing IxDA’s mission and I’m pumped to be surrounded by others that feel the same. Second, this is my very first interaction design / user experience design conference and I’m completely curious as to what’s in store and can’t wait to learn all that I’m about to learn. Third, I’m so happy to be attending with some very great friends, and am looking forward to being introduced to and talking with more awesomely talented UXers.
Here are only some of the talks that I’m hoping to attend:
Scenarios for Design – Liz Bacon
Designing for Billions – Rapheal Grignani
10 Things I Learned About Being a Design Consultant While Living In the Hospital for a Year – Greg Vassallo
The Human Interface (Or: Why Products Are People, Too) – Christopher Fahey
I would love to hear any advice, suggestions, words of wisdom about what I should expect, what I should look for, etc. This is all new to me, and any and all guidance is welcome. I can’t wait to come back with a full report for everyone!