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Re: Expert/Rapid/Special Forces Design (was: Yet Another iPod Birth Story)
by Jim Leftwich
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These issues are extremely complex and difficult to adequately, or
non-tediously discuss and examine in text-based forums. I think we
would agree that they're much easier and productive to discuss in
live face-to-face forums, and with examples to provide necessary
context. The field is just that wide and diverse, and terminology
can often be misconstrued and misinterpreted. That's a problem
that's not going to go away in the discipline of Interaction Design
anytime soon. But I don't want to unintentially offend,
misinterpret, or be misinterpreted. I think that all design efforts
are valuable. I start with that value.
I greatly appreciate this spirited discussion. It's an important
one. And I have the utmost respect for opposing points of view,
though there are some aspects that I strongly, and historically,
disagreed with, and I rarely see opposition rising to meet statements
of some of the more visible pundits in the field of user experience
and Interaction Design. So I will do it to represent the many ad
hoc, solitary, small team with no time or budget, or rapid expert
intuitive approaches out there who *don't* believe we're doing a half-
assed or non-optimum job of things. I really don't like the term
"designer-centric design" either, because design is always "solution-
centric" and hopefully wholistic, integrated, and multi-dimensional.
>> Many people will easily claim they practice "User Centered
>> Design," (I'd argue all good user experiences are designed with the
>> user in mind. I'm reminded of groups that call themselves something
>> like "Concern Americans In Favor Of Freedom" etc.), and the same
goes
>> for "Activity-Based Design," and the methods of "Systems Design."
>
>All good designers design with the user in mind, naturally. But to
>quote Brenda Laurel: "Perhaps the single most pernicious sort of
>folly I have seen over nearly thirty years in the computer field is
>the belief on the part of engineers, designers, and marketing people
>is that they "just know" what will work for their audience. For
>extremely observant, experienced designer, this may indeed be true,
>but such people are exceedingly rare, and those who are most
>successful have "trained" their intuition by carefully observing and
>reaching deep understanding of certain kinds of people, cultures, and
>contexts. For the rest of us, that first "great idea" is usually a
>shot in the dark."
I'm particularly glad that you quoted Brenda Laurel. Let's examine
how she constructs that quote. First off, she starts off by framing a
particular type of non-research-based design, as a "pernicious
folly." Then she cleverly escapes the, "But what about these
successful examples" question by boxing it into the ,"Yeah, well
there are a few, "exceedingly rare* individuals argument. The "rest
of us" tagline really underscores the attempt to distance the reader
for any hope that they might also develop some effective, intuitive,
and valuable judgement for use in a large range of situations calling
for it.
This kind of dishonest framing of the IxD argument has been going on
for years and years by the research community. And to oppose it is,
unfortunately, to risk accepting the framing to begin with. I don't
accept this framing. Because nobody says, in the most simplistic and
misunderstandable form, says they just know what will work (100%).
But what they might indeed say is that they have a pretty good idea,
after sizing everything up rapidly, of what is likely to be the best
shot, given a fixed amount of time, resources, and need for
significant innovation, development from scratch, or fixing of an old
or poorly-working solution. It's a serious mistake to speak of design
in universal terms, and make it sound as though all design problems
start out as equal, or the situations in which they must be tackled.
This is a way of boxing and subsequently dismissing and
deligitimizing any approach other than the one the research
priesthood blesses. If you can successfully paste the label of
"genius," or "rare," on someone, you can paint them as an outlier
that no longer needs to be considered seriously, let alone studied in
order to discover and perhaps derive alternative methods that can be
repeated and applied in appropriate situations and used by greater
and greater numbers of designers.
Intuitive design approaches can and should be learned "by the rest of
everyone." Many more than would be acknowledged by that dismissive
statement have the capability of tackling greater design challenges,
take much larger intuitive risks, and thus achieve much larger design
gains across the field.
Maybe some here remember how many millions of dollars the big group
of heavily credentialed researchers of an place that billed itself as
"the next Xerox PARC" burned through before they closed. I think
anyone involved in that effort should be careful before throwing
around terms like "pernicious folly." Particularly, when such terms
are aimed at those that may, for reasons of lack of budget, time,
resources, or other constraints can very well make expert and
intuitive decisions in complex situations.
Let's definitely begin a discipline-wide examination of the ratio of
money-spent:success-of-design. Many large corporations have large
staffs of UX, Usability, Research, and associated disciplines. How
many of them truly produce paradigm-shifting, profitable, best-of-
class products?
We have a fundamental and serious schism in the discipline of
Interaction Design. I think we've got plenty of researchers and
academics and some consultancies ready to cast aspersions on those
that don't follow their methods. But bear in mind that I, and no
other designers I'm aware of, are saying research is not valuable,
nor are other methods, including UCD and ACD not completely viable
methods.
It's non-UCD/ACD methods and practitioners, in the form of fictional
strawmen, that continue to be lambasted by the pundits. I, and
others, would like to see this stop. I'll likely be assailed as
coming from an egotistical position, but nothing could be further
from the truth. This is not about any one particular designer's
approach or methods, but more an appeal on behalf of the many single
and small team design efforts out there that innovate and improve
user experiences a great deal with very little resources, or time.
I argue that *many, many* more designers could learn to be excellent
intuitive designers, capable of bringing successful solutions to a
much larger set of products, systems, and services.
But by throwing around statements such as the one you quote above,
there are many young designers that will never take bold steps.
They'll never understand that they can indeed, with careful thought
and insights (and I argue exposure to other designers that may mentor
them) learn to hone their intuition. Start small on small products
and work up from there. Take big risks on small projects. Then take
big risks on larger projects.
A designer can do no worse than some of the well-researched multi-
million-dollar flops!
>> So I find this a misleading and, in a certain sense, dismissive
>> terminology. It colors and prejudices an approach that's not at all
>> based on a practitioner's "genius," though in agreement with you,
I'd
>> say that in all fields, talent and smarts are a real benefit. But
>> what we're really talking about in this approach to design is not
>> whatsoever, as you claim in your book, "the easiest way" to approach
>> things. (You say many people take this approach because it's,
>> frankly, easier."
>
>I'm sorry, but leaving aside the years of training and background one
>should have to use genius/intuitive approach, it is easier. Research
>and its analysis are damn hard work, and by leaving off that step,
>you remove a lot of effort and expense. No design method or process
>is truly easy, but drawing on one's own experience is considerably
>simpler than the recruiting, researching, and analyzing the data that
>one has to do in UCD or ACD.
This is where we're really far apart. What you're failing to
acknowledge is that in many types of situations where the designer,
or small team has, for example, one or two months to assess and
design an entire product or system architecture (let's use the
example of a mobile phone OS UI system/language and application
framework), I can guarantee that 70-hour weeks of difficult and
complex work, often with small teams, is no picnic. Calling it easy
is offensive, and that's what I could not more strongly object to. If
95% of that time is spent designing and completing to great detail
and documentation, and it's successful, then it does not follow that
it was any easier. I can't speak for your experiences, but I will
not accept that any of my small team's efforts were easy in the
slightest. They were grueling right down to the deadline. It's just
that the hard effort was spent in other activities other than what
you, and others, might deem necessary. Most projects have very tight
constraints. Devoting significant chunks of time to research may be
necessary in some projects, but it's certainly not in all projects,
or at least the only way to expect success.
No practitioner I'm aware of would make the ludicrous charge that
research is easy, and that's part of my point. Nobody's attacking or
denigrating UCD or ACD, etc.. What I, and others who work in these
sole proprietorship and small team situations are asking is that we
and our approaches not be denigrated, sidelined, explained away as
"extremely rare," or most offensively of all - called "easy."
I can assure you, Dan, that the methods you describe are not the only
"damn hard work" out there in the Interaction Design field. This
attitude is primarily why I feel the urge not to attack the methods
you advocate, but rather stand up for those you claim, wrongly, are
"easy" and others claim, even more wrongly, are "pernicious folly."
Jim
James Leftwich, IDSA
Orbit Interaction
Palo Alto, California 94301
USA
http://www.orbitnet.com
jleft@...
(650) 387-2550 mobile
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... discuss@...
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These issues are extremely complex and difficult to adequately, or
non-tediously discuss and examine in text-based forums. I think we
would agree that they're much easier and productive to discuss in
live face-to-face forums, and with examples to provide necessary
context. The field is just that wide and diverse, and terminology
can often be misconstrued and misinterpreted. That's a problem
that's not going to go away in the discipline of Interaction Design
anytime soon. But I don't want to unintentially offend,
misinterpret, or be misinterpreted. I think that all design efforts
are valuable. I start with that value.
I greatly appreciate this spirited discussion. It's an important
one. And I have the utmost respect for opposing points of view,
though there are some aspects that I strongly, and historically,
disagreed with, and I rarely see opposition rising to meet statements
of some of the more visible pundits in the field of user experience
and Interaction Design. So I will do it to represent the many ad
hoc, solitary, small team with no time or budget, or rapid expert
intuitive approaches out there who *don't* believe we're doing a half-
assed or non-optimum job of things. I really don't like the term
"designer-centric design" either, because design is always "solution-
centric" and hopefully wholistic, integrated, and multi-dimensional.
>> Many people will easily claim they practice "User Centered
>> Design," (I'd argue all good user experiences are designed with the
>> user in mind. I'm reminded of groups that call themselves something
>> like "Concern Americans In Favor Of Freedom" etc.), and the same
goes
>> for "Activity-Based Design," and the methods of "Systems Design."
>
>All good designers design with the user in mind, naturally. But to
>quote Brenda Laurel: "Perhaps the single most pernicious sort of
>folly I have seen over nearly thirty years in the computer field is
>the belief on the part of engineers, designers, and marketing people
>is that they "just know" what will work for their audience. For
>extremely observant, experienced designer, this may indeed be true,
>but such people are exceedingly rare, and those who are most
>successful have "trained" their intuition by carefully observing and
>reaching deep understanding of certain kinds of people, cultures, and
>contexts. For the rest of us, that first "great idea" is usually a
>shot in the dark."
I'm particularly glad that you quoted Brenda Laurel. Let's examine
how she constructs that quote. First off, she starts off by framing a
particular type of non-research-based design, as a "pernicious
folly." Then she cleverly escapes the, "But what about these
successful examples" question by boxing it into the ,"Yeah, well
there are a few, "exceedingly rare* individuals argument. The "rest
of us" tagline really underscores the attempt to distance the reader
for any hope that they might also develop some effective, intuitive,
and valuable judgement for use in a large range of situations calling
for it.
This kind of dishonest framing of the IxD argument has been going on
for years and years by the research community. And to oppose it is,
unfortunately, to risk accepting the framing to begin with. I don't
accept this framing. Because nobody says, in the most simplistic and
misunderstandable form, says they just know what will work (100%).
But what they might indeed say is that they have a pretty good idea,
after sizing everything up rapidly, of what is likely to be the best
shot, given a fixed amount of time, resources, and need for
significant innovation, development from scratch, or fixing of an old
or poorly-working solution. It's a serious mistake to speak of design
in universal terms, and make it sound as though all design problems
start out as equal, or the situations in which they must be tackled.
This is a way of boxing and subsequently dismissing and
deligitimizing any approach other than the one the research
priesthood blesses. If you can successfully paste the label of
"genius," or "rare," on someone, you can paint them as an outlier
that no longer needs to be considered seriously, let alone studied in
order to discover and perhaps derive alternative methods that can be
repeated and applied in appropriate situations and used by greater
and greater numbers of designers.
Intuitive design approaches can and should be learned "by the rest of
everyone." Many more than would be acknowledged by that dismissive
statement have the capability of tackling greater design challenges,
take much larger intuitive risks, and thus achieve much larger design
gains across the field.
Maybe some here remember how many millions of dollars the big group
of heavily credentialed researchers of an place that billed itself as
"the next Xerox PARC" burned through before they closed. I think
anyone involved in that effort should be careful before throwing
around terms like "pernicious folly." Particularly, when such terms
are aimed at those that may, for reasons of lack of budget, time,
resources, or other constraints can very well make expert and
intuitive decisions in complex situations.
Let's definitely begin a discipline-wide examination of the ratio of
money-spent:success-of-design. Many large corporations have large
staffs of UX, Usability, Research, and associated disciplines. How
many of them truly produce paradigm-shifting, profitable, best-of-
class products?
We have a fundamental and serious schism in the discipline of
Interaction Design. I think we've got plenty of researchers and
academics and some consultancies ready to cast aspersions on those
that don't follow their methods. But bear in mind that I, and no
other designers I'm aware of, are saying research is not valuable,
nor are other methods, including UCD and ACD not completely viable
methods.
It's non-UCD/ACD methods and practitioners, in the form of fictional
strawmen, that continue to be lambasted by the pundits. I, and
others, would like to see this stop. I'll likely be assailed as
coming from an egotistical position, but nothing could be further
from the truth. This is not about any one particular designer's
approach or methods, but more an appeal on behalf of the many single
and small team design efforts out there that innovate and improve
user experiences a great deal with very little resources, or time.
I argue that *many, many* more designers could learn to be excellent
intuitive designers, capable of bringing successful solutions to a
much larger set of products, systems, and services.
But by throwing around statements such as the one you quote above,
there are many young designers that will never take bold steps.
They'll never understand that they can indeed, with careful thought
and insights (and I argue exposure to other designers that may mentor
them) learn to hone their intuition. Start small on small products
and work up from there. Take big risks on small projects. Then take
big risks on larger projects.
A designer can do no worse than some of the well-researched multi-
million-dollar flops!
>> So I find this a misleading and, in a certain sense, dismissive
>> terminology. It colors and prejudices an approach that's not at all
>> based on a practitioner's "genius," though in agreement with you,
I'd
>> say that in all fields, talent and smarts are a real benefit. But
>> what we're really talking about in this approach to design is not
>> whatsoever, as you claim in your book, "the easiest way" to approach
>> things. (You say many people take this approach because it's,
>> frankly, easier."
>
>I'm sorry, but leaving aside the years of training and background one
>should have to use genius/intuitive approach, it is easier. Research
>and its analysis are damn hard work, and by leaving off that step,
>you remove a lot of effort and expense. No design method or process
>is truly easy, but drawing on one's own experience is considerably
>simpler than the recruiting, researching, and analyzing the data that
>one has to do in UCD or ACD.
This is where we're really far apart. What you're failing to
acknowledge is that in many types of situations where the designer,
or small team has, for example, one or two months to assess and
design an entire product or system architecture (let's use the
example of a mobile phone OS UI system/language and application
framework), I can guarantee that 70-hour weeks of difficult and
complex work, often with small teams, is no picnic. Calling it easy
is offensive, and that's what I could not more strongly object to. If
95% of that time is spent designing and completing to great detail
and documentation, and it's successful, then it does not follow that
it was any easier. I can't speak for your experiences, but I will
not accept that any of my small team's efforts were easy in the
slightest. They were grueling right down to the deadline. It's just
that the hard effort was spent in other activities other than what
you, and others, might deem necessary. Most projects have very tight
constraints. Devoting significant chunks of time to research may be
necessary in some projects, but it's certainly not in all projects,
or at least the only way to expect success.
No practitioner I'm aware of would make the ludicrous charge that
research is easy, and that's part of my point. Nobody's attacking or
denigrating UCD or ACD, etc.. What I, and others who work in these
sole proprietorship and small team situations are asking is that we
and our approaches not be denigrated, sidelined, explained away as
"extremely rare," or most offensively of all - called "easy."
I can assure you, Dan, that the methods you describe are not the only
"damn hard work" out there in the Interaction Design field. This
attitude is primarily why I feel the urge not to attack the methods
you advocate, but rather stand up for those you claim, wrongly, are
"easy" and others claim, even more wrongly, are "pernicious folly."
Jim
James Leftwich, IDSA
Orbit Interaction
Palo Alto, California 94301
USA
http://www.orbitnet.com
jleft@...
(650) 387-2550 mobile
________________________________________________________________
Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)!
To post to this list ....... discuss@...
List Guidelines ............ http://listguide.ixda.org/
List Help .................. http://listhelp.ixda.org/
(Un)Subscription Options ... http://subscription-options.ixda.org/
Announcements List ......... http://subscribe-announce.ixda.org/
Questions .................. lists@...
Home ....................... http://ixda.org/
Resource Library ........... http://resources.ixda.org
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