Blog

Democratization of Design & The Lost Art of Justification

By: Sarah Doody on Apr 14, 2012

A sad thing happened to my recently. I was shown a website that was recently redesigned and it was horrible. Not just a few pixels off, but entirely incoherent. There was no consistency or re-use of elements, the fonts were all over the place, navigation jumped around, breadcrumbs came and went, and it was simply something that looked like an elementary student could have made. But that wasn’t the most painful part. The most painful part was a scary realization that the democratization of design is breeding a whole group of people who can make stuff, but can’t tell you the why behind what they are doing. Is the pre-fab model of design is forfeiting the important art of justification and meaning?

When I started out, we did not have websites that sold Photoshop templates. We did not have websites that held contests for people to design a logo for $39. We did not have massive libraries of site templates and stencils to work from. More importantly we didn’t just focus on making, we also focused on meaning. We took time to understand why a page is laid out a certain way, how the placement of objects changes the composition, and the impact of color, font, and tone to the overall message. We had to think about everything we did and every decision we made because the cost of change was high given that we had to create everything and didn’t have an infinite number of toolboxes to pull from.

I didn’t go to school to study user experience and design, in fact I don’t think I even knew the term user experience existed back then. I pretty much stumbled into the field. One day I was given a copy of Photoshop 3 and Dreamweaver 2 and told to learn the programs. Along with slowly learning these tools, I read as many books and case studies as I could about design, communication, technology, and creativity. I was a sponge for information and became a master researcher. It seemed like the best way to learn about this emerging field that gave perfect opportunity to my half creative brain and have technical brain.

One of the most influential books I read was MTIV: Process, Inspiration, and Practice For the New Media Designer, by Hillman Curtis. At the time, Curtis was a pioneering flash designer and filmmaker who told really great stories through his work. I absolutely fell in love with the idea of being able to use this digital medium to tell stories – and that design was not just about what it looked like, but more importantly, the story the experience told. What was so great about Curtis’ book was that it wasn’t just about how to do things – how to make a flash movie, how to create a grid system, how to make a navigation system – but it was about why you should do these things – it let you see into his brain and understand the thought process behind what he did. I don’t think I’d be half the designer I am today if I hadn’t have developed a deep love and appreciation for the process.

In the section about his process, there is a chapter called Justify. In it Hillman Curtis emphasizes the importance of being able to justify your design and that every element needs to have a definable purpose. The best way to ensure you are designing with purpose is to continually question and justify your design decisions. I remember eating this up. After reading this, my design partner and I would ask each other for feedback – and all we needed to do was point at a part of the design and if the other said “justify”, we knew that it needed more thought. It was an important and valuable part of our process that ultimately always led to a better experience.

Today, I fear that the art of justification is being lost as a critical part of the design process. Partially this is due to the pre-fab model that designers have access to. Yes, all of these tools do make design more accessible. But, I’d argue that they also provide a false sense of security. There’s an assumption that if it came from a template or a stencil, then it must be right, and that it can be trusted as an acceptable design pattern. However, what so many designers don’t consider is that it’s not about the pieces as single objects; it’s how the pieces work together. It’s fine to borrow elements, as long as they fit within the context of the project. But the key word there is context – and I believe the greater problem is that context in design is being lost.

The democratization of design affords us the ability rush the creation process, without fully defining the story we hope our creations will tell. We spend countless rounds rearranging the pieces of a design. But often times, that is done blindly, or at the direction of clients who see the pieces as eye candy, and not important characters of a story, not being justified by the original context of the design. Without understanding the story you wish to tell, how on earth can you really justify the pieces that make up a design?

I definitely don’t have a solution. But I do see this as a growing problem. As design will become even more democratized, how do we help ensure that we don’t lost focus on the story, the message that we are trying to tell through the medium? How do we teach and educate about the need to elevate context and justification in the design process?

PS: More thoughts to come …

Comment

3 Tips For Companies Looking To Hire A User Experience Designer

By: Sarah Doody on Mar 31, 2012

User experience design continues to be one of the hardest jobs to fill. Companies are realizing the value that creating a great user experience can have on their business. Today, people more than ever expect, and demand, a great experience. This is an exciting time for the industry. However, as companies race to create great user experiences, I’m concerned that the quality of the experiences could be jeopardized.

I’d guess that the rise in demand for user experience designers is being fueled significantly by companies who finally realize the value of focusing on creating a great user experience. But, as companies seek to improve their user experiences, they face a huge challenge in actually finding candidates. Of course, supply and demand is a key contributor to this problem. However, the greater problem is that most companies don’t truly understand the exact skill set within user experience design that their company specifically needs. Companies are walking blind into the hiring process – and that’s scary, for everyone involved.

So how can we help solve this problem? How can companies truly understand the role of user experience in their organization? And from this knowledge, how can companies be sure they are hiring the correct person for their team? I think it’s partially a responsibility of the user experience design community to help educate businesses about the spectrum of what we do, because it can be pretty blurry at times!

Here are 3 tips that every company should consider before they set out to hire anyone to do user experience.

#1: Know Your Problem
As a company, you need to identify what problem you think hiring a user experience designer is going to solve. The spectrum of roles within user experience design is very wide, so you have to know what you need. For example, if you had an existing website and were happy with how it was performing, but felt like it was out of date and needed to be updated, you’d want to focus more on the aspects of visual and interface design. On the other hand, if you were embarking on creating a brand new Internet based product, you’d probably want to find someone who was more experienced in research and strategy, and who had more leadership skills and businesses sense.

#2: Know Your Process
Another thing you need to understand is how your existing teams function and how this person would fit into what’s already in place. Do you have an in house technical team or do you outsource all the development? Does your development process follow an agile or more waterfall method? How much value does your company put on user feedback and analysis? These various situations mean very different things and define how a user experience designer would work within the context of your environment.

#3: Know Your People
You have to have an intimate understanding of the existing people and skills on your team. Don’t be fooled. Just because you already have someone on your team who has “designer” in their title, doesn’t mean that they can create a new design for your site or create a great new checkout process. In the same vein, you also have to dig deep and find out who on your team may have hidden skills that could contribute to building a culture of user experience. Find out if any of your developers, specifically front end developers, also have design or user experience skills. You’ll probably be surprised if you ask around. Understanding what talent is already on your team is critical to finding the gaps and hiring the right person to help bring new solutions.

Conclusion
The field of user experience is changing so much. It’s not just about making things pretty. It’s not just about organizing information. It’s not just about making things easy to get to. It’s not just about designing pages and pages of wireframes that map back to a sitemap. It about understanding the journey that happens between the pages, how all those pages connect together to create a cohesive and delightful experience for your customers.

So as you navigate the world of hiring new team members to help you develop a great user experience, don’t get started until you know your Problem, Process, and your People. If you don’t take time to dig deep and understand these areas, you’ll likely end up hiring the wrong person, which in the end is a frustrating experience for both you and the designer.

If you’re a company looking to hire a user experience designer, leave a comment and let me know how you’ve navigated hiring this slightly blurry position :o)

Happy Hiring!!

Comment

Thoughts about "Best Practices" In User Experience Design

By: Sarah Doody on Mar 24, 2012

I recently started co-teaching 12 week class on User Experience Design in partnership with General Assembly. One of the most common questions the students ask is for concrete Best Practices about UXD. It’s been really challenging to try and identify Best Practices, simply because of the breadth of content we’re covering. So, this got me thinking, do Best Practices exist and does the idea of them distract us from more valuable learnings?

The idea of Best Practices implies that if you do a set thing, a set result will occur. It makes us believe that there is a rulebook for how to successfully design an experience. In reality, I’ve never been one to follow the rules, maybe it’s why I love designing experiences so much :)

I think we need to do everything we can to try and shift the impression that there are “rules” for how to do what we do. Because the truth is, and we all know it, there is no one way to do what we do. So much of what we do is about problem and solve, about try and try again, about incrementally moving forward. We ultimately design for people, and people are different. People think different, feel different, and behave different. So thinking that applying a set rule to an experience will yield the same result from people is not possible.

So, instead of thinking about rules, I think we should focus on patterns and guidelines, common ways of thinking that provide us with a default, a starting point that we can then tailor to the unique product and the people we’re designing for.

I recently found this TED Talk by Andrew Stanton (animator, writer, and director at Pixar) called The Clues To A Great Story. In the talk he recounts the process of writing Toy Story. The writing process wasn’t going so well and someone suggested they apply the common elements that had made other animated films successful (villain, love story, happy songs, etc). The team chose to not follow these “rules” and thank goodness the did! Andrew speaks about how that experience made him realize that “Storytelling has guidelines, not hard fast rules”.

I think the same concept applies to User Experience Design. There are patterns and guidelines that can help us get started. But ultimately, a great experience comes from understanding people and tailoring the experience to their needs. So back to my original though on educating people about UXD, I think our focus should be less on methods and mechanics, and more on training people how to think – how to be curious and observant, how to develop ethos, how to tell stories, and how to solve problems.

What are you thoughts? Are education programs in UXD focused too much on mechanics? Do Best Practices give us (or clients) a false sense of future success? What can we do to help people design beyond the defaults to create great experiences?

Photo credit: biphop from Flickr

Comment

Google's Project:ReBrief Aims To Re-Imagine Digital Advertising

By: Sarah Doody on Mar 11, 2012

I really thought I’d arrived. It was my first day as a web designer at a large software company. I was sitting in my own office (with a window and door!) figuring out what I was supposed to do, and then I got an email. A guy needed me to make him a banner ad … my heart sunk. I had this visceral reaction and thought to myself “I am that person who has to make those tacky banner ads”. I didn’t know that was even a part of my job description. I’d never even made an animated gif in my life! But it was my first day, so I figured it out, and the guy got his banner ads, and many more.

Looking back, the most frustrating part about that experience was feeling like I’d sold out somehow as a designer and storyteller. At the time, I was reading books like Emotional Branding and Ogilvy On Advertising and I was excited about the opportunities that technology was opening up for us to apply old-school communications and design techniques to a new medium. But, at the time, there was clearly no place for innovation like that. That was nearly 10 years ago, and you know what, not much has changed in the digital advertising space.

In 2012 digital advertising will turn 18 years old. And after two decades, there has been little innovation in using the medium to engage instead of just inform. People are spending more time online than ever before. So why haven’t we figured out how to reach them where they’re at?

Googled wondered the same thing and recently launched Project:ReBrief – an experiment focused on the future of digital advertising. The project aims to figure out how to use storytelling to capture and deliver emotional experiences in the digital age.

The experiment, which culminates in an upcoming documentary film, takes four iconic campaigns from major brands, and tries to refactor the campaigns for the digital age. It’s truly brilliant. Working with the original creative directors, art directors, and copywriters of campaigns for brands such as Avis, Volvo, AlkaSeltzer, and Coke the project seems to take advertising icons “who defined mediums of the past” and work with them to “help shape the medium of the future”.

It’s no surprise that a key theme that appears to be emerging from the advertising legends is that of storytelling. Howie Cohen, copywriter for Alka-Seltzer’s 1972 iconic ad I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing notes that “People need to be communicated with in an emotional way, and storytelling is the best way to do that.” How did the balance of our focus move away from people and learn too much toward technology?

In the trailer for the documentary, one of the people interviewed says “to come up with great display advertising, you first just have to come up with great advertising.” It will be interesting to see if Google can help an entire industry re-imagine it’s own craft for the web, and more importantly, people.

Visit Google’s Project:ReBrief to learn more about the campaign and film.

Comment

9 Ideas For Designers (& Everyone) To Live By

By: Sarah Doody on Jan 31, 2012

Years ago while living in Portland, I wrote this as a reminder of why I do what I do.
Having recently found it and being inspired, I thought I’d share it with my designer friends … a source of inspiration for people who are just starting their careers, a kick in the ass for people who maybe need to make a change, and a reminder for everyone else, that there is no ‘there’ and that what matters most is not what you achieve, but who you become along the way.

1. Look beyond the immediate
Don’t let yourself become paralyzed by the situation you’re currently in. Whether you’ve hit rock bottom or feel like you are at the top of your career, always remember to look to the future – to examine your potential – to look beyond the immediate.

2. There’s always room at the top
If you are great at what you do, people will notice – whether they are looking for it or not. When people find someone who is great, someone who has authentic passion, talent, and persistence that is so rare, they will take notice. People will carve a place out at the top for those who choose to be great.

3. We’ve all done our time
Along the journey, each person will likely find themselves in a place where they don’t fully enjoy where they are at. Realize that these times are only temporary – and if we choose, lessons can be learned along the way – that will help you get to where you want to be.

4. Seek wonder in the detail
Train yourselves to be an observer. Learn how to filter through the noise and see the beauty and inspiration that we often let pass us by each day. Slow down. Don’t think so much. Learn to imagine again and think like a child – with curiosity, inquisitiveness, and fearlessness of the unknown.

5. Discover your strengths
Each person is born with inherent gifts – unique talents that when discovered, should not be ignored. Realize that you’re greatest potential will be realized when you focus on your strengths, instead of trying to fix your weaknesses.

6. Work from the inside out
In creative projects, in life, in everything – learn that you need to work form the inside out. You can’t know your purpose until you know who you are. Likewise, you can’t know a design, until you have an intimating understanding of the product or service, you can’t build a great building until you know each intricate detail about how it needs to function. Work from the inside out and the design will come naturally as a result of the intimate understanding of purpose.

7. Make your own rules
Change is inevitable. You must be flexible and agile to adapt to the
change that you face each day. Don’t allow yourself to be caught up in doing things the right way. Do what works – in the context of the situation – in the context of change.

8. Ask stupid questions
People love to be listened to. It is validating, empowering, and flattering. Take time to focus on listening more than speaking and you will be amazed at what type of information and ideas people will naturally volunteer.

9. Love the process
Forget the destination. The destination is dead. Half of the time you have no idea what the destination is. Learn to appreciate the process. Understand that what you learn during the journey is far more precious than the destination.

Comment [2]

< Previous Posts