3 perspectives on how the same creative process drives the work of Roy Scholten as an artist, an open source contributor and as a user experience consultant.
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to deliver a talk at Shift in Split, Croatia.
Shift is a developer conference, so initially, I thought it would be entertaining to talk about what it’s like to work with an engineer, from a designers perspective. The working title of the talk was Things Engineers Hate About Working With (Me) a Designer.
I was going to share the mistakes I’ve made, and learned from, along the way. A manifesto of what not to do when working with an engineer. However, feedback included phrases like “it’s a bit tongue & cheek” and the best talks are ones that are “raw, honest and vulnerable.”
You don’t write code, but you’ve been successful in spite of it. The lines are blurring between design & engineering. Why not talk about how tools have helped bridge that gap?
There was something more interesting to talk about. I realized that I didn’t write code because I didn’t need to. For years I’d been spoiled, and to some extent enabled, by a handful of incredibly talented iOS engineers. The realization didn’t sit well with me.
I scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board.
Tools were my first introduction to a hobby that turned into a passion that has become an obsession
They have been steadily influencing and shaping me as a designer from the first time I sat in front of a computer in elementary school. I would not realize how much they’d impact my life until much much later.
Tools have had a massive influence on me and my work, but had they on others?
A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to deliver a talk at Shift in Split, Croatia.
Shift is a developer conference, so initially, I thought it would be entertaining to talk about what it’s like to work with an engineer, from a designers perspective. The working title of the talk was Things Engineers Hate About Working With (Me) a Designer.
I was going to share the mistakes I’ve made, and learned from, along the way. A manifesto of what not to do when working with an engineer. However, feedback included phrases like “it’s a bit tongue & cheek” and the best talks are ones that are “raw, honest and vulnerable.”
You don’t write code, but you’ve been successful in spite of it. The lines are blurring between design & engineering. Why not talk about how tools have helped bridge that gap?
There was something more interesting to talk about. I realized that I didn’t write code because I didn’t need to. For years I’d been spoiled, and to some extent enabled, by a handful of incredibly talented iOS engineers. The realization didn’t sit well with me.
I scrapped everything and went back to the drawing board.
Tools were my first introduction to a hobby that turned into a passion that has become an obsession
They have been steadily influencing and shaping me as a designer from the first time I sat in front of a computer in elementary school. I would not realize how much they’d impact my life until much much later.
Tools have had a massive influence on me and my work, but had they on others?
Graham Thomas - 10 Great but Now Overlooked Tools - EuroSTAR 2012TEST Huddle
EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2012 presentation on 10 Great but Now Overlooked Tools by Graham Thomas. See more at: http://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/past-presentations/
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I asked Process Street's Product Designer how Shape Up's development method works in practice. Want to know more about Shape Up? Check out what Ivy has to say.
It is a well-known fact that Design Sprint is a very good technique – wonderful perhaps – but something incomplete (at least in its conception), that is for two reasons, 1.- it only allows you to concentrate on a single flow of a single product (what is not always optimal depending on the time and environment), and 2.- it facilitates you to fall into many inconsistencies that can end up affecting your entire UX process.
YOU CAN EXPECT TO LEARN:
* Ways to solve defects caused by focusing on a single flow of a single product
* What are the most common inconsistencies and possible ways to solve each of them
* Show a real case (my particular case) about how Sprint Design can be inserted in a UX macro process
10 signs you’re actually a project manager (and what you can do about it!)Ross Stanley
Have you switched out your project managers for product managers and started “doing agile”, but you’re not feeling like you're winning yet? Would you like to develop more product management practices at your organisation?
In this session, Ross Stanley (curr: Xero, prev: Vend) will describe the changes he’s seen in the industry as product management and associated practises have matured, identifying along the way the things that often go hand in hand with making great software products. Spoiler: there’s probably more to it than just hiring product managers.
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Have you switched out your project managers for product managers and started “doing agile”, but you’re not feeling like you're winning yet? Would you like to develop more product management practices at your organisation?
In this session, Ross Stanley (curr: Xero, prev: Vend) will describe the changes he’s seen in the industry as product management and associated practises have matured, identifying along the way the things that often go hand in hand with making great software products. Spoiler: there’s probably more to it than just hiring product managers.
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Here is a simple guide that may help you organize yourself and start learning with effective ways
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This is a short guide that will help entrepreneurs and start ups to design a professional and versatile logo investing little time and with little or no money.
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EuroSTAR Software Testing Conference 2012 presentation on 10 Great but Now Overlooked Tools by Graham Thomas. See more at: http://conference.eurostarsoftwaretesting.com/past-presentations/
An Interview with Ivy: Shape Up From a Product Designer’s PerspectiveQuekelsBaro
I asked Process Street's Product Designer how Shape Up's development method works in practice. Want to know more about Shape Up? Check out what Ivy has to say.
It is a well-known fact that Design Sprint is a very good technique – wonderful perhaps – but something incomplete (at least in its conception), that is for two reasons, 1.- it only allows you to concentrate on a single flow of a single product (what is not always optimal depending on the time and environment), and 2.- it facilitates you to fall into many inconsistencies that can end up affecting your entire UX process.
YOU CAN EXPECT TO LEARN:
* Ways to solve defects caused by focusing on a single flow of a single product
* What are the most common inconsistencies and possible ways to solve each of them
* Show a real case (my particular case) about how Sprint Design can be inserted in a UX macro process
10 signs you’re actually a project manager (and what you can do about it!)Ross Stanley
Have you switched out your project managers for product managers and started “doing agile”, but you’re not feeling like you're winning yet? Would you like to develop more product management practices at your organisation?
In this session, Ross Stanley (curr: Xero, prev: Vend) will describe the changes he’s seen in the industry as product management and associated practises have matured, identifying along the way the things that often go hand in hand with making great software products. Spoiler: there’s probably more to it than just hiring product managers.
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Have you switched out your project managers for product managers and started “doing agile”, but you’re not feeling like you're winning yet? Would you like to develop more product management practices at your organisation?
In this session, Ross Stanley (curr: Xero, prev: Vend) will describe the changes he’s seen in the industry as product management and associated practises have matured, identifying along the way the things that often go hand in hand with making great software products. Spoiler: there’s probably more to it than just hiring product managers.
Programming is our present and the future of other coming generations.
Here is a simple guide that may help you organize yourself and start learning with effective ways
Talk from Renaissance IO 2014 on how to make sure you’re designing your apps for the right audience. Covers Baxley’s “Universal Model of the User Interface” and designer temperaments.
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Our May 2016 workshop featured Jim Edgerton who presented on making beautiful PowerPoint slides and presenting them in an engageing and memorable way. Networking followed the conclusion of the workshop where dozens of Portland professionals connected with new and old contacts and exchanged information.
Connect Conference 2022: Passive House - Economic and Environmental Solution...TE Studio
Passive House: The Economic and Environmental Solution for Sustainable Real Estate. Lecture by Tim Eian of TE Studio Passive House Design in November 2022 in Minneapolis.
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2. Design process
Monday, April 15, 13
Many sessions have been about with how to build something.
Today, I'd like to talk a bit about what you can do to find out *what* to build in the first place.
Because it doesn't matter how lean and agile your continuous delivery is if you don't start
from an understanding of the problem you are trying to solve
How do you get to that understanding?
That's where the design process comes in. Because design is how it works.
3. User needs
Business goals
Technology
Monday, April 15, 13
Before we dive into the process part, lets establish the domain we're working in.
The interaction or user experience designer looks for the overlap between
- business goals
- user needs
- technological constraints
4. User needs
Business goals
Technology
Monday, April 15, 13
Only where those three meet there is a chance for a viable product or service
So that’s the playing field established.
Now for the process bit…
5. P.I.S.A.
Monday, April 15, 13
I studied illustration at the art academy.
One course was called concept development.
It thought a method for generating creative work and drawing it to a conclusion of some
sorts.
It was very abstract…
6. P.I.S.A.
Problem
Inventory
Selection
Arbitration
Monday, April 15, 13
This is what it stood for.
We basically got two weeks to work on each stage.
- find an interesting problem
- generate multiple ways to solve it
- choose the best option
- improve that and ‘ship’ it, make it presentable.
I’d like to show how I apply this pattern to 3 different but related kinds of creative work
11. Problem?
Me.
Monday, April 15, 13
This makes it simple. I’m always around me
This makes it hard. Using your own ideas and perspectives to create something.
12. Inventory
Free experimentation.
Generate lots of material
Monday, April 15, 13
So finding an interesting problem in itself requires that I generate stuff.
It’s mandatory to create a lot of waste here.
13. Monday, April 15, 13
Etching is where you etch an image into a zinc or copper plate. This allows for multiple prints
from one original
Monoprint comes down to applying ink to anything that will go through the press. Most of
the times this material is brittle and so you can only create only one unique image
16. Monday, April 15, 13
- This is why painters walk back and squint
- This is what happens when you say "lets take a step back"
- Pick a direction and create another inventory of options but this time focussed around the
chosen direction
you look at all the stuff together
17. Monday, April 15, 13
Isolate some pieces to see if they can live up to being presented as is
18. Monday, April 15, 13
For this particular round of work. I selected these two pieces.
Not because the overall images were the strongest
19. Monday, April 15, 13
But there was a certain quality in the detail that I wanted to pursue further, get a grip on this
particular kind of visual language
20. Arbitration
Reproduce the happy
accidents in a more
controlled way
Monday, April 15, 13
So where these were mostly monoprints, the non-reproducible technique.
I wanted to find a way to capture this on zinc, and apply this to the zinc plate
21. Monday, April 15, 13
You cover a polished plate in ground
Remove and apply it again.
It’s very similar to using layer masks in photoshop.
22. Monday, April 15, 13
So, applying this to multiple plates, a body of work is generated that once again has to be
reviewed, selected, reordered.
It’s iterative!
And then there comes the moment where it’s time to draw your conclusions and pick the
works that you want to show.
23. Monday, April 15, 13
So where this was the starting point for this particular series of sprints.
24. Monday, April 15, 13
It resulted in these works.
This is the etched wireframe one
30. Problems?
No shortage of Drupal
usability problems…
Monday, April 15, 13
Drupal UX problems?
- Just how serious the issues were became clear in 2008, when two proper usability lab tests
were done on Drupal 6.
- Dries wrote a blog post about not releasing Drupal 7 before 90% of the most serious issues
were fixed.
- I helped organize a usability sprint at Drupalcon Szeged and you could say that that's where
we bootstrapped Drupal UX team.
So, how do we work within core development to redesign and improve parts of the user
interface?
31. Problem?
Content creation UX not
good enough.
Make it better!
Monday, April 15, 13
Having a well defined idea of what you'd like to see fixed is key.
Pick your battles. Drupal is huge, don't try to boil the ocean.
Pick a self-contained part of the user interface and get a clear idea of what you want to fix
and what not.
A critical audience is all the content creators and editors
Those people that get to use Drupal content creation forms weekly or even daily, long after
you’ve delivered the project.
Where this used to be a decision made by IT,
These people have a strong influence on which system to use
32. Monday, April 15, 13
Simple example. Some serious problems with even a simple version of a content form
- no clear hierarchy to the overall page
- essential options are hidden from immediate view
- people do not know if ‘Save’ means it will be published or not.
33. Inventory, I
What do we have now?
What are the others doing?
What is contrib doing?
http://groups.drupal.org/node/214898
Monday, April 15, 13
So we have an interesting problem to crack. Relatively contained problem. Improvements will
have a big impact on general perception of Drupal usability.
So, again, we do the inventory
1, 2, 3
34. Monday, April 15, 13
(switch to firefox)
its important to show your research, you need better foundations for your designs than ‘i like
it that way’
35. Inventory, II
Sketch!
Monday, April 15, 13
The best way to get a good idea is to have many ideas
- This is the part where some developers get really nervous!
- Sketching is deliberately open-ended, literally sketchy: vague, half-defined.
- Post your ideas and allow for feedback
36. Monday, April 15, 13
Throw out rough ideas. Create multiple options
We had Skype meetings to review our ideas and point out promising areas, problematic
ariesas
37. Selection
Review & decide
Continue in hi-fi
(Photoshop!)
Monday, April 15, 13
It makes sense to timebox things a bit.
There comes a moment where you realize that you won’t be coming up with anything new
(for now)
38. Monday, April 15, 13
yes photoshop. It’s not an option to dive in and write up the patch that implements this
design in a quick and easy way.
Photoshop is still usefull in those cases where you want to get an idea of what the page as a
whole comes across
Couple of iterations here as well. Exploring particular details.
(switch to firefox)
39. Arbitration
Take it to the issue queue
for implementation
Monday, April 15, 13
Wrap up the design phase, time to bring it to the issue queue
- Create a brief, reference all the prior research and art, outline what you want to see built.
- Ideally, kick it off with a patch
- Developers love patches, it's their source material and gives them something to play around
with and brings things into their domain of expertise
- It can all still totally go off the rails, core issue queues often define the limits of what core
devs see happening on d.o.
- Usability test if necessary
- From then on, it's mostly monitoring the discussion to maintain momentum, help deciding
on additional issues and generally try to keep things on track
(SWITCH TO FIREFOX)
40. Wunderroot
Monday, April 15, 13
Hi. My name is Roy Scholten and I’m a user experience architect at Wunderroot Belgium.
I joined Wunderroot because I want to be there where the rubber meets the road.
41. User needs
Business goals
Technology
Monday, April 15, 13
So we've established multiple times that we can do better than producing static wireframes,
mocking up detailed designs in photoshop and the like.
We need to be more agile! Lean! reduce waste and focus on providing Business value asap.
What can you do to help your clients discover the sweet spot?
42. Agile UX
P. Business & user goals
I. Sketch scenarios
S. Review and select
A. Prototype & Usability test
Monday, April 15, 13
This is the format I’m applying these days to uncover what we need to build in order to best
help cleints