Slideshow for the O'Reilly Webcast
"Avoiding the Heuristic Solution: Moving past functional and correct to joyful and inspiring"
To be given on 31 Jan, 2012 -- Sign up for free, now:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/e/2102
Interactive systems can be easily made foolproof and practical, but joy and delight all too often elude the final product. This author of two books on design process and interactive patterns has discovered that strict adherence to these same processes or patterns can result directly in functional, but ultimately boring interactive products. In this discussion, you will learn how to avoid the safe answer, while still embracing proven patterns, best practices and user feedback. You will also discuss how to recognize this problem, the principles to avoid these pitfalls, and how to implement tactics to encourage innovative design for your users, and that works within your organization.
Design Thinking for Startups - Are You Design Driven?Amir Khella
This presentation provides some best practices and tools to help small business entrepreneurs and startup founders in creating a culture of innovation.
Whether you're working on a web 2.0, iPhone or a physical gadget, these simple practices are universally applicable.
***Note****
I will be running a webinar in October 2009 to expand on the points mentioned in this presentation, study design thinking use cases and stories and answer questions. Please leave a comment and follow the discussion, or follow @amirkhella on twitter to get notified about the webinar.
Presented at Design Thinking Meetup (Warsaw). Ideation process in service design - is a moment when we diverge and converge. What techniques to use in ideations? What are tools and how should you prepare facilitation. Methods of great ideation workshop. Inspired by life, cases, Socjomania workshops and Design Thinkers Academy certificate.
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.
Design Thinking: The one thing that will transform the way you thinkDigital Surgeons
What's the one thing that will transform the way you think? Design Thinking. The startups, trailblazers, and business mavericks of our world have embraced this process as a means of zeroing in on true human-centered design.
Design Thinking is a methodology for innovators that taps into the two biggest skills needed in today’s modern workplace: critical thinking & problem solving.
Of course, if you ask 100 practitioners to define it, you’ll wind up with 101 definitions.
Pete Sena of Digital Surgeons believes that Design Thinking is a process for solving complex problems through observation and iteration. At its core, he describes it as a vehicle for solving human wants and needs.
Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open. Thomas Dewar was a Scottish whiskey distiller.
Communicating ideas or insights is often the hardest part of the design process. And PowerPoint and Excel spreadsheets are limited in their ability to do this. But the communication tools used in Design Thinking—maps, models, sketches, and stories—help to capture and express the information required to form and socialize meaning in a very straightforward, human way.
The Five things that all definitions of Design Thinking have in common:
1. Isolating and reframing the problem focused on the user.
2. Empathy. A design practitioner from IDEO, the popular design and innovation firm strapped a video camera to his head and it was only then that he recognized why the ceiling is such an important factor when working with hospital patients. As a patient you lay in bed and stare at it all day. It’s these little details and true empathy that can only be realized by putting oneself in the user’s shoes.
3. Approach things with an open mind and be willing to collaborate. Creativity with purpose is a team sport.
4. Curiosity. We have to harness our inner 5-year-old here and really be inquisitive explorers. Instead of seeing what would be or what should be, consider what COULD be.
5 - Commitment. Brainstorming is easy. It’s easy to want to start a business or solve a problem. Seeing it into market and making it successful is not for the faint of heart. We’ve all read about big “wins” (multi-billion dollar acquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp). What we don’t read about are people like Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, who work for years before becoming industry sensations.
Pete describes what he refers to as the “Wheel of Innovation” as a process that continuously focuses on framing, making, validating, and improving on your concept. Be it as small as a core feature in your product down to the business model and business idea itself.
Design is about form and function, not art.
What are the business benefits for Design Innovation?
IDEO started an idea revolution when they coined this phrase DESIGN THINKING. Organizations ranging from early-stage startups up to Fortune 50 organizations have capitalized on this iterative appr
Design Thinking for Startups - Are You Design Driven?Amir Khella
This presentation provides some best practices and tools to help small business entrepreneurs and startup founders in creating a culture of innovation.
Whether you're working on a web 2.0, iPhone or a physical gadget, these simple practices are universally applicable.
***Note****
I will be running a webinar in October 2009 to expand on the points mentioned in this presentation, study design thinking use cases and stories and answer questions. Please leave a comment and follow the discussion, or follow @amirkhella on twitter to get notified about the webinar.
Presented at Design Thinking Meetup (Warsaw). Ideation process in service design - is a moment when we diverge and converge. What techniques to use in ideations? What are tools and how should you prepare facilitation. Methods of great ideation workshop. Inspired by life, cases, Socjomania workshops and Design Thinkers Academy certificate.
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.
Design Thinking: The one thing that will transform the way you thinkDigital Surgeons
What's the one thing that will transform the way you think? Design Thinking. The startups, trailblazers, and business mavericks of our world have embraced this process as a means of zeroing in on true human-centered design.
Design Thinking is a methodology for innovators that taps into the two biggest skills needed in today’s modern workplace: critical thinking & problem solving.
Of course, if you ask 100 practitioners to define it, you’ll wind up with 101 definitions.
Pete Sena of Digital Surgeons believes that Design Thinking is a process for solving complex problems through observation and iteration. At its core, he describes it as a vehicle for solving human wants and needs.
Minds are like parachutes; they only function when open. Thomas Dewar was a Scottish whiskey distiller.
Communicating ideas or insights is often the hardest part of the design process. And PowerPoint and Excel spreadsheets are limited in their ability to do this. But the communication tools used in Design Thinking—maps, models, sketches, and stories—help to capture and express the information required to form and socialize meaning in a very straightforward, human way.
The Five things that all definitions of Design Thinking have in common:
1. Isolating and reframing the problem focused on the user.
2. Empathy. A design practitioner from IDEO, the popular design and innovation firm strapped a video camera to his head and it was only then that he recognized why the ceiling is such an important factor when working with hospital patients. As a patient you lay in bed and stare at it all day. It’s these little details and true empathy that can only be realized by putting oneself in the user’s shoes.
3. Approach things with an open mind and be willing to collaborate. Creativity with purpose is a team sport.
4. Curiosity. We have to harness our inner 5-year-old here and really be inquisitive explorers. Instead of seeing what would be or what should be, consider what COULD be.
5 - Commitment. Brainstorming is easy. It’s easy to want to start a business or solve a problem. Seeing it into market and making it successful is not for the faint of heart. We’ve all read about big “wins” (multi-billion dollar acquisitions like Instagram and WhatsApp). What we don’t read about are people like Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, who work for years before becoming industry sensations.
Pete describes what he refers to as the “Wheel of Innovation” as a process that continuously focuses on framing, making, validating, and improving on your concept. Be it as small as a core feature in your product down to the business model and business idea itself.
Design is about form and function, not art.
What are the business benefits for Design Innovation?
IDEO started an idea revolution when they coined this phrase DESIGN THINKING. Organizations ranging from early-stage startups up to Fortune 50 organizations have capitalized on this iterative appr
Design Thinking: engage customers like never before.
Inconsistent customer interactions. Undifferentiated touch points. Indifferent customers. If these are business challenges you are facing, it’s time to take a closer look at the customer journey that your business is providing.
Join us in a hands-on, interactive session that will introduce you to a new way of thinking. Design Thinking is a user centric problem-solving mindset that combines empathy, rationality and creativity, and keeps the end-user of your product/service at the center of the design process.
These techniques are being used by the world’s most prolific innovators to deliver powerful interaction experiences across the entire customer journey.
What we covered within the workshop:
1) The basic foundations and benefits of Design Thinking as an innovation process.
2) How to start integrating Design Thinking ideas and techniques into your daily customer interactions.
3) How to use Design Thinking to draw customer journey maps and gain actionable insights.
Design Thinking in Solving Problem - HCMC Scrum Breakfast - July 27, 2019Scrum Breakfast Vietnam
Did you know that Design Thinking is one of the most advantageous processes in dealing with difficulties?
Particularly true for developers, who always lean on teamwork to solve problems, Design Thinking becomes more important as it helps boost team’s performance to the next level after all.
Join this Scrum Breakfast event now if you are finding a practical and effective problem–solving way!!
– Topic: Design thinking in solving problems
The basic concept of Design Thinking
How the entire Design Thinking process works
How Design Thinking helps in understanding problems from customer’s perspective
How Design Thinking helps in defining and brainstorming solutions
– Speaker: Mr. Nhung Ngo – Scrum Master at Axon Active Vietnam
– Time: 09:00 AM – 11:00 AM | Saturday, 27th July 2019
– Location: Trung Nguyen coffee, 264A Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Str., District 3, HCMC
Come and enjoy this Scrum breakfast event with us now! There are free light breakfast and drinks for everyone.
FIND MORE INFORMATION HERE http://bit.ly/2FTc6XA
Centre for Entrepreneurship (C4E) of the University of Cyprus and Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (ICE) present the:
Why are some designs better than others, and what can you do about it? (The workshop)
If you've ever described a poster as heavy, a website as dense, an app as clumsy or an object as whimsical, you probably already know the answer. Recent psychology research is showing that experiential metaphors are key emotional drivers that impact our perception of the world. Applying these findings to design confirms what designers have learned throughout their careers—good design is subconscious first and rational second. Michael will share stories from this research and the IDEO portfolio then share tools to help you be more consciously subconscious.
Speed Design Studio is a variant of Will Evan’s Design Studio Process and was designed collaboratively by Jabe Bloom and Will Evan’s at TLCLabs
Speed Design Studio was modified from the original based on insights from Cognitive Edge methods and is focused on extremely rapid iterations in an attempt to emerge team level understandings of design problems and solution language.
Due to efforts applied to tighten cycle times, Speed Design Studio can be taught in a 1-2 hr workshop.
GHC slides for dare to disrupt the numbersAliza Carpio
These are slides to support the talk with Sonia May-Patlan and Aliza Carpio at Grace Hopper 2021. The title is "Dare to Disrupt the Numbers: Design Open Source for Inclusivity". These slides are specific to the design thinking portion of the talk
These slides were prepared to introduce district leaders to the design thinking process. The design challenge we worked on during this day-long introduction was to redesign high school media centers. These slides were used to step participants through each phase of the design thinking process.
An end to end design thinking exercise. An inclusive activity for the whole team to participate. From designers, to researchers, to engineers and product managers.
Myself and a fellow group of Product Managers did the IDEO HCD course in order to learn about IDEO's famous innovation techniques. We learnt a lot, and here I digest how it can be used in a product mgmt setting.
Mind(re)set
Learning and leading from the inside out
Our changing world is moving at an exponential pace adding to the complexity in our connected, global environment. We see signs of this in our workplace every day. As these signals emerge in our organizations and institutions, leaders and educators need to begin re-imagining not only what the future looks like, but how to help shape it.
What are you doing to prepare yourself as a future leader and educator in this increasingly complex environment?
Developing new skills, knowledge, and approaches are important, but change isn’t sustainable if they’re not layered on top of a shift in thinking, acting and/or being.
It takes a Mind(re)set – and the ability to learn and lead from the inside out. Mind(re)set starts by helping you “learn how to learn” from your own internal experience. In this experiential workshop, you explore your current mindset - how you physically, emotionally and mentally experience change. Then you begin to see how a Mind(re)set can lead to more success.
After writing a post on Medium about my Design Thinking experiments in the the UX class I taught last semester, I had the privilege to be invited by the Dean of School of Media Studies & Information Technology from Humber College to give a talk of the story with the program coordinators and associate dean. These are the slides of my talk.
This is a short talk and workshop (30' + 90') to give a first introduction to design thinking. Gives theory foundation, notes a few different approaches, and then dives into one of them.
This presentation was first done at ImpactON / StartupChile evening in 2015.
Design Thinking Workshop
an introduction to MBA Students at HEC Montréal, QC, Canada
Key Note - Why we need to change how we solve problems
What is Design Thinking, how is it applied, what are the key success factors
In Practice - a vision for 2025 of e-commerce
UXCampLondon presentation on Risky design decisions. Sharing our own experience on a few projects and trying to trigger some conversation about everyone's views and experience with 'risk' in design.
Design Thinking: engage customers like never before.
Inconsistent customer interactions. Undifferentiated touch points. Indifferent customers. If these are business challenges you are facing, it’s time to take a closer look at the customer journey that your business is providing.
Join us in a hands-on, interactive session that will introduce you to a new way of thinking. Design Thinking is a user centric problem-solving mindset that combines empathy, rationality and creativity, and keeps the end-user of your product/service at the center of the design process.
These techniques are being used by the world’s most prolific innovators to deliver powerful interaction experiences across the entire customer journey.
What we covered within the workshop:
1) The basic foundations and benefits of Design Thinking as an innovation process.
2) How to start integrating Design Thinking ideas and techniques into your daily customer interactions.
3) How to use Design Thinking to draw customer journey maps and gain actionable insights.
Design Thinking in Solving Problem - HCMC Scrum Breakfast - July 27, 2019Scrum Breakfast Vietnam
Did you know that Design Thinking is one of the most advantageous processes in dealing with difficulties?
Particularly true for developers, who always lean on teamwork to solve problems, Design Thinking becomes more important as it helps boost team’s performance to the next level after all.
Join this Scrum Breakfast event now if you are finding a practical and effective problem–solving way!!
– Topic: Design thinking in solving problems
The basic concept of Design Thinking
How the entire Design Thinking process works
How Design Thinking helps in understanding problems from customer’s perspective
How Design Thinking helps in defining and brainstorming solutions
– Speaker: Mr. Nhung Ngo – Scrum Master at Axon Active Vietnam
– Time: 09:00 AM – 11:00 AM | Saturday, 27th July 2019
– Location: Trung Nguyen coffee, 264A Nam Ky Khoi Nghia Str., District 3, HCMC
Come and enjoy this Scrum breakfast event with us now! There are free light breakfast and drinks for everyone.
FIND MORE INFORMATION HERE http://bit.ly/2FTc6XA
Centre for Entrepreneurship (C4E) of the University of Cyprus and Berklee Institute for Creative Entrepreneurship (ICE) present the:
Why are some designs better than others, and what can you do about it? (The workshop)
If you've ever described a poster as heavy, a website as dense, an app as clumsy or an object as whimsical, you probably already know the answer. Recent psychology research is showing that experiential metaphors are key emotional drivers that impact our perception of the world. Applying these findings to design confirms what designers have learned throughout their careers—good design is subconscious first and rational second. Michael will share stories from this research and the IDEO portfolio then share tools to help you be more consciously subconscious.
Speed Design Studio is a variant of Will Evan’s Design Studio Process and was designed collaboratively by Jabe Bloom and Will Evan’s at TLCLabs
Speed Design Studio was modified from the original based on insights from Cognitive Edge methods and is focused on extremely rapid iterations in an attempt to emerge team level understandings of design problems and solution language.
Due to efforts applied to tighten cycle times, Speed Design Studio can be taught in a 1-2 hr workshop.
GHC slides for dare to disrupt the numbersAliza Carpio
These are slides to support the talk with Sonia May-Patlan and Aliza Carpio at Grace Hopper 2021. The title is "Dare to Disrupt the Numbers: Design Open Source for Inclusivity". These slides are specific to the design thinking portion of the talk
These slides were prepared to introduce district leaders to the design thinking process. The design challenge we worked on during this day-long introduction was to redesign high school media centers. These slides were used to step participants through each phase of the design thinking process.
An end to end design thinking exercise. An inclusive activity for the whole team to participate. From designers, to researchers, to engineers and product managers.
Myself and a fellow group of Product Managers did the IDEO HCD course in order to learn about IDEO's famous innovation techniques. We learnt a lot, and here I digest how it can be used in a product mgmt setting.
Mind(re)set
Learning and leading from the inside out
Our changing world is moving at an exponential pace adding to the complexity in our connected, global environment. We see signs of this in our workplace every day. As these signals emerge in our organizations and institutions, leaders and educators need to begin re-imagining not only what the future looks like, but how to help shape it.
What are you doing to prepare yourself as a future leader and educator in this increasingly complex environment?
Developing new skills, knowledge, and approaches are important, but change isn’t sustainable if they’re not layered on top of a shift in thinking, acting and/or being.
It takes a Mind(re)set – and the ability to learn and lead from the inside out. Mind(re)set starts by helping you “learn how to learn” from your own internal experience. In this experiential workshop, you explore your current mindset - how you physically, emotionally and mentally experience change. Then you begin to see how a Mind(re)set can lead to more success.
After writing a post on Medium about my Design Thinking experiments in the the UX class I taught last semester, I had the privilege to be invited by the Dean of School of Media Studies & Information Technology from Humber College to give a talk of the story with the program coordinators and associate dean. These are the slides of my talk.
This is a short talk and workshop (30' + 90') to give a first introduction to design thinking. Gives theory foundation, notes a few different approaches, and then dives into one of them.
This presentation was first done at ImpactON / StartupChile evening in 2015.
Design Thinking Workshop
an introduction to MBA Students at HEC Montréal, QC, Canada
Key Note - Why we need to change how we solve problems
What is Design Thinking, how is it applied, what are the key success factors
In Practice - a vision for 2025 of e-commerce
UXCampLondon presentation on Risky design decisions. Sharing our own experience on a few projects and trying to trigger some conversation about everyone's views and experience with 'risk' in design.
Presentación del proyecto de Biogás de ainia en la Cámara de Comercio de Madrid dentro de la jornada sobre el impacto de la innovación y la gestión del conocimiento en las Pymes.
There is no doubt we have come to this world to leave our footprint. Many times, in order to achieve success and be able to reach our goals, we have to undergo difficult, painful situations.
We have to hit rock bottom in order to learn, regroup, and resume our journey through a path of peace, wellness, and full of dreams waiting to come true.
This Amazing Stories Special Edition is the result of our desire to present real testimonies; Opportunity now in the UK! www.ArdyssLifeUK.com
Workshop: The craft of creating delightful experiences: User Centred Problem ...Blackboard APAC
Learn about the Design Thinking methodology used at Blackboard to empathise with our users and solve problems. In this workshop we will apply Design Thinking to evaluate the Learn interface and user experiences when logging into Blackboard. Together we will ideate and wireframe suggested solutions.
Many of us learned design thinking in a contained environment, likely by attending a workshop or a sponsored session by a design organization like IBM Design or AIGA. As a matter of learning, that's great. But it can lead you to believe that design thinking only happens in a workshop. However, I'd like to propose a different approach, one that I call "grassroots design thinking", the basis of which suggests that the workshop is not the most atomic element of design thinking effectiveness. When you do design thinking at a more granular, grassroots level you, in fact, have a powerful tool to win over naysayers and critics.
User Centered Execution for Mobile UX DesignersSteven Hoober
The biggest barrier to good experiences (as well as the largest problem for most UX designers) is in getting well-intended, well-designed systems executed as the business owners and design teams intend. I present the problem, and a series of philosophical changes and specific tactics to alleviate this, and to work with implementation teams to get design executed correctly.
Slideshow I will present 29 Feb 2012 at 10 am PT as an O'Reilly webcast:
http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/2103
Presented at an O'Reilly Webcast, 8 November 2011
Good mobile designs share many features in common, regardless of the fidelity of the device type, the OS or the user. Almost two decades of interactive design experience, as well as the creation of almost 76 mobile patterns for Designing Mobile Interfaces have led to some very specific and actionable insights into their use. Covers the intent of mobile patterns, and how to use them correctly in your design. Designed to be especially helpful for those migrating from other platforms, such as desktop web design.
The webcast was recorded, so since SlideShare dosn't have notes pages, if you want to know what I was saying, just listen directly:
http://oreillynet.com/pub/e/2087
The elements of product success for designers and developersNick Myers
All software, whether it's for consumers or workers, needs to meet the ever growing demands people have in today’s world. Greater user expectations and influence are forcing companies to create and deliver better products, but not every organization has a rich heritage in software creation like tech giants Apple and Google. Most companies need to be more customer-focused, become design specialists, and transform their cultures as they shift to become both software makers and innovators.
Myers, head of design services at Cooper, will share the elements of product success that companies need to possess and be market leaders: user insight, design, and organization. Myers will share principles and techniques that successful innovative companies use to truly understand their customers. He’ll also discuss the methods effective designers use to support their customers and create breakthrough ideas and delightful experiences. And he’ll finish by sharing the magic formula organizations need to deliver ground-breaking experiences to market.
This talk was given at UX Day.
The Design Mind: Design Thinking Strategies for Facilitating Growth and Perfo...Aggregage
Design thinking is at the root of creative success. Seriously! But do you know how to shift your mindset and creative process – as well as that of your team – to create and ideate in ways that are truly innovative? The most inspired and innovative teams and individual designers need to be a part of a culture that enables forward-thinking, acceleration, and efficiency. It’s a combination of creative, analytical, and collaborative approaches that produce results.
Design Thinking to Co-Design Solutions: Presented at ACMP 2018Enterprise Knowledge
This presentation from EK's Rebecca Wyatt and Claire Brawdy details how the Design Thinking process can be applied to facilitate sessions and engage end users in the design process. Originally presented at the ACMP Change Management 2018 Conference in Las Vegas.
6 to 106 in 4 years - The story of the Atlassian Design teamAlastair Simpson
4 years ago Atlassian had 6 designers. Fast forward to today and the design team numbers 106. Building and managing a design team of this size is one thing, integrating it successfully into a traditionally engineering led organisation is another. Alastair Simpson (Head of Design — Confluence) will share how Atlassian has successfully embraced design as a first class discipline and is changing from being an engineering, to an experience led company. At the end of the session, you’ll be armed with a basic playbook for how to manage your team of designers to affect meaningful change within any organisation. Come for the practical tips about how to grow and manage design as you scale, and hear some of the road bumps along the way as we grew from 6 to 106 designers in just 4 years.
In the course of her career working solo, in a duo, with agencies, with corporations, and with a startup, Meagan's learned a few valuable lessons (some the hard way) about how to grow as a designer. She'll talk about how she got started, as well as insights on collaborating, evolving your style, and getting things launched. You'll also hear about the design maxims she holds dear (and which ones she ignores), and the web development techniques that have strengthened her design skills. She hopes to leave you with some ideas for how to be a web design champion.
7 Tips for Idea Generation for Start-upsBernard Leong
The talk focus on how start-ups can quickly work out whether their ideas are feasible and we offer 7 tips to do that. This presentation is given during the SPRING Young Entrepreneurs Event and Idea Generation Workshop in Asian Civilizations Museum on 29 March 2010.
Similar to Avoiding the Heuristic Solution: Moving past functional and correct to joyful and inspiring (20)
You can’t just build a successful mobile app or website without first understanding how the user thinks and what they need from you. Everything we design and build exists as a part of an ecosystem, the physical and digital environment in which the user perceives and uses it.
In this 3-hour Masterclass, we will discuss how to think specifically about the real use cases and how to pick the right technology to meet opportunities for your organization and your users.
We will practice using existing, well-proven UX design tools and methods to understand users, and to design your mobile products to engage real people.
We’ll wrap up by reviewing the actual products you are working on, to leverage what we’ve just learned to improve them even more.
Presented as a workshop at GPeC 2019 in Bucharest. Hands on parts you have to do on your own, therefore.
It’s okay to use hamburger menus! We know how people really use their mobile phones and tablets and have developed a human-centered design system to encourage your eCommerce users to find and understand your products better to close sales more easily.
Mobile touchscreens are not new. We have data on how people use their mobile phones and tablets. We can use this to create human-centered design systems for more consistent and usable design.
In this session you will learn a very simple set of tactics to place content, create more useful interactions, and design a consistent and readable navigation and way-finding system for your eCommerce mobile app or website.
Presented at GPeC 2019 in Bucharest
It's okay to use hamburger menus! We know how people really use their mobile phones and tablets, and have developed a human-centered design system to encourage your eCommerce users to find, understand, and transact better.
Presented at Mobile Trends Conference 2018, Krakow Poland
UX for Mobile with Steven Hoober at Pointworks AcademySteven Hoober
If you work on a team without sufficient time or resources and need to do design thinking outside your official role yourself, this workshop can help. There are roles in the workshop for product owners, information architects, interaction designers, content managers, UI/visual designers and developers.
In this course, you’ll discover:
The way digital products really work; layering, the stack and back
Proven UX design tools to get to the new needs of users, and how to think about exploiting new technologies
A brief history of design; how Swiss Modernism is what we mean by flat today
Designing by zones; touch accuracy and touch preference regions are not what you think
How to conquer Blank Page Syndrome by designing interfaces using mobile OS navigation patterns
The overlap between technology and use, including how people use different devices in different contexts at different times of the day
Design considerations unique to mobile, including features and sensors that aren’t available on desktop applications
Problems of poor connectivity, and how to plan for them; it’s not just “airplane mode”
How to create task flows that account for the user and the system all as one
Everything we design and build exists as a part of an ecosystem, the physical and digital environment
in which the user perceives and uses it. Though we should always have been designing like this, your
connected city, home and wearable devices give us an excuse to think specifically about the use and
technology to make it work best.
This session will discuss and demonstrate how to use proven UX design tools to get to the new needs
of users, and how to think about exploiting new technologies.
Participants will work as teams to create new product ideas, and develop them into workable services
by using technology and considering the user, their needs, and their environment.
Presented at UXPA-China UserFriendly 2016 in Suzhou, 17 November 2016.
Today’s world is full of open, and airy, beautiful, tediously identical, and unusable designs. Trends shouldn’t be taken too far, and we can easily make modern interfaces that work. But being authentically digital doesn’t just mean removing gradients and woodgrains.
In this workshop we’ll discuss principles, define how to make interfaces that work for real people in the real world, and redesign design your website, mobile app or other interface how people expect their various devices to work for them.
Presented at UXPA-China UserFriendly 2016 in Suzhou, 19 November 2016.
Phones Aren’t Flat: Designing for People, Data & EcosystemsSteven Hoober
A session at Society for Technical Communication (STC) Summit 2015
Tuesday 23rd June, 2015 9:45am to 10:30am
We like to think phones are flat slabs of glass our users touch, but it's not entirely true. Everything we design and build exists as a part of an ecosystem, the physical and digital environment in which the user perceives and uses it. Though we should always have been designing like this, multi-screening, smart homes and wearable devices give us an excuse to think specifically about the real ways people work. We'll discuss how to use technology to build products and services—not just apps and websites—for your business and users.
We will apply this with a brief exercise, so bring along a current or recently-completed project, or a favorite (or least favorite) tool you use day to day to work on.
Presented at MoDevUX on 23 March 2015
Everything we design and build exists as a part of an ecosystem, the physical and digital environment in which the user perceives and uses it. Though we should always have been designing like this, the ubiquity of mobile smart devices, connected cities, smart homes and the flood of wearables give us an excuse to think specifically about the real use cases and how to pick the right technology to meet opportunities for your organization and your users.
In this 3-hour workshop, we will discuss how to use existing, well-proven UX design tools and methods to get to the new needs of users, and how to think about exploiting new technologies in the best possible way. Participants will work together to design connected digital products through a series of engaging team exercises.
Fingers, Thumbs & People: Designing for the way your users really hold and t...Steven Hoober
For the newest version of this presentation, always go to: 4ourth.com/tppt
For the latest video version, see: 4ourth.com/tvid
Summary in text and all the linked articles, research and references are at: 4ourth.com/Touch
We are finally starting to think about how touchscreen devices really work, and design proper sized targets, think about touch as different from mouse selection, and to create common gesture libraries.
But despite this we still forget the user. Fingers and thumbs take up space, and cover the screen. Corners of screens have different accuracy than the center. It's time to re-evaluate what we think we know.
Steven reviews his ongoing research into how people actually interact with mobile devices, presents some new ideas on how we can design to avoid errors and take advantage of this new knowledge, and leaves you with 10 (relatively) simple steps to improve your touchscreen designs tomorrow.
How People Really Hold and Touch (their Phones)Steven Hoober
For the newest version of this presentation, always go to: 4ourth.com/tppt
For the latest video version, see: 4ourth.com/tvid
Presented at ConveyUX in Seattle, 7 Feb 2014
For the newest version of this presentation, always go to: 4ourth.com/tppt
For the latest video version, see: 4ourth.com/tvid
We are finally starting to think about how touchscreen devices really work, and design proper sized targets, think about touch as different from mouse selection, and to create common gesture libraries.
But despite this we still forget the user. Fingers and thumbs take up space, and cover the screen. Corners of screens have different accuracy than the center. It's time to re-evaluate what we think we know.
Steven reviews his ongoing research into how people actually interact with mobile devices, presents some new ideas on how we can design to avoid errors and take advantage of this new knowledge, and leaves you with 10 (relatively) simple steps to improve your touchscreen designs tomorrow.
Presented at ConveyUX in Seattle, 7 Feb 2014
There is a gap between the most discussed and trendy practices in design, and the way many UX professional do their work. Sketching in the browser is fine for those who only design websites (and have a coding background) but what about apps, messaging, services and systems?
In this workshop Steven will outline some of the basic principles of good tools, and demonstrate with simple hands-on exercises how to use your existing software, and other simple techniques to design for multiple screen sizes, multiple contexts and every platform.
You will learn:
- How to consider scale, and really understand portability and touch.
- Design with adaptive and responsive needs in mind.
- Specifying design, so UX speaks the language of implementation.
- Service and systems design techniques.
- Quick techniques to assure that your designs will work in context.
Originally Presented at Mobile Trends 2014 in Krakow, Poland on 16 January 2014
Almost all mobile apps fail to make back even their development costs. Add user-centric tactics and principles to help you understand users and their needs, and validate your ideas before you spend the time.
Entrepreneurial User Experience: Improving your products on a shoestringSteven Hoober
Presented 6 & 8 January, 2013 at Kauffman Labs, Kansas City, Missouri
Many big, successful companies hire User Experience experts to help analyze and design the system from the user's point of view, and assure their users can use their digital products. But assuming you can't hire one of those yet, Steven Hoober will teach you a little about how to embed the principles of UX into everything you do, every day, and how to improve tasks you are already doing to better guarantee the right outcomes.
There will be a focus on mobile and multi-channel experiences, but the principles willapply to any digital platform. Whether you are trying to just improve the website for your product, or create an all-new, all-digital experience, come — and bring your whole team — to put these principles into practice.
Jan 6th, 6pm-8pm
What is UX, why it's not just colors and fonts, and why designing for experience matters.
Understanding your audience, their goals, and yours.
Ecosystem design. A website is not a digital strategy: finding what your experience strategy is.
Jan 8th, 6pm-8pm
Formalizing baseline analysis with heuristic evaluations.
Tactics for discount usability testing in a multi-device world.
What you should bring:
Paper Ticket for the class
Something to work on. I will provide you with a fake project for the exercises, but if you are willing to let others see your idea, or some subset or faked version of it, then go ahead.
Your whole team. We will mix and match and you can meet new people, but bring everyone in your company or department if they have the time. If you want, your actual team can be a workshop team so you get used to the tactics being taught.
Presented 12 December 2013 at MoDevEast13
We are finally starting to think about how touchscreen devices really work, and design proper sized targets, think about touch as different from mouse selection, and to create common gesture libraries.
But despite this we still forget the user. Fingers and thumbs take up space, and cover the screen. Corners of screens have different accuracy than the center. It's time to re-evaluate what we think we know.
Steven will review the current state of research on how people actually interact with mobile devices, present some new alternative ideas on how we can design to avoid errors and take advantage of this knowledge, and review work you bring so we can all come up with ways to improve real world sites and apps today.
Mobile Design: Adding Mobile to Your Learning EcosystemSteven Hoober
Presented at DevLearn 2013, 24 October 2013, Las Vegas
Every platform offers unique challenges and opportunities. As mobile becomes the preferred platform, you have to address what makes it work well to assure success, satisfaction, and maybe delight. And it’s a lot more than size and touch. Mobile and desktop are very different in their principles and in the way people use them. Learn about the pitfalls and fallacies of designing for mobile and multi-platform, multi-user experiences.
How People Really Hold & Touch (their phones)Steven Hoober
Despite decades of research and years of carrying a touchscreen mobile handset around, there’s a lot of myth, disinformation, and half-truths about how touchscreens work, how users actually interact with touch devices, and how best to design for touch.
Participants in this session will get research findings and other data in order to clarify and set aside misunderstandings about user behavior and touchscreen technologies. You’ll learn the different ways and types of interactions for touch devices that will give you a solid base of knowledge you will then use to review how behavior and interaction can influence design patterns and design choices.
The Trouble with All Those Boxes: Designing for Ecosystems Instead of ScreensSteven Hoober
The desktop web has all but ruined the practice of interaction design and information architecture by the assumptions about technology and user attention, and a rigid adherence to page-based design. Mobile is different and is exposing these problems more than any other digital system. We cannot gloss over bad design anymore because it can make or break your whole organization. Many organizations, even if they address the design or user experience head on, are built to work on the desktop Web so they are having trouble really embracing mobile at the tactical level, even if their leaders set goals and objectives to do so.
During this session, participants will discuss the pitfalls and fallacies of designing for mobile and multi-platforms. You’ll learn principles and tactics for building multi-user, multi-platform experiences and you’ll learn by attempting to improve an example project. This will give guidelines for how to meet user goals, needs, and expectations in all your platforms.
In this session, you will learn:
How to recognize and avoid pitfalls in your project development, UX design, and development practices
To design your digital products as universal, extensible services and ecosystems
The principles of resilience design, and how to design robust systems that function and satisfy even when mistakes occur
How to branch design to address platform-specific features, capabilities, and expectations
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
Transcript: Selling digital books in 2024: Insights from industry leaders - T...BookNet Canada
The publishing industry has been selling digital audiobooks and ebooks for over a decade and has found its groove. What’s changed? What has stayed the same? Where do we go from here? Join a group of leading sales peers from across the industry for a conversation about the lessons learned since the popularization of digital books, best practices, digital book supply chain management, and more.
Link to video recording: https://bnctechforum.ca/sessions/selling-digital-books-in-2024-insights-from-industry-leaders/
Presented by BookNet Canada on May 28, 2024, with support from the Department of Canadian Heritage.
Neuro-symbolic is not enough, we need neuro-*semantic*Frank van Harmelen
Neuro-symbolic (NeSy) AI is on the rise. However, simply machine learning on just any symbolic structure is not sufficient to really harvest the gains of NeSy. These will only be gained when the symbolic structures have an actual semantics. I give an operational definition of semantics as “predictable inference”.
All of this illustrated with link prediction over knowledge graphs, but the argument is general.
Securing your Kubernetes cluster_ a step-by-step guide to success !KatiaHIMEUR1
Today, after several years of existence, an extremely active community and an ultra-dynamic ecosystem, Kubernetes has established itself as the de facto standard in container orchestration. Thanks to a wide range of managed services, it has never been so easy to set up a ready-to-use Kubernetes cluster.
However, this ease of use means that the subject of security in Kubernetes is often left for later, or even neglected. This exposes companies to significant risks.
In this talk, I'll show you step-by-step how to secure your Kubernetes cluster for greater peace of mind and reliability.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
Key Trends Shaping the Future of Infrastructure.pdfCheryl Hung
Keynote at DIGIT West Expo, Glasgow on 29 May 2024.
Cheryl Hung, ochery.com
Sr Director, Infrastructure Ecosystem, Arm.
The key trends across hardware, cloud and open-source; exploring how these areas are likely to mature and develop over the short and long-term, and then considering how organisations can position themselves to adapt and thrive.
7. We’ll just…
• Use a “standard” form.
• Put it in a Pop-up.
• Add a CAPTCHA.
• Make them fill in the email twice.
• Add a help page to explain it.
Or you say…
• Let’s make it look like iTunes.
• Just like the iPhone’s [anything].
• What is [the competition] doing?
• What would Amazon do?
• You can’t fight best practice.
7
9. Design methodologies to success
• Understand the problem, and write it down
• Leverage your team
• No idea is worthy
• Your competitors are not wizards
• Embrace your constraints
• Collaborate
• Seek outside input
9
10. Understand the problem
Put the markers down. First time, every
time, talk to the customer, their
workers, the users.
They know more about their business
than you do. Ask them about it.
10
13. Studio methods
• 100 thumbnails
• Moodboard
• Sketch
• Model
• Co-design
• Talk-aloud
• Scissors and tape
• Gesture and act
13
14. No idea is worthy
Don’t do a little dance for your great idea. I
promise it has flaws.
Consider components individually, and look
for flaws.
14
15. There are no design wizards
Inspiration is fine. Copying is pointless.
Follow your process to find the right answer for your
business, and the current world.
15
16. Embrace your constraints
Brainstorming doesn’t work.
Working within your constraints adds
focus to any design session and
fosters ideas.
16
17. Collaborate
Don’t just work together, collaborate.
Use everyone’s skill, and knowledge, to find
the best solution.
17
18. Seek outside input
Systems, process, and business knowledge is
held by specialists you won’t see.
Unless you go looking.
18
Naturally, O’Reilly is hosting this presentation because I wrote this book for them. But also because I had more to say. While writing it, I essentially raised more questions than I feel I answered.While it’s a pattern book, I am not entirely comfortable with a pattern-centric design methodology, such that I actually wrote a little on this very topic in the introduction for the book.
There are many, many online pattern libraries, which are effectively showcases of shiny design. But patterns have a lot more going for them. And you have to understand these features to understand how to use them.Patterns are:Universal – They apply equally to everything possible. Mobile patterns are surprisingly similar to desktop patterns. And overlap massively with kiosks, TVs, tablets, game consoles, etc.Generalized – Specific implementations are not useful as examples, as their specifics are not yours. You need to understand what is part of the pattern, and what is not.Organized – Very often, there are multiple choices. Without good structure, indexing and cross-referencing, you don’t know what the options to choose from are.Explained – Just like in your design specifications, pictures aren’t enough. You need to know what the pattern does, and why it does this. You need to be able to find the reasons (rooted in cognitive psychology, or human physiology) behind each one. Without the reasoning, it’s just a guess.Best practices – Very simply, never just common practice. Do not assume a common practice is good until you prove it. But patterns are also…
…mis-understood. Obviously, this is not a key attribute of patterns that we want to have. But it’s true. Patterns are mis-understood, and therefore mis-used:Design solutions are Reactionary and solve for point problems, instead of considering the entire system.Even when larger solutions are found, they are Single view: or only for one screen, one device or one platform.The first satisfactory solution is accepted, and rapidly becomes entrenched. There should always be incentives to keep working, to find the best possible solution.There is likewise no incentive to find unique, interesting or differentiable solutions. The Rote solution, or the published pattern, is used without modification (another reason I don’t like to give examples).Patterns that do consider solutions generally lead to excessively High-level design, with no reasoning (or an incomprehensible one). VizDs and developers won’t understand what part is important so will modify it and miss the point. I tend to derisively call all of this the “heuristic solution.” It’s not /bad/ per se, in fact the reason we’ve been getting away with it for years is that it checks all the boxes, but it’s not inspired, and is never /truly/ satisfactory. And I mean “satisfactory.” It might even pass CSAT measures, and show improvement. But it levels off and you never get up to that really top-tier, no matter what you do.
Let’s try an example on for size. Very regularly, in discussions on design forums, LinkedIn groups and the like, someone will ask for input on a solution. And far too many responses offer up “best practices.” For example, just a couple weeks ago, there was this question involving three options and defaults and labeling. Everyone says, oh, no not a pulldown. But answers involve: “users understand radio buttons” and “why do anything but best practice?”Well, look at it more seriously. This solution offers: Two clicks when it’s one action only. Click a radio, then the Save button.Research shows that real users do NOT understand the difference between radios and checks.And, it also shows that understandings of details like this go out the window when users change contexts. No one understands form elements when on a kiosk, for example.It’s hard to call this a “best practice” anymore, with those answers. So, what else could you do here?
A simple answer for something like this is to simply provide the buttons directly. This, to me, is a best practice, but to many it’s thinking outside the box. And, I’ll admit, this example is mine. I went with the radios, and let people spend an extra click and have the possibility of indication and selection overlap, all for consistency and ease of implementation. I now think it was the wrong choice and this would have been better. For your designs to move from acceptable to exceptional, you need to provide yourself and your organization an atmosphere in which new ideas can be discovered, and fostered.
That was just one, simple example. If you find yourself (or your team) reaching out to simply copy “standard” implementations, or copy existing, well-known products, stop and think about it. Do you want your product to look like everyone else’s? Isn’t differentiation key?And, how do you know it’s the right solution for YOUR situation, and your users? I mean, it might be good. But you have to know. You have to prove it first.
The most important thing, by far, is to be aware of what you are doing. At any step, be able to explain to yourself, to your team and to your bosses what you are doing. And why. If you do that, it’s hard to go wrong with any design decision. (It also helps get rid of disagreements, because there’s less opinion).
But, I’ll make it easy on you by also giving a bunch of specific tactics you can work towards.
Before even starting to design anything, ask questions. Perform user interviews, ask the business what they want, and gather any other information about current and expected usage you can. Develop measurable objectives, stick to them during design, and be sure to measure after it launches. Without feedback, you cannot learn.Try not to draw. This is hard to do, for me at least, but sketching concepts early will tend to lock you into that thinking. You might be on the wrong track. Keep away from this, and seek to understand the problem space first. If you are wondering, this is a project I did for Hallmark, where one of the first things we did was have them to the office for two full days of interviews and data gathering, kicked off with a visit to a store, to really understand their current processes, needs, and gaps.
Then, write down what you came up with.I like to make brief, clear documents like:Problem StatementsProduct VisionValue StatementsDesign ObjectivesDesign PrinciplesDesign GoalsAnd then, once everyone has agreed to them, I put them on the wall. Just like you may have seen Personas go up, so everyone can refer to them, I like to print these out nice and big and stick them on the wall of the team room, or over every pod. For designers, product owners, and developers.
The best ideas come from individuals, or small teams, working independently. To get the most good, unique ideas, task those individuals or small teams to develop quick, independent designs and regularly share and regroup, iterating to a final solution.Manage your teams to make sure they work well together, and keep working as a team, not as individuals.
A number of these processes are what I call “Studio Methods,” as I learned how to apply them in Design School studio classes, which always threw together groups of students to come up with a single solution. Which solution works depends on you, your team, the project, the environment you work in, etc. Here’s a few key ones:100 thumbnails – The visual side of brainstorming, by yourself, sorta. Stretch your limits by forcing a slightly-impossible number of variations. If you have three ideas, and cannot think of a fourth, insist you make 10 more. Crazy or not, they get your brain working. One may be brilliant.Moodboard – Grab not so much good ideas, as good thoughts. From non-competitive industries. From advertising, and non interactive media. If they inspire you, specific to the project, stick them on the wall. Sketch – Draw. Whatever you do, draw the designs. Rapidly. Get the ideas down. Model – The 3D version of a sketch. For mobiles, this can be key. Even if you aren’t building hardware, tape designs to old handsets, or blocks of wood, or whatever. It matters. Co-design – At least occasionally, bring everyone together, as shown, and put up paper or give them whiteboard markers. Everyone can draw at more or less the same time. Talk-aloud – Remember when I said you should be able to explain your reasoning? Well, the next step is to explain your idea WITH the reason. We need to add buttons SO the user can selection options BECAUSE they are easy to read, and easy to use. Scissors and tape – Be ready to cut apart printouts of your designs, and tape them back together, especially as a team exercise. More on this next. Gesture and act – Even if not in the right environment, even if the device is a tape dispenser, acting out actions can help explain or help you understand the end user.
Many of these involve individuals working independently. So, everyone comes back with ideas and you review them as a group. Then you evaluate not complete designs, but each component. How does it fit into the overall concept. Assign components that are similar to other designs, so they are combined in interesting ways, and people get outside their comfort zones. When working with design concepts, whether evaluating competitor sites, or with the design teams above -- remember to approach the design from a modular point of view, and evaluate the suitability of each element to the overall goals, and process. Do not just accept (or reject) whole designs.Even with one idea, whether just trying to determine if the idea is good yourself, doing an eval or whatever, do not fall in love with the idea so much that you:1) Look at it as a whole2) Miss the flaws.Deconstruct it, to understand what it is, what it is made of (patterns, components!) and then how it might NOT work. Deconstruct means: feel free to break out the scissors and tape. Or erase and scribble and draw lots of arrows on the whiteboard. This can be a challenge to your brain, since we like winners and losers. But stretch yourself and you’ll be surprised.
I’ve already sorta said this, when I keep telling you not to clone screenshots, but it can go deeper. Your competitors and forefathers do not have the magic formula. Some just have better cultures of design.Some just lucked into it. When you are required to look at the competition, or the great previous-generation ideas, recognize that business models, customers, and goals are not the same over here, or in this day and age. Inspiration is fine – inspiration is to be encouraged -- but use good process to find the right answer.How many of you carry a Walkman phone? Of course, none. But for /years/ after the iPod came out, every pundit was sure Sony would come and crush the market.Didn’t happen, because Sony (apparently) builds good products, not good ecosystems. It seems no one was able to turn their tape player era devices into the digital music era.
Brainstorming is for suckers: As we learned it in Grade School, it doesn’t work. Boosters will say it does, and the counter studies aren’t doing it right. To which I say: no one does it right, such that I never want to call it “brainstorming.”There are bad ideas.There are ideas that you shouldn’t even consider, as they are out of scope.Instead, I like to set preconditions and say Embrace your Constraints.Whether in concepting exercises, workshops or as individual designers, only work within the domain, set preconditions, and remind everyone that the goals and objectives define the desired end state.However, I have to warn you that the constraints need to be well-defined. They should be written down somewhere early on, while you are working on the Design Objectives. Sometimes, there are a lot of them. Here, for example, is a chart of desired features by persona, which was used to set the scope. THEN, after a couple weeks of research and analysis, we got into design solutions for these problems.
(I have a 10,000 character essay on collaboration, which you can find on my blog. So this is necessarily a summary. If collaboration eludes you, or like I was, you get blamed for being not collaborative, check it out.)Design teams will, ideally, have a variety of individual skillsets, or at least multiple individuals, each with their own background and opinions. Use the individual skills of the team members to find solutions and explore concepts.Some other key attributes of good collaboration have been outlined above. Be a conscious designer, so you can discuss your ideas, or defend them. And not because you like it; defend only what you know to be true from experience.Collaboration can be very informal. When you get into it, you will start asking advice for even simple behaviors and problems. This sort of activity is why some people like open-plan offices. Just turn around and ask the team.
Beyond collaboration, get input from people outside the design team. This is especially good in big places that have been around for decades, or centuries.Not everyone has all knowledge of the arbitrarily complex systems we work on all too much, so cross-functional collaboration can have great value in confirming concepts, getting input on the viability of concepts, and discovering tangential solutions already considered, or in progress somewhere else in the organization.This is not just useful for the gathering of information, which you should do up front, but to confirm that your design works. Often, those same people can add more value after they see what you mean. “Oh, you are using that information. Have you talked to these guys about their project in the stores?” etc. Do what it takes to get them there. If you have to, feed them.
At each step of the process, you should be referring to the Design Principles, Design Objectives, Project Goals, Personas and whatever else you determined and set at the beginning of the effort. I have put this here as one step, at the end, but ideally you are doing this all along.Each working team (or here, the team room where everyone lives) has key documents up on the wall for easy reference. And, it falls back to some of the Studio Methods. When you come up with a solution, don’t just explain it as part of the IA, or the system, but how it fits into these principles. Say you have an objective of Trust, and have two design options on the table (which meet all other objectives broadly equally): the one that can more clearly be said to engender Trust wins. Every time.On the other hand, maybe your solution is brilliantly beautiful, but violates the objective of “no popups.” Always be open to re-evaluating the objectives and principles. These are essentially a hypothesis, and you haven’t proven it yet. Consider other solutions. This is NOT to say that you can just ignore the objectives. You must always be conscious and deliberate. If you change an objective, everyone has to buy in and sign off, and you need to go back and evaluate the whole project for impacts of this change. Changing your point of view like this can result in the best work you’ve done, but it’s not trivial.
If you are designing products for end users, then at some point you want to make sure you get their feedback. Real user data is key to this, so at some point you need to gather it. And before I get to that, I want to mention that all data is good. I consider user information to include:AnalyticsCustomer SatisfactionLab studiesMarketing and needs researchCall center ratesSite feedbackYes, some you have to be careful with, and most of these require the product to be out in the wild. So, when still designing it, how do you get past evaluative techniques and make sure it’s something people want to use? Well, ask them. I am not going to get deeply into research, because it is a big field and there are many experts and other good presentations on the topic. Look it up. But a lot of people are only familiar with research taking lots of money or time. I have gotten plenty of good results from very cheap research in just a few days. Paper Prototypes – At their core, as shown here. The design is drawn on paper (here, at scale, with a handset frame around it). There’s a moderator to ask questions as usual, and another person (who usually doesn’t talk) is “the computer.” They move bits of paper around based on user actions. If a pop-up appears, they paste the “pop-”up piece of paper on top of the frame. The paper can even be hand-drawn, so this can be very cheap and quick to run. Similar results can be found with other types of quick-and-dirty prototypes. If you need to test an interaction, make it up in some digital tool, but don’t worry about making it very good or complete. Friends and family – Who do you use for these studies? Well, whoever you can get. If it’s hard to recruit, use friends and family. Or co-workers. But not those who have worked on the project. Put up a poster or a note on the corporate intranet, and let people come to the cafeteria to give feedback on the new product. Just like a big lab test, but quick and cheap. Ethnography – Remember people use products in specific environments. A call center worker uses a desktop computer in a very different environment and manner than you do at home. If possible, see them in their real work space. Or, ask people to track their daily use, or try out some version of the product on their own if you can make it work for even one user at a time. It can be expensive and difficult to follow people around, so let them take photos, or videos, or write in a diary how they use the product. Or how they would use a product you’ve shown off in the lab. This, then, becomes as valid a bunch of feedback as anything you’ve gotten before from the team. As I mentioned on the previous slide, whenever you get more valid input, reconsider everything and make sure that your design is on track, and your objectives are true.
So, once you have done that, preferably a few iterations of it, now you have a great design settled on, and bought into, and not just by the business owner, but by everyone in the whole place, hopefully.And now the gulf of execution. No, not Don Norman’s gap between stimulus and understanding, but the difference between what you give design and what comes out of the development team.
Questions?
Of course, I also talk about design topics as well as the patterns in the book Designing Mobile Interfaces.Be sure to visit 4ourth.com to read it online, and get updates, especially to the design and test resource lists. And, please add to the discussion if you have other information. This presentation is already up on Slideshare, so you can download it whenever you want. But now, what questions do you have today?