Why is finding direction (or strategy) so rare, so difficult? One reason is that creating the strategy is different from execution.
You have to stop and take time to find the direction. You can’t run while you’re reading the map.
And this is the potential problem with popular methods such as:
• iterative design
• rapid prototyping
• agile development
…which are great and all, except when there’s no well-thought-out direction to go in.
So be forewarned – it’s hard to be a strategist. People prefer action. “Ready-fire-aim” sounds so much more exciting and appealing. “Do something!” they say – and it can be hard to sit down and say hey, let’s take at least a couple of days to think about who our customers are and talk to them about what they need.
Speaking with the customers refines and narrows the direction. After all you are fulfilling their needs.
“Designing well is not easy. The manufacturer wants something that can be produced economically. The store wants something that will be attractive to its customers. The purchaser has several demands. In the store, the purchaser focuses on price and appearance, and perhaps on prestige value. At home, the same person will pay more attention to functionality and usability. The repair service cares about maintainability: How easy is the device to take apart, diagnose, and service:? The needs of those concerned are different and often conflict. Nonetheless, the designer may be able to
satisfy everyone.”
Inventor, entrepreneur and visionary Ray Kurzweil explains in abundant, grounded detail why, by the 2020s, we will have reverse-engineered the human brain and nanobots will be operating your consciousness. Filmed in 2005, this is a little dated (his 2010 predictions seem a little optimistic). But you still can’t help be blown away by the audacity of his vision. He believes we’re heading for a radical merging of humanity and technology. What do you think?
We try so hard to please our client(s) that we fail to do what would be truly pleasing. That includes also giving our client critical feedback.
The challenge is to be of service without becoming servile. We shouldn’t elevate any customer to the role of superior being, but treat each with human respect.
The key to becoming a stellar service provider lies in making only responsible commitments. This requires not simply being knowledgeable about what must be done but “no-legible” about how preferences resolve into satisfying results. We must know how and when to say, “No,” because no one can know what will finally emerge as best. Client and designer will have to discover what constitutes best, and this always means stumbling through some uncomfortable territory together.
It’s crazy how much more satisfying to it is when you are able to present an even better solution to the problem they were really hoping for when they were offering suggestions or ideas.
Of course you’ve heard this Henry Ford quote a hundred times:
“If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.”
Or Tom Kelley’s (IDEO’s general manager) translation of that:
“Customers don’t envision the future, they inform the present.”
When ignoring an experienced and talented designer, your organization will only waste more dollars “trying out” everyone’s ideas, testing what’s been tested, ad nauseum, etc.
As far as handling feedback, I don’t think it’s the designer’s responsibility to manage feedback process. Typically, a designer is hit with competing and often conflicting feedback from every direction– an overwhelming experience that often includes a healthy dosage of office politicking. The design team manager (or any manager) should set rules for unsolicited feedback. I think designers should not be forced to balance conflicting executive feedback.
Design input is always valuable and fresh eyes often can see overlooked design weaknesses, but a business/client should understand years of design experience is worth something.
Being a good designer is not only a matter of creating great work, but being able to work with various stakeholders to successfully deliver the project.
This 10 web design rules that you can break article, made me realize that “Rules you should break” or “Standards you shouldn’t follow” articles appeal to everyone rebel side. Some of you guys may wonder what Jakob Nielsen would say to “Breaking the rules is okay when a design calls for it”.
I think rules #4 “Make your site’s goal obvious”, #5 “Navigation should be easy to figure out”, #7 “Don’t put animation in the way of your content” and #9 “Don’t have a splash/landing page” can be broken for personal portfolio or some entertainment sites, where a more creative approach might be appropriate, but not so much for e-commerce, news or corporate sites.
#6 “Use different colors for the text and background” should be “Use Contrast between Text and Background”, not different colors. Most of the examples here use variations of the base color, and use contrast to make the text readable, just like it supposed to be.
#8 “Stick to web-safe fonts”: I’m getting into using Cufon and Typeface.js (I used it for 2 projects), they offer a great solution in terms of progressive enhancement (better than sIFR), and think this is one area where the old rules no longer apply.
I also liked the tables joke and the tone it sets to encourage designers not to be so serious all the time!
As we dealt and continue dealing with the fallout from so many executives making such terrible decisions, the simplest advice seems the most appropriate. Figure out what you care about and devote yourself to that purpose. Stay the course, even when your colleagues wander off course. And never forget that if something sounds too good to be true—from no-money-down-mortgages to instant riches with a hedge fund—it probably is. “When you run with the pack, what you generally see are other people’s backsides,” Arkadi Kuhlmann says. “We know why we’re here, and it’s not to copy other people’s bad ideas. Every person who tries to do real innovation is going to be tempted by money, greed, acceptance, being in the middle of the action”.
Sometimes, the most important form of leadership is resisting an innovation that takes hold in your field when that innovation, no matter how popular with your rivals, is at odds with your long-term point of view.
The documentary “HOME” shows that, over the past few decades, the mankind has interfered with the balance established on the planet for the last four billion years. Furthermore, the mankind has only ten years left to reverse this situation.
The World Environment Day celebrated on June 5th (today!) was chosen as the most symbolic date to simultaneously show it in more than 50 countries. The aim of the film is to reach the largest possible audience and to convince everybody of our individual and collective responsibilities before the planet.
As the dynamics of the Web 2.0 continue to evolve, we will see more and more consumers not only expecting, but demanding, to interact with companies and products. Corporate websites can sometimes be less than compelling… Perhaps a shift will come where corporate websites will become the forum for interaction rather than outside social networking sites…just a thought…
Do you see a shift at some point in the future where corporate websites will become arenas for that amount of dialog? Couldn’t it only be beneficial if that interaction was done on the corporate website? For example, rather than fans dialoguing on Facebook and commenting on the Wall there, do you see a point where a corporate website will have fan profiles and a corporate Wall? If so, do you think that would be detrimental to the company’s overall reach for exposure? It is interesting to see how social media forces the evolution of corporate behavior.
I personally love learning more about a company by hearing from its “fans” and consumers through social media rather than having a company website tell me who they are. On facebook, there are many ways to tell that story about your brand or company.
I noticed that VW ran a commercial with their facebook.com/vwwebsite on the bottom right of that commercial. That was awesome!
Making your interface smaller, hiding advanced functionality and taking out the obvious is the path to a simpler interface. Along this path you’ll face many obstacles. For every feature you hide or take away, there will be people who complain and demand that you bring it back. But every one of your users has different needs and uses your web app or website in a different way. If you listen to all the feature requests and needs, and go as far as addressing and implementing them all, you’re unlikely to arrive at the zenith of software design.
For those looking for some base concepts on the idea of simplicity, here are John Maeda’s Laws of Simplicity:
Reduce – The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction
Organize – Organization makes a system of many appear fewer
Time - Savings in time feel like simplicity
Learn – Knowledge makes everything simpler
Differences – Simplicity and complexity need each other
Context – What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral
Emotion – More emotions are better than less
Trust – In simplicity we trust
Failure – Some things can never be made simple
The One – Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful
