Thoughts, ramblings and experiments in making sense of a complex Future

via JohnnyHolland

Great interaction design is a delicious soup. You boil a variety of different ingredients and spices in the right proportion,  and voila – pure bliss! Unlike other branches of design, however,  it’s extremely hard to write a recipe for interaction design. By its very nature, the interaction design process needs to be fluid and dynamic.

Interaction design tingles the complete experience over time. It tastes most satisfying in conditions when multifaceted flavors and ingredients are brought together. The bigger the challenges are —the more diverse and mixed the ingredients need to be. This beautiful paradox sits at the heart of the interaction design menu, very differently from other design cuisines.

During my time as a Master’s degree student in Interaction Design at Umeå (Sweden), I often found our group repeatedly doing the following:

• Obsessing with finding the ‘perfect’ solution to a problem.
• Frequently questioning the value of having mixed, diverse groups of professionals studying Interaction Design together. Were frustrating debates stemming from disparate backgrounds and differences of opinion really the most efficient way to designing interactions?

I haven’t found ’the perfect solution’ yet, but I do believe the process is a lot more interesting. Having experienced the inherent value of a multifaceted approach professionally, I believe that mastery in the interaction design process lies in perfecting those moments when the room is packed with people who won’t share your views and probably don’t have your skills.

Mastering the science of ‘We, not I’.

The quest for perfection and the myth of genius are timeless aspirations that meet with sporadic and rare success. Genius chefs (like genius designers) never seem to be able to cook the same dish twice.  Some modern authors, such as Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers: The Story of Success, debunk the notion of genius altogether. According to Gladwell, even geniuses like Mozart, The Beatles and Bill Gates had more than 10,000 hours of practice at doing what they did—iteratively—constantly improving their craft while focused on process. I believe that a mastery of interaction design process does not rest in divine inspiration and confined sketching (read: genius!). The key probably rests in learning to churn together – a pool of motley professions, backgrounds, skills and interests. Interaction design is a team-sport at its most intense, meaningful climax, and we need to change the way we train for this sport. We need to rearrange our kitchen in order to cook this soup – and we need to do it often, depending on what we’re cooking.

The big hurdle – we’re conditioned to think and act as individuals, not as groups. Could this be the un-learning needed in order to be able to synthesize truly well-rounded experiences?

As a former architect, the process of design was inevitably intensely personal. My colleagues in architecture were all inspired by the singular genius of Corbusier, van der Rohe and Gehry. Moments of solitary and inspired sketching were thought to be the catalysts for the ‘eureka’ moment. Graphic and product design Masters of that era worked in much the same way. Processes in interaction design, on the other hand, seemed to work in quite stark opposites. After migrating to interaction design, students from very different backgrounds were thrown amidst multifaceted peer groups—something many struggled to cope with. A group of motley backgrounds, each with their own stubborn opinions, conflicting ideas, dissimilar skills oft resulted in frustrated groups and heated differences of opinion during projects. Many were left questioning the value and efficiency of such a process. Product and transportation design classmates seldom faced this problem. They were still relatively blissful in the peaceful confines of their work-spaces, diligently pursuing that perfect sketch.

Wouldn’t too many cooks in the interaction design kitchen spoil the broth?

Read more HERE

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I’ve recently been working a lot using the Agile method – a method used alot in the software development World, but something that has immense value for us to use as Interaction Designers.

I’m sure alot of my colleagues/alumni are now experiencing this method wherever you are in the World. Please feel free to add to this post.

Johnny Holland recently posted an amazing article titled ‘ How UCD and Agile can live together’ where a lot of the definitions are given. I think it would be very interesting for us to read and try to implement this method more into how we approach projects – especially those in teams. Several projects of our’s are done in teams, with different backgrounds – experience levels, skills and roles.

Excerpts from the amazing Johnny Holland blog:

User Centered Design is the methodology by which you design a holistic product while considering the needs of stakeholders and users. Agile Development is a programming methodology and philosophy intended to overcome the challenges of the waterfall development process and to deliver clean and functional code. How can these two methodologies come together?

Framework

In order to have this discussion, I would like to define a few terms as they will be referred to in this article. These are by no means absolute definitions, but in writing this article and soliciting feedback from practitioners I thought it prudent to define what I do (and don’t) mean by certain terms for the sake of the article.

• Agile Philosophy: the tactical, iterative and transparent perspective on a project engaging all stakeholders and members of a project team. The ultimate goal is a clean and functional product built through transparency and accountability;
• Agile Method: also referred to as scrum, the actual development process including all the hard deliverables including user stories, backlog, burndown charts and all the other tangible by products of an agile team;
• User Centered Design, The iterative strategy where design and research practitioners involve stakeholders and users to gain a cohesive view of a project and to empathize with users. The ultimate goal is a cohesive vision and product definition backed with qualitative and quantitative findings;
• User Experience, or IxD, or any other of dozens of titles: the actual process of qualitative and quantitative research, concept validation, and design. The end deliverables include system visualizations, information architecture, and design spec’s.

The picture above is from my flickr-stream and was taken during one of the projects to show the all important ‘Scrum-board’ where time and responsibilities were mapped.

You can read more about the Scrum method and order your own FREE copy here. (highly recommended!)

I hope to blog in greater detail about my experiences with this method in the near Future.

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