designineffect

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Design Thinking – Org wide and Not Exclusive to 'Designers'

Design Thinking – Org wide and Not Exclusive to ‘Designers’

Est. Reading time: 10 min

Misnomer in the term itself

There’s a lot to a name or a label. In this case the term “Design Thinking” is misleading. Since it has the word ‘design’ in the term, many misunderstand that it’s a design device thus only designers are only good at it – it’s simply NOT TRUE.

In order for Design Thinkingto work at optimal capacity the whole org (every facet of…

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Vintage New York t-shirt design– any lacrosse fans out there? =)

https://www.tostadora.com/lacrosse/

[designineffect]

Asking “Why?” Always

As an external designer being introduced to a company– I’m met with company culture all the time and I study it first– here’s why. Just like people, companies have habits, some good, some self-defeating, it gets set it in its ways– just like we are as people, it’s in our nature as humans to “habituate”.

Designers who practice the “design thinking” discipline are inquisitive in nature, looking for…

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UX (User Experience) & Testing–Why Do It?

UX (User Experience) & Testing–Why Do It?

In the most simplest sense, UX in the web is ensuring websites and applications to be intuitive and easy for their customers to use; to continuously test every aspect of the company’s business with real customers to create a better “user experience”. Great user experiencebuilds brand loyalty, attracts more customers and generates more sales. A bad user experience means customers leave our…

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Reporting From The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference

Reporting From The CSUN Assistive Technology Conference

They say to follow your nose, and you’ll find what you’re looking for if you’re lucky. This time I did get “lucky” doing just that. In my short trip to San Diego it was supposed to be work-play where I’d do some networking and sightseeing of one of my favorite Californian cities. I took notice of this convention being held near where I was staying so I thought I’d check it out. It became a…

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Story-Telling: Its Impact & Reach

Story-Telling: Its Impact & Reach

People love stories– we all did as kids, even now as grown adults. The power of story-telling in all forms of media, and getting the right message across to sell an idea or even a political party, is a reality today. The below video clip (8 min) is a good overview on its reach & impact. Regardless of our  political views, when looking at the US elections (Past & present) objectively, it’s the…

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Gathering #DesignArtifacts for #UX similar to CSI? Tracing back to who & the why #UseCase #UserStories http://blog.kevinglee.net/index.php/2016/09/09/design-artifacts-gathering-is-similar-to-first-steps-in-csi-crime-scene-investigation/

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I’ve always had a soft spot for the simple and vintage curves

[designineffect]

Art meets Reality + Capitalism.

love the simple idea - mixing the pop culture, art, and reality in a simple stroke of entrepreneurial genius

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genius and so simple!

[designineffect]

User Behavior of Mob & Web Part 1

There are times that I feel I suffer from mild ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder), especially when I’m navigating through Chrome on my smart phone or browsing for something in my tablet or laptop. Does the following symptoms ring a bell? Be easily distracted, miss details, frequently switch from one activity to another, become bored easily, struggle to focus & follow instructions, etc. Many would say that this is a common behavior of users of digital devices or websites—I strongly agree. I’m not saying we suffer from ADD literally but let’s ponder on our own behaviors in using our personal devices for a moment. In our industry of design, why is this so important to be aware of? Does this affect our design choices during a project? Does it relate to our industry catch-phrase & philosophy of being User-centric & content-centric? Let’s review:

Why so hyper? What’s the rush?

Quickly checking costs of fights, or checking the box scores of a football game while we’re hailing a cab or meeting someone at the cafe—wouldn’t you say this is now a common reality for most people? We are definitely on the move when we connect to the net, which means less time, which means we’re giving it 3-4 seconds before we swipe to another site for what we are wanting to get that moment. Yes, we are hyper-impatient, we are target-specific, and we are ruthless in bouncing out and seek another source of content, no apologies required.

Reading? That’s soooooo last decade

We scan through the content when we’re connected and filter out relevant from the irrelevant quickly. When we do have the content we want, we still don’t read most things on the web-page. This is how we operate as we’re always on the move, constantly trigger-happy for that swipe or click off the site. We scan and keep scanning for more until need to jump to another task.

We get a pass 100% of the time- Blame it on society of the digital age

Call it a blessing or a curse, we are living in the age of digital consumption where we can pull rich data of almost anything quite easily when & wherever we are. We prefer Youtube over  terrestrial television, we seek & pull content on a daily basis. There are literally hordes and hordes of distractions with senseless content out there to filter through —to get what we are looking for. We are highly skillful at searching, bouncing from, and scanning for the content we want at that time and at the devices we want to view it from. Our ADD in the digital realm is widely accepted and continually enabled through a web of providers.

What does this all mean for design?

Design more than ever needs to make users feel in control, simple, fast, responsive to our behaviors. Allowing users to make mistakes, forget things, and be forgiving to fix the mistakes by themselves intuitively & easily would be a key success factor for our projects. As far as content goes, certainly it makes you think next time you want to sit down and write the next “Old Man & the Sea”. It needs to be catchy, sexy, funny, and quick & easy to digest —ok there will be exceptions to this as would be for everything. But I think being content-centric & user-centric comes with first understanding the User’s habits & behaviors. In this case, our chronic ADD conditions in the web have no cure in the near foreseeable future, nor do we want one.

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Brief - TOP LEVEL CLASSIFIED!

Every once in awhile you simply stop & marvel at some designs—I did exactly that on my recent trip to San Diego when coming face-to-face with this amazing piece of design & engineering called the A-12 Blackbird, the predecessor to the devastating Stealth Bomber.

The A-12’s design brief to the designers & engineers would’ve been unique if anyone got it dropped on their desks at work one morning:

Brief - TOP LEVEL CLASSIFIED!

Create an aircraft for stealth missions across the world, undetectable to enemy radar scans, which can fly as fast & as high as technology allows (as money is no issue, unlimited budget). Some key performance factors as per below:

100% stealth/cloaking mode is paramount

If in case of unfriendly / enemy encounter, the vessel must be able to out-fly gun-fire as well as missiles fired at it with pure speed

As an alternative mode of escape, fly as high into the stratosphere (orbit territory) to nullify the missiles fire at it

The vessel must be manned by at least 1 pilot

The vessel must be equipped to record & report back reconnaissance data from missions

In other words, build a speed devil & an elegant spy machine that can reach the past the skies and kiss the universe. My lord, and this is what the end-result of the project:

A-12 was the only aircraft in the world that was air-breathing which was capable of sustained speed of excess of Mac 3 at altitudes above 85,000 feet. Its turbo-RAM jets were capable of 32,000 lbs of thrust each, 98% of the aircraft was made of titanium (the strongest & lightest metal on earth), and capable of carrying more than 84,000 lbs. of fuel. And yes, it had just 1 pilot to reduce excess weight.

For me the A-12 is by far the coolest aircraft than its successors (past 30 years of service for the US military) such as the SR-71 or modern stealth aircrafts as they were designed for carrying bombs and are not as fast due to it. The A-12 was silent and a speed demon/spy. What is amazing is that it was constructed in the 1950s and was 28 years in secrecy before the world knew about its existence. Although the dozen A-12 today is on display in museums across the nation, Its true speed capabilities & altitude is the topic of many experts still as the fact still remains, CLASSIFIED.

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App Maps in UX design

What are app maps? Essentially they are the mobile app design's equivalent to web design's site maps. Just like a map helping a tourist orientate himself in a foreign city, the app map will serve as a key way for clients, project managers (PM), designers to "get on the same page" when transferring & sharing objectives -- they hit across objectives in business, UX, and marketing, etc. Just like a blue-print of a house, the app map will showcase all the key screens (as well as the transitional ones) but they show the User's journey within the product all in one glance. As for producers & PMs, an app map is the bible for digital projects. 

Sketch it out You won't need to be an artist or a designer to create one. Forget aesthetics or ornaments (throw out any interruptions of color & stylistic preferences for now). Business owners, clients, PMs, and producers can do this and should be leading this phase. Simple boxes and arrows, circles and more boxes with scribbles of notes are what's needed here. Objectives which are unique to each screen/box should be the focal point -- write them down , articulate in minimal usage of words. I've found that large pieces of plain paper (A3 size is my favorite) or a whiteboard works well. Business input is key here and many questions asked without getting stumped with the "how" as that comes later. Structure and pillars of what will hold up this product is discovered and mapped out here.

Keep it in 1 page Turning the rough sketches into a line-art is ideal here. PMs and producers commonly turn to designers at this point to start creating WireFrames at this point. I say, no need. Today, the industry is full of tools where non-designers can Do It Yourself. See below for tools which are available. Regardless which way you head, keeping it simple is the best way, in line-art (meaning collections of lines nothing more), and in black & white only. I've seen pieces of papers taped together with photocopied outlines of iPhones serving as great versions many times. Post-it notes stuck on? absolutely--use them! The key is to have it all in one page ---where you can place it on the wall or on the floor and the group involved can see the TUX (Total User Experience) of the whole journey. It may not be pretty yet or fleshed out, but we can all get an idea how it's taking shape from the point of view of the USER.

Include UX elements Within 5 minutes of googling, anyone can find common UX design elements of buttons, gestures, etc. It is not un-common for even designers to do this--put them all in one page and print it out, then cut and paste them to the map. Hide/unhide elements of UX should be communicated on the app map. For designers Adobe Illustrator is the preferred tool for vector(line) art--it serves perfectly for creating & moving around navigational parts to get the idea across. Tip: the work created in the app map can be transferred easily to wireframe stage (which then is used for final designs). Yes, the wireframes can be doctored into 1 page to serve as an app map (why not??) and vise versa.

It's Alive! The map should be a living document with changes and corrections updated as they flow. Tip: save versions of the files (if you are working digitally) as you can retroactively access some parts which are needed at a later stage. This is known to happen, frequently. Any substantial changes should be shared with the stake-holders, clients, of the project--whom by now are familiar with the app map so you'd only need to point out the updated part.

Useful recommended tools Balsamiq - anyone can use this tool and come up with decent app maps and even prototypes. The style of the tool is sketchy & hand-drawn which is a huge advantage as you'll avoid the common confusion from stake-holders asking you "that's not how it's going to look finally right?" Anything else would look too polished & misguide them from what you are actually doing, mind-mapping. http://balsamiq.com/ Lumzy - similar to balsamic and is flash based, fast, and cheap to get started. http://lumzy.com/ MS Power point - great option if you don't have time to try something new. Simply modify the slide's dimensions (go to file> page setup) by making the slide itself 5 or 6 times bigger to fit in the needed information. Adobe Illustrator - the choice for professionals as it has squashed its main competition or bought them out years ago. Excellent for app maps> wireFrames > final design/art stages. It even comes with templates with UX elements for both iPhone & iPads. These days anyone can own this tool for a monthly licensing via Adobe creative cloud for $10 per month. http://www.adobe.com/

[designineffect]

The Brief: Our Salvation, Hands Down

In the many years I've been working in the digital media industry I kept seeing recurring patterns--whether it be in a board room as a project manager or as a freelance designer, it was the same potential slow-train wreck I can foresee. Be it from your manager or the client, it comes at you like a tornado with chaotic elements and guess what? You're the one to make sense of it and solve the puzzle. We love puzzles, as long as it's a  game and it's solved within a reasonable amount of time. When we have projects at work with higher stakes the pressure will mount and surprises are common spoilers--they tend to turn up at the most inopportune time as well. What if we can minimize the surprises and steer the ship in the right course through the rough waters, and get home? The brief. It is our compass and guide-map all in one. 

Let's take some scenarios which we can face:

Scenario 1: We serve "everyone" You're a PM (Project Manager) and meeting with a client for a web presence project, this is the first sit-down together (which you've insisted after an email with a jumble of sentences was all the info previously). Client: I want something really edgy and not boring... You: ...what's purpose of the website? Client: Security for homes, our last webpage is so ugly , can we get a couple of fresh looking designs to look at? You: who are you targeting? your customers I mean Client: people who need our products, it can be home owners, or corporate businesses---so everyone really...

Scenario 2: Just get it like Amazon  From a conference call, you're a PM (Project Manager) and your supervisor assigns you an operation task from a spreadsheet with a line of shorthand notes he's taken from his boss. It's marked as "urgent". Your Manager: ...this is the complaint we have-- it's a problem we've been having repeatedly. we need you to fix it asap You: …where does the issue occur? Manager: our website You: which one? we have more than several website types, the e-commerce site or the corporate website…if we count all the countries, there's 21. Manager: yes that one, I think the complaint is coming from Poland or Turkey, not sure You: do you have the link or URL where the bug is? Manager: I can't find it, Talk to (name of colleague from another division) if he's away then speak with his manager. Look at Amazon and see what they've done with it. Get it like them.

Scenario 3: Do you have it in black? Client: …and this promotional piece needs to have a lot of red, some black You: why is the color red preferred? Client:  Our key competitor (name of company) uses blue a lot, it's overdone. I personally hate that color. Either red or black. You: what will be the message you want to get across? Client: that we're better than the competitor, and cheaper---but better quality, more classy.

Believe it or not if you haven't experienced it, the above discussions are commonplace today. You may have just 10 minutes to squeeze out key information to get started in the right direction. The biggest challenge is to understand what the requirements of the mission is and if the messenger (or the person making the order) doesn't know how to articulate it, you'll be looking at potentially a time-sucking maze of misunderstanding and confusion. Below is a quick list of key questions you can pull out and fast-track a brief gathering in the most rushed environment:

• Objectives What are the end result of the task/project? prioritize them in order if there are multiple. (eg. generate revenue via ecomerce/ banner ads, promote an event, increase traffic, branding, etc)

• Target Audience Who is the end-user? Who are you targeting to view the product? Who are they? age, sex, sub-culture, socio-economic

• Message That is the promise the service/product making to the TA? Why will they believe what we say?

• Content In bullet form, specify the sections and sub-sections (if any) of how you'd see the content structured ( eg. About Us, Company profile, Forum, Products & services  etc)   What are the mandatory elements? (eg. logos, addresses, etc)

• Functionality & Deliverables What are the functions expected? How will it be executed? What technical components are needed? What are the deliverables produced in the end?(eg. dynamic? Content management system, shopping cart, Database, eNewsletter management, animation, etc.)   • Preferences  Is there are preferences to color/font or a particular style? is there the general look desired? (eg. corporate business / commercial / light-hearted)   • Budget & deadline What is the target cost range? When does it need to get completed by?     Tailor it to your area of specialization  Depending on which area of specialization you're in, you'll need to flesh out areas which are relevant. For example if you're Brand analyst, you'd probably add sections such as Market summary & competitors info etc.   "Everyone" is not an answer  If your client doesn't know who they are targeting, this is trouble. Start fleshing them out there, knowing who you are targeting will answer many other key questions to follow. Drill them down to age groups, sex, sub-cultures, profession, socio-economic etc.   Follow up with a written brief Once you have as much info, write it up and fill in the blanks where it was not answered to help guide the client. It can be a 1-page email or document, the length/ time investment is depending on the task/project. Send it no later than a day later after the briefing as it would be fresh in their minds. Email it with a note that they'll need to approve it before you progress and if any elements are not right, they should edit it. Having dialogue in person or on the phone is one thing, approving written docs is another--they are taken more seriously. They will read it and respond. Once the final draft is approved, send them a copy and keep one for yourself for future reference---you will refer to it for sure down the line. If they do not collaborate, should you throw yourself into the predictable maze of despair? I wouldn't. 

If you can describe in words please... If a client cannot describe what they want in words, why would be any easier when the task/project has started? If it's sketchy from the start, don't expect for it to get any better later in a reasonable amount of time. If time is a factor, then getting the requirements of the task/project in a few lines of text is a worthwhile investment which can save you hours, days, weeks of labour.

Who is the one approving? who's signing off or approving the work? Are you speaking to the right person to get the brief? are there multiple people who has the right have a say in the matter? find out who they are before progressing, get them all to review the brief and have their edits included. Fixing & negotiating conflicting agendas/interests via a simple A4 paper is far easier than having to deal with conflicts mid-way through with the production already ticking away billable hours.

Expect Changes & accommodate It's the nature of the beast with a fast paced environment---changes big or small. The ideal way is to always refer back to the brief and measure how it affects the initial time  & cost estimate. Inform the client that the changes affect the cost/time/quality and make note of it---save the new version of the brief with denoting the changes in a different color etc. The brief will help save you from having discussions like " I actually said instead…" "I understood it to be…" It's written down clearly what was expected so it should ease the misunderstanding gap. For example, if there's a change in the deliverables of the design/functionality since starting it would justify you to ask for more time/costs. It works both ways, if the change is eliminating some components it means lesser time/costs also. The brief provides a platform for both the provider & client to measure fairly. 

Maze illustration credit: Phyliss Gilbert