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Functioning Form: Interface Design

Functioning Form: Merging medium and message in interface design, the user experience design process, Web applications, and more.


Local Market Factors that Influence DesignNovember 29
While presenting our Influencing Strategy by Design workshop overseas earlier this year, Tom Chi and I compiled a short list of factors that can influence Web application design decisions in specific local markets:

Tags: global design, context, decision making

CanUX: Leadership InsightsNovember 19
A few points from the Banff Centre’s Creative Leadership session at CanUX 2008 stuck with me:
  • Once you are able to get a group of people working together effectively, be prepared to let them improvise. A team in harmony has the potential to enhance plans and processes by building on each other. Sticking to a single pre-determined outcome may limit the potential of this improvisation
  • Pay attention to body and facial movements. What is unspoken is often larger and more complex than what is being said.
  • Creativity is possible when you move too quickly for your inner critic to object or when you lull your inner critic to sleep and ideas surface.
  • Quick full-body activities force you to surrender to the moment and allow natural ideas to flow.
  • Calm or simple repetitive activities let your mind drift and ideas to come forward.
  • We have a tendency to over think. Focusing on simple aspects of human activity (with an empathetic lens) allows insights to surface.
  • Leaders need to practice leading just like musicians practice music.


Tags: communication, control, dialog

CanUX: 5 Sketches or ElseNovember 17
At CanUX2008 in Banff, Jerome Ryckborst outlined his methodology for getting groups of developers to good design solutions in the absence of professional design help.
  • In some organization, developers are doing design. How can we deal with this?
  • Parallel design: have several developers attempt to solve the problem at the same time. Parallel design means we get to hear from everybody
  • 5 Sketches: saturate the design space, mash up the ideas, get to a pretty good solution, analyze it, and deliver a written statement
  • tep one: discuss the problem with subject matter experts to understand the competition, market, and personas
  • Step two: craft a problem statement to which the team can respond, without limiting creativity or dictating a specific solution
  • Step three: sketch five substantially different ideas. The first few are quick, then get to an uncomfortable sticking point and need to work past it. Sketch on large paper with minimal detail, label all actions and outcomes.
  • Step four: presenting a sketch only takes seconds. Each person presents on sketch, etc. Need to use green thinking hat (build on ideas).
  • Step five: mash up ideas to create a new sketch that uses parts of yours, parts of others, and also includes something new. Can modify, iterate, improve all ideas. Mash ups are about getting everyone to work together. Contribute ideas and find new ideas.
  • Step six: get to a
CanUX: Why so much Sketching?November 17
At the CanUX 2008 conference in Banff several speakers outlined the benefits around quick collaborative sketching in the early stages of a product design process. Though the methodologies for sketching they shared were somewhat different, there was a good deal of convergence on the basics:
  • Use quick sketches in the early stages of a project
  • Ensure you do lots of sketches so many ideas come forward
  • Discuss and edit the sketches collaboratively
  • Build consensus and buy-in through this process
This got me to thinking about why there was so much interest in sketching. Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that design teams have increasingly become involved in up-front problem solving and problem framing activities.

Previously design teams may have been confined to the later half of the product design process when it was time to make things “look good” and be “usable”. As a result, they would focus on solo activities like wire-framing and Photoshop design. While there’s still an important need for these skills, they don’t do a lot to get team buy-in in the early stages of a project.

Early on, idea generation and collaboration helps create alignment between diverse groups and stakeholders. Communicating lots of ideas quickly in an easily editable form (sketching) can help facilitate that process.

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CanUX: Sketchboards- Good Design FasterNovember 17
Brandon Schauer’s workshop at CanUX 2008 in Banff outlined a methodology for collaborative sketching that enabled teams to jumpstart the product design process.
  • Clients want great experiences and they want them fast
  • Traditionally designers use wireframes to explore designs but they only focus on a single page of the experience at a time.
  • We need a process to explore ideas without getting bogged down in unnecessary detail. It needs to reveal the best of multiple options and gets everyone’s input and buy-in.
  • Sketching: explore and find lots of ideas (exploratory sketching) or gain convergence (refinement sketching).
  • Exploratory sketching: lots of ideas, rough & varied, need to draw up 6 or so. Can use a word list to pick new ideas, or an inspiration library of design artifacts, or conceptual models like spectrum, 2x2, or grids.
  • Refinement sketching: fewer, better ideas with a higher level of fidelity. Can use shading to imply importance and call-outs to explain elements on the sketch.
  • Sketchboards: get a large sheet of paper so lots of ideas can be added. Create some structure between your refined sketches on the large sheet of paper. Add inputs like requirements, personas, design criteria, etc. to show the whole picture.
  • Sharing sketchboards: show ideas, walk people through the sketches, facilitate a discussion, draw on the sketchboard to make changes or clarifications.