“Designers already live in the future. Through our work, we’re pulling the present up to us.” – Julian Bleecker
Peter Merholz noted in his Adaptive Path blog post that Julian said this quote when asked about the future and about design.
It is our responsibility to to have an ironclad rationale to support our design decisions
“We have to arm ourselves with data, research, design patterns, and a clear understanding of our users and our content so our decisions are not made out of fear but out of real, actionable information. Although our clients may not have articulated reasons for why they want what they want, it is our responsibility to to have an ironclad rationale to support our design decisions.” – Debra Levin Gelman
This quote is from Debra’s article “The Very Narrow Bridge.”
Thanks to @aaroni268 for pointing to this article and quote!
Making a User Experience Strategy Tangible
User Experience Design begins with the definition of a user experience strategy, or a shared holistic vision for what a product or service will be from the end user’s perspective. Before a design team can start creating a product or service’s interface and defining specific capabilities, the team needs to evaluate ideas to determine what will meet both user and business goals most effectively. Defining a user experience strategy up front is critical to making sure that all design decisions map back to a vision that is supported by research and that has defined success criteria.
Read more to understand the elements of a UX strategy, why it’s important to make the strategy tangible, and some techniques to create a tangible UX strategy.
We need to be collaborators and co-creators with the communities and individuals we are researching
“What has been and always will be true about Design Research is its consideration of people. The future lies not in ignoring needs, but in broadening our horizons. We need to think about more than just insights. We need to be collaborators and co-creators not only with the companies we are designing for, but also the communities and individuals we are researching.” – Tara Mullaney
Tara’s quote summarizes her reflections on IIT’s 2010 Design Research conference in this Core77 article.
(Thanks to Putting People First for linking to this article)
Stop pretending content is somebody else’s problem. It’s time to make content matter.
“Until we commit to treating content as a critical asset worthy of strategic planning and meaningful investment, we’ll continue to churn out worthless content in reaction to unmeasured requests… We’ll keep failing to publish useful, usable content that people actually care about. Stop pretending content is somebody else’s problem. Take up the torch for content strategy. Learn it. Practice it. Promote it. It’s time to make content matter.” – Kristina Halverson
Read more in Kristina’s UIE article “The Discipline of Content Strategy.”
Facebook Privacy Settings Redesign Concept – Part 2
Update: Check out the October 11, 2010 follow-up to this article: “Fortune.com revisits some of my ideas in light of the introduction of Facebook Groups“
In Part 1 of this series, I introduced a design project I contributed to for Fortune.com. Fortune asked several User Experience Designers how they would redesign Facebook’s privacy settings to address recent outcries over privacy concerns on the social networking site. You can view the final article here. Part 1 focused on the first few phases of the process I went through to define a strategic direction for the redesign.
I identified the two primary privacy problems facing Facebook today as the unwanted public disclosure of information and the difficult management of social networks. The strategy proposed to address these issues focused around three key themes:
- Increase visibility of privacy information by placing it in context of user interactions
- Assure users that information they disclose is being disclosed to the intended audience
- Improve clarity around privacy settings
This post focuses on the process I went through to progress from many rough ideas to a single refined solution.
- Start with Research
- Define the Problem
- Craft a Strategy
- Sketch, Sketch, and Sketch Some More
- Narrow Down Ideas and Wireframe
- Apply a Visual Design