Design and Research “AI” is Paving the Wrong Roads
I’m not convinced the “AI” is doing much of the work. The permission to go full-feature-factory is where the gains are coming from. When the tools enable “I have a cool idea” to become “my idea is validated by research” without understanding the situational context of the user, things will dramatically speed up. The team will appear more productive.
Situationally Reflective Design
Over the last few months of attempting to observe my behavior while designing things, this is what I see myself doing. It’s holding many incomplete threads as potentially useful in the future. It’s weaving them together. It’s untangling them later. It’s weaving them together again in a different way.
A Reflective Conversation with a Situation
Every profession is confronting a dilemma of rigor or relevance. On the “high ground” the problems are trivial. In “the swamp” below you can work on the important social and technological problems of the age, but you don’t know how to be rigorous in any way that you can name.
The Problem with Problems
Don’t talk about problems (or solutions). Instead, talk about progress. Only then can we be precise without dictating implementation details.
Is Asking Why Always the Best Strategy?
There’s such a thing as getting down to the root problem too quickly, particularly when it comes to product design. The value in figuring out the “Why?” behind things isn’t quite as much about the destination as it is about the journey.
Product Feedback You Can Act On
We should happily take anyone’s feedback any way they want to give it. After that, it’s our job to continue the conversation and make sure we have the right information, and enough of it, to make a good choice on what to change in our products.
Product Design Skills in Plain English
In short, I’d like to get specific about the fundamental skills involved in product design, a few brief examples of the type of work that can be done for each skill, and how they’re mapped to common product design roles.
Design is a Team Sport
Design can’t be relegated to a single role. We all care. We all want to make a better product. Unfortunately, we all too often forget the most important member of the team. The customer.
Learning to Observe
With the right background, an observer can find so much more value in their observations. But when the background of the observer is different than the intended audience, an observation can become a huge liability.
Ignorance
The ideas in Ignorance by Stuart Firestein, surprisingly, reiterate s and clarify many principles of designing and building great web products. The ideas aligned well enough that I kept thinking I was reading a startup book. Now that I think of it, it’s one of the best startup books I’ve read in a long time.
Attention Spans, A Theory
Attention spans aren’t simply on or off. There are phases that you need to move through by earning your audience’s trust.
Taking the Guesswork Out of Design
Creativity breathes life into successful websites. However, creative ideas and solutions can sometimes seem like guesswork — and guessing is risky business. So what can designers do to show clients they’re using a solid strategy and have the best intentions?