anatomy of a design decision

[ SXSW Bios ]



What separates a good design from a bad design are the decisions that the designer made. Jared will explore the five styles of design decisions, showing you when gut instinct produces the right results and when designers need to look to more user-focused research. You’ll see how informed decisions play out against rule-based techniques, such as guidelines and templates. And Jared will show you the latest research showing how to hire great decision makers and find opportunities that match your style. Of course, Jared will use his unforgettable presentation style to deliver an extremely entertaining and informative presentation.

How designers make decisions. Gray’s Anatomy (Henry Gray / James Carter) described every part of the human body. We’re missing a lot of (UI) design language. Anatomy: a study of the structure or internal workings of something.

Language of Design Decisions

The choices we make take the design in a certain direction. We can say “Great” or “Horrid”…

Styles of Design

Every style has a purpose/place/usage. Great designers are aware of which style they are using and use the same style throughout the entire project (decided the style up front). Everyone on a design team uses the same style. Higher up the style path, the more expensive it gets (be sure to allocate the budget required). External agencies can’t go beyond Genius design style. Internal design can take it to Activity and Experience-focused level. The style path is organized from least advance to more advanced, and user satisfaction grows along this path.

Unintentional Design

Focusing on the architecture (organization?) instead of what we’re trying to build; happens on its own. This works as long as our users will put up with whatever we give them (few usage or intense training), and we don’t care about support/training costs or pain from frustration.

Self Design

Designing something for our own use. This works as long as there are a ton of users just like you, and you regularly use it like your users do.

Genius Design

Designing for users beyond ourselves. Expert-based design? What we’ve learned previously about user needs. This works when we know their knowledge, needs, etc. based on research.

Activity-focused Design

Designing for users/activities we’ve never researched before. We make lists (Users, Tasks). This works when we can easily identify users/tasks, we have to get beyond our previous experience, etc.

Experience-focused Design

Designing for what happens between activities that sums up the entire experience. This works when we can be pro-active, and game-changing is the priority. What is it like to be , ? What are the different contexts?

Making decisions

“Bitches under Trees”

Templates and site guidelines “the rules” don’t work. Design style guides don’t work. Rule–based decisions are the opposite of informed decisions. We’ve been trying to prevent thinking while at the same time trying to build a community of “committed content authors”. Design wants thinking. It requires content authors to think. Content authors (even in a CMS) are designers because there’s still that body box. Since you can’t build a guide with all rules for all situations, when the rules don’t apply you get crap.

Rule-based Decisions: Style Guides.

Informed Decisions: Design Patterns. This is what we’ve done and this is the stuff that worked. Pro-active education.

The path to experience design:

  1. Eat your own dog food
  2. Start doing usability testing
  3. Do field studies
  4. Create Personas and Patterns

Journey to the Center of Design

Process: If you ever got something done, you must have had a process. Methodology means taking things and making them repeatable. Dogma. Techniques are skills that require practice. Tricks are misused techniques/tools that gets the job done.

Teaching people how to measure and observe to make an informed decision.

The entire team watches someone use the design every 2 weeks.

Resume that shows what kind of designer you are: What types of decisions do you make? Tell the story of your decisions.