Beauty & Desire +

Soulful Experience

November + December 2009

[ 6] Mullet, K. and Sano, D. Designing Visual Interfaces. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1994.

interactions

that “visual design is as complex and organized as engineering,” not random magic [ 6].

3. Guidelines. Apple’s human interface design guidelines, a legendary contribution to the interaction design field, are still a highly valuable resource for designers of all types, not just for the Macintosh or iPhone platforms. From modal dialogs to tool palettes to save/cancel flows and state persistence, these guidelines serve as yet another resource and source of evidence for designers in the heat of conflicts with team members.

4. Personas and Scenarios.

There is tremendous debate about the details of creating and using them, but these devices (the former as character archetype, the latter as narrative technique) improve a designer’s

empathy with the intended audience—understanding their problems and goals—given the context of use. Done well, they shape a view into a person’s way of living and the possibilities for improvement. Contextual inquiry is another method of cultivating this kind of empathic knowledge essential for smart design decisions.

Finally, it is worth mentioning again that for the seasoned, well-intentioned designer, informed intuition, judgment, and thoughtful insight gleaned from general research and experience serve as a legitimate source of authority and knowledge.

 

The Role and Value of a Designer Amid the contentious debate over data versus design, I found

myself wondering the subtext of held beliefs and attitudes regarding the designer’s place on development teams. For either position held, it suggests a certain attitude toward designers and perhaps the level of trust and respect for that role.

For example, for those who adamantly defend a data-driven philosophy, I would guess that they view designers as tactical pixel-pushers, short-order cooks answering solely to user test results. User said “x,” so do “x.” Hence the phrase “data-driven design”—incremental, hill-climbing targeting of specific feature optimization to yield marginal profitability. There is little to no room for a holistic, inspirational design vision arising from a designer’s prior knowledge and experience. Something of that sort may be dismissed prematurely.

However, it would be better to describe the primary role of a designer as one of an “informed visionary” who leverages the multiplicity of data (experiential/observational/ anecdotal plus statistical) with intuition and judgment to intelligently shape a vision of positive change. This involves owning the imaginative, empathic aspects of product development, and being a leader who is fully engaged in substantive conversations with QA, engineering, product management, customer support, and usability as part of the dialogue of design. Advocacy, education, interpretation, and facilitation are the principal activities of a fully engaged designer. And non-designers must play their part in this multilateral dialogue.