Interactions - May/June 2012

Tool decisions are a big part of the development process. In making these decisions, engineers determine much of what will or will not be possible when building a product (e.g., Windows Presentation Foundation, or Javascript libraries, or Objective-C). Different tools enable different outcomes, which may not map to what the designer wants or believes is necessary to serve the interests of project stakeholders [ 1]. So designers need to be involved in these decisions. Designers can’t just throw it over the wall, or they risk being margin-alized and ignored.

To make an informed contribution, here and at other stages, designers should be familiar with the technology engineers are using. Designers should not just read about the technology, but play with it to find out what value it can provide beyond what users already know they want. Being able to manipulate technology toward anticipating and exceeding user expectations is a powerful thing.

At every stage, designers should be flexible and open-minded. Trade-offs and compromises are inevitable and can help ensure success, not undercut it, so long as they are grounded in sound humanistic principles, not user dictates.

Getting down to business. What about business factors? Companies need to make money, and to keep funders happy, nonprofits need to show mission success. Working in either sector, designers need to create products that enable clients to meet their goals.

In the enterprise software sector where I work, it’s vital to understand the “sales channel”—that is, the ongoing series of interactions between salespeople and customers. These interactions not only drive deals but also feed release sched-

ules to the customer, with feature and bug-fix requests going back to the development team. The sales channel can be an extremely useful source of information for designers, though of course they should keep in mind that customers—product buyers—are not always the same as product users.

Also key is to understand customers’ business models: what they offer their customers, why this offering has value, how they make the sale, and how they ensure the sales stream will hold up over time. Useful here is the recent book Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder, which explains traditional business thinking through a design lens. Understanding your customers’ business, you can then explain the business value of a particular design, or make a convincing case for using a particular business model to sell a proposed new product (e.g., “ free-mium” or “subscription-based”). And of course you’ll be able to shape your designs to meet not just users’ needs, but customers’ business needs as well.

Revisiting the center of design. So
what’s the center of a design? In one
sense, it is the designer’s nuanced
understanding of the problem or
opportunity at hand—as designers
love to say, the focus of design is
problem solving, not self-expression.
Again, this understanding must be
based on balancing human, finan-
cial, and technical challenges. As
design scholar Richard Buchanan
has said, “Design lies at the inter-
section of constraint, contingency,
and possibility” [ 2].

ENDNOTES:

1. Gajendar, U. and Johnson, C. The inmates are still running the asylum: How to share a design vision with engineers. Proc. of HCI International. Springer, 2011, 276-282. 2. Liedtka, J. and Ogilvie, T. Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Toolkit for Managers. Columbia Business School Publishing, New York, 2011.