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To acquire an understanding of the design space as a whole, Linnéa and I began our work by reading the report produced by the C & R analyst. This helped us understand the business goals of the system, situations where the system would be used, the characteristics of users, and the overall character of the system and technical limitations. We were aware that we would make incorrect assumptions while reading, but design is a process of continuous learning, where those initial errors would be corrected.
While reading the report, I actually started the process of designing. I made some sketches on paper, and wrote down some of the most important things, from a design perspective, that I found in the report. I also noted design issues related to them.
After reading the C & R report, I had a basic understanding of the design space, but I also had many questions. My next activity was a 2-hour discussion with the C & R analyst to gain an even richer understanding of the design space. My intention at this stage was to understand how the potential users of the system think about the tasks which the system will support, which goals they have, and what their professional concerns are. In this case, I found that the two most critical goals for the users were (1) avoiding losing face and (2) having the potential to generate decision alternatives quickly. This understanding helps me to appreciate the perspective of a potential user as I reflect on alternative designs.
Some designers use detailed descriptions of user tasks, but I have never found them critical in my work. In the design of systems for use in offices, homes, and public places, I find concentrated descriptions of users, situations, and usability goals to be sufficient. I do strive to understand the situation as a whole, rather than being concerned with details.
Although I now have a preliminary understanding of the design space, Im aware that I still dont have a coherent picture of how things fit together. Therefore, I feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of the task. This was particularly prevalent during the early part of my career, but now I am filled with anticipation because I am confident that some hard work and creative thinking will lead to significant progress on the design. A feeling not unlike what I felt as a child on Christmas just before opening the presents.
It is now time for creativity and reflection. Linnéa and I use our conception of the design space and our experience with similar design problems to begin generating ideas. As we work together, ideas begin to flow and we reflect on them as we go. My method for capturing the results of this activity is to draw interaction sketches (not screen shots) on a whiteboard. For this I use a visual language with arrows. The specific technique is not as important as being able to visually represent the ideas. Even more important is the ability to clarify the ideas for myself and my co-designer. Presenting ideas visually helps us reflect on the design ideas to evaluate them and to generate new ones.
When working with a whiteboard, I quickly shift from idea generation to reflection and back again. For this I use techniques such as Bubbling (described in a later section), but I never carry it out in detail or for very long, and I only record it if I find something critical for the design. For me, recording design paths, suggestions, alternatives, and decisions are vital, but must not hinder my progress.
When designing, I generate conceptual, functional, and graphical suggestions simultaneously. This is a result of reflecting on ideas from all aspects in the design space. However, I am careful to never lose focus on the design space as a whole. At the conceptual and functional level of design, I try to generate directives for the graphical design and leave the graphic design details until later. Later, when doing the graphic design I can then follow those directives as I attempt to generate an effective graphical representation of the users mental model.
Linnéa first was very surprised, when after some hours of intense, productive work, I took a step back and said, Well, this is quite good, but I dont know if I can defend this design. At first, she thought I was joking, but as we discussed my comment, we came to two interesting conclusions. One is that a designer must be able to justify every design decision, whether it pertains to a detail or to the design as a whole. If someone questions a part of a design or proposes something that hasnt been considered, a designer should carefully evaluate it. Therefore, one of the core abilities of designers is to be critical of their own designs. The other thing Linnéa and I concluded is that designers should be aware of their particular styles of designing if they are to improve them.
Because I can never be certain of how effective a design is, I conduct user-driven evaluations to determine how well the design matches the way the users think and act. In this case, we found that our conceptual foundation didnt match the users way of thinking about their tasks. As a result, we abandoned that particular design in favor of others.
In a previous project, my co-designer and I had used the conceptual metaphor Swedish smorgasbord to communicate our design to the users. Linnéa and I began searching for a metaphor for our current design space. However, we limited our search time to 4 hours because there is little benefit in constructing a mediocre metaphor just for the sake of having one. Time is better spent searching for an effective design representing the users mental model.
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