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Our co-design sessions at the whiteboard are our most efficient activities, but it is impossible for all design work be that efficient. It is intense, tiring work, and if all our design efforts were carried out together, there would be no time for individual reflection. We would then miss the opportunity for some other creative ideas. The time that we are not working together we both do individual design work. Because creative ideas and potential difficulties can occur at the most unexpected times, I am careful to write them down or record them on my digital recorder. As we discussed our activities together, we concluded that co-designing on the whiteboard can be compared with children playing, combined with the adult analytical abilities.

After three hectic weeks of design sessions, user driven evaluations, and technical considerations, it was time to implement the design. After a few weeks of implementation work, we found that the programmers had omitted some vital details of our design. My experience is that, even if the design idea is communicated to the developers, they do not retain it throughout the implementation. Therefore, it is important that I verify the external design throughout the course of the project. It is also important that I coordinate the work of the graphical designers and system developers so that their decisions will be consistent. It’s my responsibility to insure that the initial design concepts are implemented. This coordination cannot be accomplished simply by writing down all design details. It is impossible to capture all the design specifications in writing.

In this case, the design was accomplished without using a formal information model because there were few classes and their structure was relatively obvious. However, this is not something I recommend. A “map” of the data to be presented is usually necessary. As a designer, I’ve had experience with most ways of presenting data (e.g., business documents, ER-diagrams, and OO-models). However, when performing conceptual design I prefer business documents or simple ER-diagrams rather than detailed ER/OO-diagrams. The diagrams include detailed implementation considerations of which I am totally indifferent as a designer. At Linné Data, we use an object-oriented technique to create declarative enterprise models. It allows us to easily capture important issues such as the case of a person occupying the roles of salesperson, customer, and buyer all at the same time.

On each project that I work, when I finally decide on a design and implement it, I am always concerned that I haven’t considered everything in the design space. Also, invariably I will think of an excellent design idea after the project is completed. Even though it may be too late to incorporate this idea on the recently completed project, these reflections are helpful for future projects. Linnéa also reminded me that there is no single correct or ultimate solution to a design space. On the contrary, there are many ideas that are never even considered.

2. BRIDGING THE GAP

To us the “design gap” is between having knowledge about the users and choosing a design based on that information. The design can be the design of the whole system or a detail such as which colors to use on the screen for a part of the interface. The gap consists of three parts: generating ideas, reflecting on ideas, and making a design decision, as shown in Figure 6.1.


Figure 6.1  Bridging the gap.

The gap is bridged not once, but many times. As a designer you create one or several ideas, reflect on them and make a decision. Then you generate more ideas, reflection on them, and make more decisions. This is a rapid, iterative process. In this process you also ask yourself more and more detailed questions about the users, thus increasing your knowledge about them. It is important to separate the three parts (generation of ideas, reflection on ideas, and making design decisions). By so doing, you allow yourself to be truly creative thus saving reflection for later. When reflecting, it is important to reflect on as many aspects of the design space as possible before making a decision. This is especially true when working with a co-designer, because one of the most important benefits of working together is stimulating each others’ creativity while not hindering one another with reflections. Therefore, instead of reflecting on your ideas, you should use them as a stimulus to generate more ideas. When workingtogether, reflecting on ideas is also effective, because you can view the design ideas from different aspects of the design space much faster.

2.1. GENERATION OF IDEAS

Generation of ideas is a creative step best done by two or more designers sketching on a whiteboard. To begin this process, the technique of Bubbling (described later) can be used to generate ideas based on the design space. Here the designer uses experience from previous design work along with pure creativity. It is important to visualize through sketching, which makes it convenient for all other project members to evaluate the ideas.

2.2. REFLECTING ON IDEAS

Reflection on ideas can be seen as filtering the ideas through the one’s understanding of the design space (from reading the C & R report), knowledge about human factors, and experience with former designs. The result of the reflection should be an understanding of the relative advantages and disadvantages of the various design alternatives, with the ultimate goal of choosing among them.

When reflecting, a designer should view the proposed design from the following different perspectives:

  The users — what will it be like to perform the task with this solution? Will the user get the right feeling when using this design?
  Human factors — does it give the user cognitive overload?
  The business organization — does it follow the business rules and contribute to relevant business goals?
  The entire system — does this design fit well into the design of the rest of the system and other systems that the users are to use?
  The hardware platform — will this design work as suggested by the guidelines of the platform?
  Feasibility — is it possible to implement this design at reasonable cost?

It is important that the designer has a good general picture of the design space. It is necessary because she will never be able to systematically filter all design ideas through all facts and details in the design space. Rather she will make judgement calls under way.


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