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Design Thinking Out Of The Box
BY
Christopher Fahey
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By Christopher Fahey
Design Thinking Out Of The Box
Saturday’s New York Times (in the Business section, of course) had an interesting article about “design thinking”. For starters, it included by far the clearest summary of what design thinking is that I’ve ever read, including from all the design thinking leaders:
While definitions vary, design thinking usually involves a period of field research — usually close observation of people — to generate inspiration and a better understanding of what is needed, followed by open, nonjudgmental generation of ideas. After a brief analysis, a number of the more promising ideas are combined and expanded to go into “rapid prototyping,” which can vary from a simple drawing or text description to a three-dimensional mock-up. Feedback on the prototypes helps hone the ideas so that a select few can be used.
The Times article also quotes IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown:
“Design thinking is inherently about creating new choices, about divergence… Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough.”
They hype around design thinking has been a little troublesome to many practicing designers, myself included. As I’ve said before, to me design thinking is intended to steer “business thinkers” in a new direction, opening their minds to new idea generation processes — a way of thinking and working that most designers are already intimately familiar with (so much so that most practicing designers find it almost impossible to understand what the heck “design thinking” means, kind of like explaining “wetness” to a fish).
But the Times article focuses on one aspect of design thinking that I am glad to hear: that the idea of design as merely a marketing tool needs to be retired.
The headline makes this clear: “Design Is More Than Packaging”. It’s conceptually in synch with my recent blog post, “Don’t Design the Box“, in which I argue that a design process that begins with trying to seduce the customer with the product’s superficial packaging — rather than seducing the customer with the actual product and the actual user experience — is increasingly going to be doomed to fail in a Web 2.0, customer-driven, design-centric marketplace.
Design Thinking Out Of The Box
Saturday’s New York Times (in the Business section, of course) had an interesting article about “design thinking”. For starters, it included by far the clearest summary of what design thinking is that I’ve ever read, including from all the design thinking leaders:
While definitions vary, design thinking usually involves a period of field research — usually close observation of people — to generate inspiration and a better understanding of what is needed, followed by open, nonjudgmental generation of ideas. After a brief analysis, a number of the more promising ideas are combined and expanded to go into “rapid prototyping,” which can vary from a simple drawing or text description to a three-dimensional mock-up. Feedback on the prototypes helps hone the ideas so that a select few can be used.
The Times article also quotes IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown:
“Design thinking is inherently about creating new choices, about divergence… Most business processes are about making choices from a set of existing alternatives. Clearly, if all your competition is doing the same, then differentiation is tough.”
They hype around design thinking has been a little troublesome to many practicing designers, myself included. As I’ve said before, to me design thinking is intended to steer “business thinkers” in a new direction, opening their minds to new idea generation processes — a way of thinking and working that most designers are already intimately familiar with (so much so that most practicing designers find it almost impossible to understand what the heck “design thinking” means, kind of like explaining “wetness” to a fish).
But the Times article focuses on one aspect of design thinking that I am glad to hear: that the idea of design as merely a marketing tool needs to be retired.
The headline makes this clear: “Design Is More Than Packaging”. It’s conceptually in synch with my recent blog post, “Don’t Design the Box“, in which I argue that a design process that begins with trying to seduce the customer with the product’s superficial packaging — rather than seducing the customer with the actual product and the actual user experience — is increasingly going to be doomed to fail in a Web 2.0, customer-driven, design-centric marketplace.
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In fact, this concept was also a key point of my recent “Seduction of the Interface” talks. In the talk I discuss how the traditional business structure (in which product design, development, marketing, and sales are all separate disciplines) needs to break down. For new digitally-distributed products, there is often no difference between the product’s user experience design, the product’s underlying engineering, the product’s marketing and advertising, and the “store” the product is sold from. All of these can, and increasingly should, be wrapped up into a single, holistic user experience.
In this new business model, design plays a key role in every aspect of the process — there are no walls between design, development, marketing, and sales. And even within design itself, there is no wall between product design and packaging design.
Many UX designers see "merchandising" as another flavor of marketing, and therefore see it as something different from, or even opposed to, good UI design. It's the evil part of the product design process that says we need to put 100 buttons on the remote control so that they can put 100 bullets on the box, which in turn will help the product sell from the shelves in the stores.
Mozilla Labs UI designer, and former Humanized ninja Jono DiCarlo writes about this phenomenon in his thought-provoking UI manifesto “These Things I Believe“.
Is UI design marketing?
User interface design is not marketing.
Software developers loathe marketing, so if they think that UI design is marketing, then they will loathe UI design.
The qualities of software that make for a good advertisement or computer-store demo are not the same qualities that make software usable and pleasant to work with long-term, day-in day-out. Often these qualities are opposites.
A shopper may choose the microwave with more buttons, because it seems "more powerful". However, the shopper will soon find out that it does the same thing as any other microwave, you just have to spend longer figuring out which button to push.
It is easy to fool people into buying something that is against their own best interest.
Don't do that.
In this new business model, design plays a key role in every aspect of the process — there are no walls between design, development, marketing, and sales. And even within design itself, there is no wall between product design and packaging design.
Many UX designers see "merchandising" as another flavor of marketing, and therefore see it as something different from, or even opposed to, good UI design. It's the evil part of the product design process that says we need to put 100 buttons on the remote control so that they can put 100 bullets on the box, which in turn will help the product sell from the shelves in the stores.
Mozilla Labs UI designer, and former Humanized ninja Jono DiCarlo writes about this phenomenon in his thought-provoking UI manifesto “These Things I Believe“.
Is UI design marketing?
User interface design is not marketing.
Software developers loathe marketing, so if they think that UI design is marketing, then they will loathe UI design.
The qualities of software that make for a good advertisement or computer-store demo are not the same qualities that make software usable and pleasant to work with long-term, day-in day-out. Often these qualities are opposites.
A shopper may choose the microwave with more buttons, because it seems "more powerful". However, the shopper will soon find out that it does the same thing as any other microwave, you just have to spend longer figuring out which button to push.
It is easy to fool people into buying something that is against their own best interest.
Don't do that.
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I'm not sure I agree with this entirely. The user experience designer's job is essentially no different than what the industrial/product designer's job has been for a century: To design products that people want to use. A product that is empirically hard to use but that people perceive as easy or fun to use because of delightful UI characteristics can be successful. A product that makes a lot of noise, takes up a lot of space, is expensive to maintain, and has a complicated interface might be extremely desirable and satisfying to many people simply because it makes them feel powerful using it, despite the measurable waste associated with the design.
A designer who neglects marketing concerns and designs a product that the target audience sees as undesirable (because, for example, it lacks a sexy list of features or a glossy interface) is just as bad as a designer who neglects production concerns and creates something that is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to build (to manufacture, program, whatever).
And unfortunately for us designers who favor elegance and simplicity, there is a large cohort of consumers and purchasers who feel a *lot* better about instead owning products that they are confident have the most buttons and bullet points, regardless of usability or even performance. You can probably throw many Windows Vista champions into this category.
If efficiency isn't generally seen as important to a product's users, then we designers who do think it's important need to make our elegant and efficient products scream out to users "I am simple to use! And (in case you didn't know) that's a good thing! Don't buy the competitor's junk with all the bloated features -- buy me instead and you'll be happier!"
That's a designer being a marketer, or even a salesman. But in a good way.
A designer who neglects marketing concerns and designs a product that the target audience sees as undesirable (because, for example, it lacks a sexy list of features or a glossy interface) is just as bad as a designer who neglects production concerns and creates something that is prohibitively expensive and time-consuming to build (to manufacture, program, whatever).
And unfortunately for us designers who favor elegance and simplicity, there is a large cohort of consumers and purchasers who feel a *lot* better about instead owning products that they are confident have the most buttons and bullet points, regardless of usability or even performance. You can probably throw many Windows Vista champions into this category.
If efficiency isn't generally seen as important to a product's users, then we designers who do think it's important need to make our elegant and efficient products scream out to users "I am simple to use! And (in case you didn't know) that's a good thing! Don't buy the competitor's junk with all the bloated features -- buy me instead and you'll be happier!"
That's a designer being a marketer, or even a salesman. But in a good way.
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 | Christopher Fahey is a founding partner and user experience director at Behavior, an award-winning New York web design consultancy focused on building compelling and elegant user experiences for business and culture.
At Behavior, Chris has led the IA and UXD strategies for clients and projects in many industries, including BusinessWeek, The National Geographic Channel, UNICEF, HBO, The Smithsonian Institution, the AIGA, and The Onion. In his 14+ years as a professional interaction designer and manager, his projects have covered everything from business- critical web applications to sci-fi adventure games and artificial intelligence chatbots. Chris is a frequent speaker on user experience design, with recent events including the O'Reilly Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW, An Event Apart, the ASIS&T IA Summit, and Euro IA. He will teach at the School of Visual Arts’ new interaction design MFA program in 2009, and has also taught at FIT, Brooklyn College, and the City College of New York. His internet artwork has been featured in the Whitney and the New Museum. Chris also blogs about design, technology, culture, and whatever else he's interested in at. | |
| Editorial USA Contributor |
 | Barry Downard‘s style of photo-illustration is a blend of photographic source material with 3D rendered elements, all thrown into his digital Mix-o-matic, swirled around and stuck together with computer glue.
Currently working with major clients, ad agencies and publishers in the UK, USA, South Africa and Australia, as well as working on illustrated children's books, creative concepts and other personal publishing projects. His first book, an illustrated version of the "Little Red Hen" story for Simon & Schuster (New York) was launched in March 2004. His second book, "Carla's Famous Traveling Feather & Fur Show" was published by Milk & Cookies Press (New York), and his third book, "The Race of the Century" was published by Simon & Schuster (New York) in 2008. | |
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