This week at d+b talks, Sarit Arora from Yahoo talks on 'Emerging Interaction Design Practices'
and 'User Research for Innovation'.
and 'User Research for Innovation'.
25 May 2012 (Friday), 3:30-4:30 PM IST. Leave a comment if you want to attend.
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Showing posts with label design. Show all posts
Monday, 21 May 2012
Friday, 2 September 2011
What do you think is the biggest challenge in an Ideation exercise?
Why do you think, most of the solutions fail?
Why does even research does not bring out all the issues?
How can you hold a brainstorming session to build a solution more fruitful and effective?
As we deal with these barriers and many more, we realize that there is a key to at least put ourselves on the right track. The key is obviously driven by the capability of the people working on the problem. But, as long as a conscious effort is made to remember the key, we would not lose our focus.
And, no we are not going to suggest that building a clear objective is the key. Although, we do not deny the importance of building a clear objective, but we are going to delve one level deeper. And we are going to explain it with the help of some examples.
So, what is this key? The key is to understand the underlying systems, components, players and influencers before jumping on to solutions. In other words, it is necessary to first understand what the problem is.
 |
| Right Approach |
 |
| Wrong Approach |
Now, let’s go through some examples:
Example 1:
One of the big problems in South Africa that people were trying to tackle was human-elephant conflict. Elephants used to encroach on farmland and destroy livelihoods. In response, some farmers resorted to poisoning or shooting elephants.
Environment conservationists jumped to solutions for solving this problem. All kinds of modern technology solutions were proposed, and many trialled: Electric fences, RFID tagging, sensors and live-GSM-tracking among them. Most of the solutions failed since they were not replicable, scalable, and/or affordable.
Solution: Elephants run away when they encounter bees. According to this BBC article, early research in Kenya indicates hives can be a very effective barrier, so much so that 97% of attempted elephant raids were aborted. Where satellites, RFID tags and mobile phones failed, humble honey bees proved to be the answer.
Also note how honey bees also proved to be an alternate source of income!
Example 2:
Wimbledon had an interesting battle on and off the courts: against the pigeons. Each summer, as tennis players battle it out on the lawn courts, the authorities used to battle and stop pigeons from interfering with the play. Authorities armored themselves with all sorts of modern technology that was available: lasers and radio controlled aircraft to gas guns and ultrasound emitters. Now, we can understand what the courts would have looked like with all equipments, like a battleground?
Solution: Now, if we look from a pigeon’s perspective, all these high tech equipment might be dangerous, but nothing is a match to a bird of prey! Hence, Wimbledon’s answer doesn’t involve anything more high-tech than a bird of prey! A few laps by Rufus, the hawk, around the tennis courts are enough to scare the hardiest of pigeons away! (Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13939805)
In India, we solve a similar problem of monkeys using langurs to scare them off!
Example 3:
One very big cosmetics company in Japan received a complaint that a consumer had bought a soap box that was empty. Management of the company immediately traced the problem to the assembly line that conveyed all the packaged boxes of soap to the delivery department. For some reason, one soap box went through the assembly line empty.
Management asked its engineers to solve the problem. The engineers worked hard on the first solution that came to mind, using X-ray technology. They devised an X-ray machine with high-resolution monitors. Two workers were deployed full-time to monitor all the soap boxes that passed through the line to make sure they were not empty. They managed to solve the problem but it was an expensive solution.
Solution: The solution was taken to the assembly line and the installation was started. Out of curiosity, one of the workers asked about the installation. On hearing the whole story, he told his engineering manager that the solution was much easier – install a fan- it will blow away all the empty boxes and the assembly line will deliver only full, heavier packages!
Conclusion: As our world is becoming more complex, our problems are becoming even worse! We have numerous methodologies to solve these complex problems, but we observe, increasingly that these solutions are not s effective or efficient as we would have liked them to be! The reason, which we also call the “key”, to get our final solution right to a greater extent is not to jump onto solutions. Some of the examples here might help us in realizing our shortcomings, hence, improving our methodologies and thinking!
Saturday, 25 June 2011
We had the pleasure to attend a session on "Design Thinking – Looking beyond the obvious and crafting a vision for the future" by Prof. Ulrich Weinberg, who is the Head of “School of Design Thinking” at Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam, Germany since 2007.
First, I will note down some key points from his session on Design Thinking and then I will put in my opinions & thoughts.
Key points from the session:
 | ||||
| Sustainable Innovation |
- For a sustainable innovation the process has to start with human needs. When the human needs are understood, then one has to understand how technology can support those human needs. And finally, one has to build the business case.
- Key requirement of Design Thinking is a multi-disciplinary team. This team has to work on an iterative process in an appropriate environment. The appropriate environment for design thinking is a variable space as will be discussed subsequently.
- Multi-disciplinary team is very important and every individual has to understand and rely on the power of team.
- Our education systems have corrupted us in thinking only about ourselves. It has made us increasingly individualistic. But, for Design Thinking to succeed we have to think of our collective success rather than individual achievements.
 |
| Iterative Process |
- In the iterative process, it is necessary that no one thinks about the solution in the first 3 steps. The first 3 steps are to:
- Understand the problem
- Observe the users and the problems in depth
- Build a point of view about the users and the problems
- Only, after building a point of view should the team move on to Ideation phase that is like a brainstorming session. The objective is to come out with as many solutions possible. "One has to build quantity before quality."
- Iteration of the whole process is important for the success. Usually, the first prototype is only 60-70% successful after testing. And every iteration refines the solution further.
- Many team members of the mulit-disciplinary team come from a non-creative backgrounds. Everyone has to understand that creativity is in-built in everyone. What is important is to "reactivate the skills" and bring back "creativity from kindergarten"
- This is also known as building up of Creative Confidence.
- "Failing early and often" is a lesson not just for the failing student but for the team and other observants as well.
- How to create a flexible working environment?
- Lots of white boards should be placed. Enough for everyone to play with.
- Movable furniture
- Standing positions for team members has been found to be better suited for such process. It was observed that individuals were more active participants when standing compared to sitting.
- Information environment - An environment where information flow is very easy.
- What sort of individuals are best suited for Design Thinking process?
- T shaped people: Individuals who are good in the filed they are in, but are equally capable of appreciating and understanding other fields and people from other domains.
- How has digital media helped?
- Design Thinking would not have been possible without the advent of Digital Media. Collecting ideas very rapidly has been possible using this media.
- Building multi-disciplinary teams is very important for Design Thinking. But, for most of the businesses this is the hardest part. All said and done, bringing together such a team would be hard for smaller businesses or in fact for anyone except some academic institutions.
- Multi-disciplinary team formulation does not take care of cultural sensitivities.
- How can one solve a problem in India sitting in other parts of the world, by building a team of people who have never been to or lived in India?
- Sustainable innovation also leaves aside the culture and society.
- A solution may be good for user needs, technologically feasible and with a good business case, but society may see it as a threat or the solution may be culturally unacceptable. So, it should be (User Needs + Cultural impact + Societal Values)
- Physical environment seems to be a key component of the whole process. With decreasing interactions in real world and increased interactions in virtual world, it is not clear how to build an appropriate environment in virtual world.
- In one of our projects where we are applying Design Thinking, half the team members sit in US and half are in India. It is a real challenge to create a suitable environment on digital world.
Sunday, 29 May 2011
A tourist in a foreign country can only dream of knowing the local language beforehand. Problems begin at the airport itself, when signage are of no help, and go all the way to the local transport, making it tough to reach places or communicate with cab drivers, and especially when it comes to restaurants' menu to select the right stuff.
When you are in such a situation, you are always worried about either running into a problem or missing out on stuff of your interest (locations, food, etc.) because you cannot communicate or read in the local language. Now, Google has launched a smart iPhone app, Google Translate, that supports translation of 57 languages.
The app allows you to translate in and out of using words or using your iPhone's microphone. While Google Translate doesn’t allow you to translate without an active data connection, you can store your most likely used translations and phrases and use them offline.
When Google Translate generates a translation, it looks for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation for you. By detecting patterns in documents that have already been translated by human translators, Google Translate makes intelligent guesses to judge the most appropriate translation as output. This process of seeking patterns in large amounts of text is called statistical machine translation (SMT). However, in SMT, since the translations are generated by machines, not all translations are perfect.
While it is a great utility in time for travelers, it is still a machine mediator between you and the people around you who do not speak and understand your language. And the capability to translate the natural, free communication between the user and the people in real-time does not exist still. As a user of the application you are never sure of other persons’ interpretation of the translation either because of inter-language subtle cultural differences, voice and tone of the language, and/or lack of gestural explanations.
A company called Quest Visual has tried to resolve this small yet important aspect of communication. Quest Visual has invented a magical ‘World Lens’ application for the iPhone with amazing augmented really capabilities.
The application allows users to scan live views using the iPhone’s camera and translate words from Spanish to English (or vice versa) in real-time, replacing the originals in the same size, color, orientation and perspective. So now it doesn’t matter anymore whether it is a newspaper article, website content, hotel menu, or signage, all you need is Word Lens. The other exciting stuff is that the application doesn’t use active data connection to do the translations and therefore saves hundreds of dollars for travelers with active roaming data charges.
The application pushes handheld computing capabilities to make the optical character recognitions algorithms perform. The program runs the captured image through a filter to remove shadows and identify the sharpness around the text and removes everything that isn’t sharp enough. It then converts the image into black and white to further enhance text readability and do a dictionary look-up of the probabilistic text string for a closest match.
Finally, it re-renders the originally captured image by removing the original text and replacing it with the translated text string on top. Although it may sound straightforward, it is not really that simple by hand-held computing standards.
With companies such as Quest Visual creating such interesting and innovating stuff to make the overall travel experience more convenient, the future will be of an app-mesh created between augmented reality apps such as Google Goggles, World Lens, and utility apps like Google Translate with sophistication of two-way voice-to-voice translation.
When you are in such a situation, you are always worried about either running into a problem or missing out on stuff of your interest (locations, food, etc.) because you cannot communicate or read in the local language. Now, Google has launched a smart iPhone app, Google Translate, that supports translation of 57 languages.
The app allows you to translate in and out of using words or using your iPhone's microphone. While Google Translate doesn’t allow you to translate without an active data connection, you can store your most likely used translations and phrases and use them offline.
When Google Translate generates a translation, it looks for patterns in hundreds of millions of documents to help decide on the best translation for you. By detecting patterns in documents that have already been translated by human translators, Google Translate makes intelligent guesses to judge the most appropriate translation as output. This process of seeking patterns in large amounts of text is called statistical machine translation (SMT). However, in SMT, since the translations are generated by machines, not all translations are perfect.
While it is a great utility in time for travelers, it is still a machine mediator between you and the people around you who do not speak and understand your language. And the capability to translate the natural, free communication between the user and the people in real-time does not exist still. As a user of the application you are never sure of other persons’ interpretation of the translation either because of inter-language subtle cultural differences, voice and tone of the language, and/or lack of gestural explanations.
A company called Quest Visual has tried to resolve this small yet important aspect of communication. Quest Visual has invented a magical ‘World Lens’ application for the iPhone with amazing augmented really capabilities.
The application allows users to scan live views using the iPhone’s camera and translate words from Spanish to English (or vice versa) in real-time, replacing the originals in the same size, color, orientation and perspective. So now it doesn’t matter anymore whether it is a newspaper article, website content, hotel menu, or signage, all you need is Word Lens. The other exciting stuff is that the application doesn’t use active data connection to do the translations and therefore saves hundreds of dollars for travelers with active roaming data charges.
The application pushes handheld computing capabilities to make the optical character recognitions algorithms perform. The program runs the captured image through a filter to remove shadows and identify the sharpness around the text and removes everything that isn’t sharp enough. It then converts the image into black and white to further enhance text readability and do a dictionary look-up of the probabilistic text string for a closest match.
Finally, it re-renders the originally captured image by removing the original text and replacing it with the translated text string on top. Although it may sound straightforward, it is not really that simple by hand-held computing standards.
With companies such as Quest Visual creating such interesting and innovating stuff to make the overall travel experience more convenient, the future will be of an app-mesh created between augmented reality apps such as Google Goggles, World Lens, and utility apps like Google Translate with sophistication of two-way voice-to-voice translation.
Saturday, 7 May 2011
Designers often get biased to widely used interaction design patterns on Web. It makes it difficult for them to find a completely different way of looking at how people would like to deal with information dissection, manipulation, and retrieval on Web.
Many times there is too much of information, too much data, or too many options and choices to make sense of. Users can easily become frustrated or disengage if they can’t find a connection with what is presented to them. One such example is e-commerce websites serving millions of products across thousands of categories.
Most e-commerce websites serve product information in a list or in a grid view. Facet search panel on left comprising either check boxes or links, with bracketed number of products inside each category, is another universal pattern used for product retrieval and filtering. For example, a website selling digital cameras, printers, or flat panel television sets will allow users to filter assortments by technical information such as megapixels, aspect ratio, screen size, FPS, make, model, and more. Most of these facets are not useful for people to make buying decisions anymore.
Few websites show number of reviews to prove product popularity in the market without caring for how long the product has been there on the shelf. Comparing product features is not desirable either because it just rearranges the technical information in a big table where each product is a column and users are forced to scan the information row-by-row to understand which product is better over others. And as mentioned before, technical information does not anyway affect people's choice of product.
BE HUMANE
When people buy items of such kind as mentioned above, beyond the technical information they are interested in the purpose and use of such products. Let's take an example of an office purchase manager searching for a large flat panel television to be used in a conference room with a seating capacity of 10 people for presentations and Internet video calls. Internally, it can be mapped to technical information such as resolution 1024x768, low priced, and Internet ready, and more. Similarly, let's look at a man who wants to buy a digital camera to capture his son’s Tennis game. Suitable camera can be internally mapped to technical information such as high FPS, bigger aperture, and in-built filter, and more. In both examples, the important point is that people want to buy stuff that is aligned to their needs. They find it very difficult to map their needs to the technical search/filter/compare criteria provided by websites.
A designer should experiment with visual/information graphic facets that will allow people to filter and compare products on their practical and emotional needs instead of technical information alone. A very simple visual representation of information can help people make better decisions, and understand something that's really complex, and connect them emotionally.
POPULARITY
A product’s social popularity on the Web has become very important. Buying decisions have started to get influenced by people's online reviews of a product. It is time that e-commerce websites graduate from traditional popularity display patterns. Merely showing information such as "number of people recommendations," "number of people liked or disliked" or "number of reviews" is not good enough anymore.
Interface designers need to start experimenting with ideas that can generate popularity based on people’s reaction in a particular context, time, and specific need. For example, one could use data visualization, like pie charts, scatter plots, and relationship circles to compare two point-and-shoot cameras and display one being more popular than the other among amateur photographers for taking home pictures and not so popular among professional or wildlife photographers along with comparative results achieved. Such generic visualization patterns will add depth to the user interface and eventually make it more useful for buyers to make right decisions.
Many times there is too much of information, too much data, or too many options and choices to make sense of. Users can easily become frustrated or disengage if they can’t find a connection with what is presented to them. One such example is e-commerce websites serving millions of products across thousands of categories.
Most e-commerce websites serve product information in a list or in a grid view. Facet search panel on left comprising either check boxes or links, with bracketed number of products inside each category, is another universal pattern used for product retrieval and filtering. For example, a website selling digital cameras, printers, or flat panel television sets will allow users to filter assortments by technical information such as megapixels, aspect ratio, screen size, FPS, make, model, and more. Most of these facets are not useful for people to make buying decisions anymore.
Few websites show number of reviews to prove product popularity in the market without caring for how long the product has been there on the shelf. Comparing product features is not desirable either because it just rearranges the technical information in a big table where each product is a column and users are forced to scan the information row-by-row to understand which product is better over others. And as mentioned before, technical information does not anyway affect people's choice of product.
BE HUMANE
When people buy items of such kind as mentioned above, beyond the technical information they are interested in the purpose and use of such products. Let's take an example of an office purchase manager searching for a large flat panel television to be used in a conference room with a seating capacity of 10 people for presentations and Internet video calls. Internally, it can be mapped to technical information such as resolution 1024x768, low priced, and Internet ready, and more. Similarly, let's look at a man who wants to buy a digital camera to capture his son’s Tennis game. Suitable camera can be internally mapped to technical information such as high FPS, bigger aperture, and in-built filter, and more. In both examples, the important point is that people want to buy stuff that is aligned to their needs. They find it very difficult to map their needs to the technical search/filter/compare criteria provided by websites.
A designer should experiment with visual/information graphic facets that will allow people to filter and compare products on their practical and emotional needs instead of technical information alone. A very simple visual representation of information can help people make better decisions, and understand something that's really complex, and connect them emotionally.
POPULARITY
A product’s social popularity on the Web has become very important. Buying decisions have started to get influenced by people's online reviews of a product. It is time that e-commerce websites graduate from traditional popularity display patterns. Merely showing information such as "number of people recommendations," "number of people liked or disliked" or "number of reviews" is not good enough anymore.
Interface designers need to start experimenting with ideas that can generate popularity based on people’s reaction in a particular context, time, and specific need. For example, one could use data visualization, like pie charts, scatter plots, and relationship circles to compare two point-and-shoot cameras and display one being more popular than the other among amateur photographers for taking home pictures and not so popular among professional or wildlife photographers along with comparative results achieved. Such generic visualization patterns will add depth to the user interface and eventually make it more useful for buyers to make right decisions.
Sunday, 24 April 2011
Great Indian Developer Summit (GIDS) was held on April 19 -22, 2011 at the green campus of IISc Bangalore. I attended the second day of conference, that was focused on Web trends and technologies. The sessions by Venkat and Harish were really good. The details of these and other sessions follow.
The conference began with “Building the next generation of experiences” by Arijit Chatterjee. Arijit is Engineering Manager for Platform Evangelism at Adobe Systems India. The trend of preferences for people is changing. Everyone wants to have better experiences, be it food, clothes or digital experiences. The experience has moved on from desktops, to laptops, to tablets and currently to smart phones. People want to have a meaningful, easy and engaging experience. There are essentially three areas of innovation in this:
1. Content authoring for the creators,
2. Customer experience management for businesses and
3. Online analytics and optimization to ensure the best value being delivered.
This session was followed by "Designing User Experiences for multi screen applications with Flash, HTML5 &CSS3" by Harish Sivaramakrishnan. Harish is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe Systems. He is also a UX design and usability expert. His talk highlighted the various devices available for communication, work etc today. The talk explored the possibility of designing the same user experience across all the different form factors i.e tablet, ipad, smart phones, desktop etc. Some practical ideas to be used by the developers to efficiently complete the coding , and the code that can be reused across all the different form factors, different screen resolutions using Adobe Flex, Flash, HTML 5 and CSS3. The programming tips and tricks were shared in these 3 platforms.
"HTML5 more than HTML5" was an interesting and thought provoking talk by Harish Vaidyanathan, who leads the evangelism efforts for Microsoft India. This session explored HTML5 and the session gave summary of HTML5 features. The session started with quick note of the logo design of HTML, and moved on to the features. Features include button curves, shadows, gradient can be done directly by coding. The button can have 4 different curve radii for 4 corners, button/ object can have shadow by placing lights .The best part is that while coding the screens can be checked by viewing in all the resolutions of different form factors. HTML5 combines the designer and developer skills and hence bridges the gap. Harish also gave aother session on "Unleashing a more beautiful web", some of the content was repetition of HTML and few features of IE 9.
"Towards a humane interface, aesthetic and usability" by Venkat Subramaniam. Venkat is the founder of Agile Developer,Inc. He has significant experience in design, architecture and development of software applications. The session gave an insight about usability in everyday interactions. Usability is more than just a “WOW” factor, it is more about making an application easier and intuitive to use. A successful application has to focus on three dimensions: business, design and usability. He gave few hilarious examples of User experience gone wrong in various products that he has come across. A spicejet check-in kiosk, Honda car to a programming language. The examples drawing to a very crucial point about Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) rule. This was a fantastic simple session and will be sharing the presentation to MT UX community once i get my hands on it.
The conference gave insights on the changing technology and its usage. A better world of tomorrow for designers and developers .
Thanks Ankush for reviewing the draft.
The conference began with “Building the next generation of experiences” by Arijit Chatterjee. Arijit is Engineering Manager for Platform Evangelism at Adobe Systems India. The trend of preferences for people is changing. Everyone wants to have better experiences, be it food, clothes or digital experiences. The experience has moved on from desktops, to laptops, to tablets and currently to smart phones. People want to have a meaningful, easy and engaging experience. There are essentially three areas of innovation in this:
1. Content authoring for the creators,
2. Customer experience management for businesses and
3. Online analytics and optimization to ensure the best value being delivered.
This session was followed by "Designing User Experiences for multi screen applications with Flash, HTML5 &CSS3" by Harish Sivaramakrishnan. Harish is a Platform Evangelist at Adobe Systems. He is also a UX design and usability expert. His talk highlighted the various devices available for communication, work etc today. The talk explored the possibility of designing the same user experience across all the different form factors i.e tablet, ipad, smart phones, desktop etc. Some practical ideas to be used by the developers to efficiently complete the coding , and the code that can be reused across all the different form factors, different screen resolutions using Adobe Flex, Flash, HTML 5 and CSS3. The programming tips and tricks were shared in these 3 platforms.
"HTML5 more than HTML5" was an interesting and thought provoking talk by Harish Vaidyanathan, who leads the evangelism efforts for Microsoft India. This session explored HTML5 and the session gave summary of HTML5 features. The session started with quick note of the logo design of HTML, and moved on to the features. Features include button curves, shadows, gradient can be done directly by coding. The button can have 4 different curve radii for 4 corners, button/ object can have shadow by placing lights .The best part is that while coding the screens can be checked by viewing in all the resolutions of different form factors. HTML5 combines the designer and developer skills and hence bridges the gap. Harish also gave aother session on "Unleashing a more beautiful web", some of the content was repetition of HTML and few features of IE 9.
"Towards a humane interface, aesthetic and usability" by Venkat Subramaniam. Venkat is the founder of Agile Developer,Inc. He has significant experience in design, architecture and development of software applications. The session gave an insight about usability in everyday interactions. Usability is more than just a “WOW” factor, it is more about making an application easier and intuitive to use. A successful application has to focus on three dimensions: business, design and usability. He gave few hilarious examples of User experience gone wrong in various products that he has come across. A spicejet check-in kiosk, Honda car to a programming language. The examples drawing to a very crucial point about Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS) rule. This was a fantastic simple session and will be sharing the presentation to MT UX community once i get my hands on it.
The conference gave insights on the changing technology and its usage. A better world of tomorrow for designers and developers .
Thanks Ankush for reviewing the draft.
Monday, 18 October 2010
Recently when customers rejected the new redesigned GAP logo, GAP decided to crowdsource the redesign exercise to help define their brand.
The entire GAP redesign exercise emphasized that if designers do not do their job well and management do not make wise decisions, the customers reject it (after all the customer is the king). And they will also suggest a redesign of the brand for you!
As the blame is now on the design firm who came up with this logo and GAP having decided to crowdsource instead, how do the rest of us (designers) ensure we do not fall into such situations? And how do we ensure crowdsourcing does not fire us and instead we work hand in hand. Moreover, what will our role be henceforth?
If you look back, from the time digital media entered the lives of designers (in 90's), designers needed to had these basic skills:
The entire GAP redesign exercise emphasized that if designers do not do their job well and management do not make wise decisions, the customers reject it (after all the customer is the king). And they will also suggest a redesign of the brand for you!
There may be many reasons why the design exercise could have gone wrong - like management making all the design decisions or underestimating design or their customers (thinking they would blindly accept their chosen logo). The management have realized that their decisions are not final, even when it comes to logo redesign. And the outpouring on the social media on this topic suggests customers do care for products they have been buying over the years.
As the blame is now on the design firm who came up with this logo and GAP having decided to crowdsource instead, how do the rest of us (designers) ensure we do not fall into such situations? And how do we ensure crowdsourcing does not fire us and instead we work hand in hand. Moreover, what will our role be henceforth?
If you look back, from the time digital media entered the lives of designers (in 90's), designers needed to had these basic skills:
- Idea generator, Creative, at times think out of the box
- Understands problems, users and provides appropriate solutions
- Produce aesthetically pleasing designs – have good knowledge in color theory, typography, layout, etc.
- Apply usability/ ergonomic principles
- Be proficient in all design softwares (esp. Adobe products)
- Work with team
With the explosion of the internet since late 90s, where anyone can access basic tutorials on Graphic design and opensource tools like GIMP, consumers are now taking a shot in designing, just like photography. And companies are trying to capitalize on this through ‘crowdsourcing’, just like what GAP is doing now, as it turns out much cheaper than hiring a design firm! Added to this, the design is created directly by the end user and their needs are being stated through design.
An amateur designer can have all the points mentioned earlier to a certain extent. S/he may be creative, have ideas, execute solutions in an amateur manner using the design tools. There will be more tools in future which will auto-suggest color combination, layout (just like what templates have already begin to do now)
However, crowdsourcing will also generate enormous individualistic data and management will still need to pick the right design which will reflect everyone's perception of the brand or idea. This is where we designers can capitalize.
Our roles in future will mainly be to –
Engage users
We will need to draw ideas from everyone, while allowing everyone to express themselves, which in turn makes customers feel they are being engaged in the entire exercise. We collect their inputs (data) for our design process and to further validate our design to the client with the populist data. We can also revalidate our design again through crowdsourcing and when the design is finally out in the market, the users will be proud of the outcome!
Analyze and draw insights
We will need to use crowdsourcing for design research to get insights to our design. The data collected from users through crowdsourcing (eg: pictures of their daily routine, etc.) will ultimately help create better products.
Induce design thinking
A designer will need to induce design thinking in the organization or team, and drive the design exercise, with team members, stakeholders and customers, getting their hands dirty in design implementation. A designer’s role will be to facilitate and bring out the best ideas from everyone and manage the entire design exercise! And use ‘Crowdsourcing’ as one of the methods from user research to design implementation.
And how do we designers achieve this - We will however need to focus more on design strategy and behavioral aspects. The technical aspects like layout, typography, usability heuristics will be automated in future. We will need to think cross-disciplinary rather than specialize in individual fields like graphic, fashion or industrial design in future.
The client/ management will also need to understand the importance of design, branding and be more involved in the design exercise while giving powers to the designer to make strategic decisions.
Thanks to Vinay and Anshuman for their inputs on the role of a designer in future.
Friday, 16 January 2009
Most of us usually concentrate on the bigger picture that solves usability related issues. Sometimes, we also need to concentrate on the small little details that help in navigation. While designing, 80% of the issues lie in navigation and who would have thought that users can find URL’s confusing.
Two types of URL’s come to mind:
The first pointer is much simpler to achieve. It is a simple configuration on the server which tells the server where to go when someone asks for, let’s say, www.url.com/abc. The latter is tricky. The factors that hinder this are:
The Bigger Gain
We might not realize the relevance of simplifying URL’s as it just requires clicking. But most users step into it or click on it only once they know what lies ahead. If users don’t understand URL’s, they are not going to tread into it deeper. This means that we have lost a prospect or even an existing customer. This just goes to say that the 80/20 rule holds true in this case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle.
Here is an article on this topic: http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000240.php
- URL’s are not just clicked, but understood.
- Most users need simplicity to know their path ahead.
- Trust is built when details are closely monitored.
- Abbreviations are not recognized universally. But ironically, not all of us know what “URL” stands for.
Two types of URL’s come to mind:
- Shortcuts that you would like people to remember e.g. www.bbc.com/weather or art.ebay.co.uk
- URL’s that can be extrapolated e.g. if I know that all usability definitions are stored as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability, I can find Interaction at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interaction
The first pointer is much simpler to achieve. It is a simple configuration on the server which tells the server where to go when someone asks for, let’s say, www.url.com/abc. The latter is tricky. The factors that hinder this are:
- Nobody captured it as a requirement.
- A technical limitation e.g. the Content Management Server does not allow such a URL e.g. http://www.postoffice.co.uk/portal/po/jump1?catId=19300207&mediaId=26800661
- It’s an application that does not follow logical structures e.g. you should not/ can’t reach the page 3 of a checkout process.
- The structure of the application mimics the directories in which different solutions are compiled. And hence, you see things like MCMSWebApp or http://viv.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?EbayTime in the URL – something that can be completely avoided on day 1, but is an expensive change later.
- Information can be accessible from multiple paths and can sit in multiple categories. Despite all the flak that Microsoft gets, it’s one of the companies whose products (like Content Management Server or SharePoint) emphasize on it. As an example (not the best ones), if you look at Jet Airways www.jetairways.com, all pages reflect the directory structure e.g. http://www.jetairways.com/Cultures/en-US/United+Kingdom/Products+and+Services/In+flight+Services
- Another example includes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/default.stm
The Bigger Gain
We might not realize the relevance of simplifying URL’s as it just requires clicking. But most users step into it or click on it only once they know what lies ahead. If users don’t understand URL’s, they are not going to tread into it deeper. This means that we have lost a prospect or even an existing customer. This just goes to say that the 80/20 rule holds true in this case: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle.
Here is an article on this topic: http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000240.php
Friday, 17 October 2008
This has been contributed by Rajesh Barde, an employee of MindTree.
With emerging content spanning across several websites, design is becoming a niche market placed within this vast world.
This week you get another interesting player in the market.
Here is your access to it!
What Are The Trends Today?
Real World Comparison
As seen in the real world, readers sip on their coffee and read content that is pushed to them. But in today’s online world, there are several other aspects like the ability to retrieve archives, the ability to categorize favorites, and the ability to make a world of your own here; this coupled with a cup of coffee!
Creating An Online Persona
More than individuals contributing to certain topics on their Blog, they find the need to create a website that does not reveal their identity. This removes bias and subjectivity in running a business/hobby online.
The Features That Come Along With It
It’s quite a thrill to see information being published that would interest a particular audience. And what’s more captivating today is not just the information being pushed forward to its readers but also the features that come along with it.
With this site, the ‘open filter’ works well as it propagates good design. Living up to your work is again a primary objective.
Targeting Your Audience
The rich look and feel of any publication or a website seems to bring in that keen interest in the audience. Especially, if you are targeting to, let’s say designers, you better give them what they want. The visual aspect of this website keeps their readers coming back for more.
Retaining Your Audience
Most websites today do have a way to subscribe or bookmark the content. This is extremely beneficial especially when you look at the competitive industry today. This website uses an 'Add to Favorites' section and also an 'RSS' feed that helps their readers keep in touch with the events and news around the world.
With emerging content spanning across several websites, design is becoming a niche market placed within this vast world.
This week you get another interesting player in the market.
Here is your access to it!
What Are The Trends Today?
Real World Comparison
As seen in the real world, readers sip on their coffee and read content that is pushed to them. But in today’s online world, there are several other aspects like the ability to retrieve archives, the ability to categorize favorites, and the ability to make a world of your own here; this coupled with a cup of coffee!
Creating An Online Persona
More than individuals contributing to certain topics on their Blog, they find the need to create a website that does not reveal their identity. This removes bias and subjectivity in running a business/hobby online.
The Features That Come Along With It
It’s quite a thrill to see information being published that would interest a particular audience. And what’s more captivating today is not just the information being pushed forward to its readers but also the features that come along with it.
With this site, the ‘open filter’ works well as it propagates good design. Living up to your work is again a primary objective.
Targeting Your Audience
The rich look and feel of any publication or a website seems to bring in that keen interest in the audience. Especially, if you are targeting to, let’s say designers, you better give them what they want. The visual aspect of this website keeps their readers coming back for more.
Retaining Your Audience
Most websites today do have a way to subscribe or bookmark the content. This is extremely beneficial especially when you look at the competitive industry today. This website uses an 'Add to Favorites' section and also an 'RSS' feed that helps their readers keep in touch with the events and news around the world.
Thursday, 17 July 2008
This has been contributed by Phalgun, an employee of MindTree.
My Favorite website for finding popular color combinations- http://kuler.adobe.com
It’s designed in Adobe Flex. There is an Adobe Air desktop application to download as well.
Anything in mind? Add on.
My Favorite website for finding popular color combinations- http://kuler.adobe.com
It’s designed in Adobe Flex. There is an Adobe Air desktop application to download as well.
Anything in mind? Add on.
Friday, 11 July 2008
Ben Shneiderman, the founding director of the Human-Computer Interaction Laboratory, focuses on the studies of information and visualization. His "Eight Golden Rules of Interface Design" is a guide to the principles of good interface design and information modeling.
His rules are self explanatory and practical.
1. Strive for consistency.
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
3. Offer informative feedback.
4. Design dialog to yield closure.
5. Offer simple error handling.
6. Permit easy reversal of actions.
7. Support internal locus of control.
8. Reduce short-term memory load.
In addition to these design principles, consider the following as well.
9. Match context and content to users.
10. Communicate the brand through information and visual design.
11. Map the information architecture to the branding assets.
12. Market content.
13. Culturally identify and map the users to its design.
Match context and content to users.
Every scenario driven design will have a context that supports the content. This should be mapped to the users who will be using it.
Communicate the brand through information and visual design.
The brand and its identity should be communicated in terms of what it is trying to do. Users will identify this through the information and the visual design.
Map the interface design to the branding assets.
The interface defines the layout and the hierarchy of content. This represents the taxonomy and the assets that the brand holds.
Market content.
Marketing content with what is being sold and what is being showcased is essential in terms of a) selling content b) selling products or services.
Culturally identify and map users to the design.
Through ethnographic/cultural studies, the context of the users are determined which helps identify and implement their behavior and the cultural nuances that exist.
Further thoughts? Add on.
His rules are self explanatory and practical.
1. Strive for consistency.
2. Enable frequent users to use shortcuts.
3. Offer informative feedback.
4. Design dialog to yield closure.
5. Offer simple error handling.
6. Permit easy reversal of actions.
7. Support internal locus of control.
8. Reduce short-term memory load.
In addition to these design principles, consider the following as well.
9. Match context and content to users.
10. Communicate the brand through information and visual design.
11. Map the information architecture to the branding assets.
12. Market content.
13. Culturally identify and map the users to its design.
Match context and content to users.
Every scenario driven design will have a context that supports the content. This should be mapped to the users who will be using it.
Communicate the brand through information and visual design.
The brand and its identity should be communicated in terms of what it is trying to do. Users will identify this through the information and the visual design.
Map the interface design to the branding assets.
The interface defines the layout and the hierarchy of content. This represents the taxonomy and the assets that the brand holds.
Market content.
Marketing content with what is being sold and what is being showcased is essential in terms of a) selling content b) selling products or services.
Culturally identify and map users to the design.
Through ethnographic/cultural studies, the context of the users are determined which helps identify and implement their behavior and the cultural nuances that exist.
Further thoughts? Add on.
Friday, 6 September 2002
The latest release of Yahoo! Messenger - version 5.5 is a significant step towards a workable and affordable electronic collaboration. We are not talking about the web cam support or the new range of emoticons that we have at our disposal, but a singular feature called 'The Doodle'.
Although, the IM Environment was present in earlier release of Yahoo! IM this one is different. Doodle allows two 'friends' to draw on a small window together. You will ask, so what? If you look back, traditionally chat software (from a user perspective) have more or less been the stylised version of the first generation or UNIX based chat applications. The earlier versions allowed users to send and receive multiple lines of text to each other, in many cases in an incoherent manner. Later, companies added capabilities to maintain friend lists and send emoticons.
However, it remained a messenger rather than growing towards a true collaborative tool.
Visual input and feedback is a critical factor in any interpersonal communication. When we speak, besides verbal communication, there is a combination of expressions, gestures and drawing on an imaginary surface. Companies tried to satisfy this need of expression through emoticons, visual feedback (although delayed) by introducing web cams. While emoticons were an instant hit, the amount of people using web cams remained restricted and often null in workplaces. The element of gestures and sketching on imaginary surfaces to explain scheme of things was missing in most of the IM software. (They are available in some high-end collaborative tools for engineering application)
Often we need to explain things to people, which can be done faster while sketching or sketches coupled with text, than illustrating it in words. Like explaining the location where you would meet your friend at your busy subway station or explaining the location of your office respective to the popular shopping mall. Besides the informational value, sketching and drawing have also been associated with self-expression and recreation for a long time. After childhood people stop drawing and sketching but they continue to doodle. From a teacher's caricature in the classroom to the boss's caricature in the boardroom, doodles have always been found to satisfy the self-expression and recreational urge.
Increasingly, products have started to address this urge as well. It started with MS Paint and has reached to picture editors in cell phones. Yahoo Doodle appears to be an attempt on similar lines. Professionals in fields like Architectural design, Engineering, Graphics, Fashion etc can benefit a great deal from this version. People can now discuss ideas by sketching it out together. When we are thinking the ideas are held in our short-term memory (STM), which works pretty much like a computer's RAM. During the thinking process it keeps exchanging information from our Long Term Memory (LTM), which works like a hard disk. To be able to think fresh and different, we should be able to keep the information in STM as fresh as possible. Sketches offer a mean to offload your brain's STM of ideas to an external medium. This makes the STM available for fresher ideas as you can always look at your sketch for reference to older ideas. Thus, adding a facility to sketch while people are chatting can encourage fresh ideas or just pure fun. This IM environment also lets you play Tic-Tac-Toe and 'connect the dots' in case you were looking for some less serious applications. There are few restrictions like how well one can draw with a mouse, absence of instant updates at the receivers end over a slow connection. A provision to copy paste existing pictures would help. Albeit the Yahoo! Doodle is a significant step towards instant electronic collaboration.
This article was first published in ZDNet on September 6, 2002.
Although, the IM Environment was present in earlier release of Yahoo! IM this one is different. Doodle allows two 'friends' to draw on a small window together. You will ask, so what? If you look back, traditionally chat software (from a user perspective) have more or less been the stylised version of the first generation or UNIX based chat applications. The earlier versions allowed users to send and receive multiple lines of text to each other, in many cases in an incoherent manner. Later, companies added capabilities to maintain friend lists and send emoticons.
However, it remained a messenger rather than growing towards a true collaborative tool.
Visual input and feedback is a critical factor in any interpersonal communication. When we speak, besides verbal communication, there is a combination of expressions, gestures and drawing on an imaginary surface. Companies tried to satisfy this need of expression through emoticons, visual feedback (although delayed) by introducing web cams. While emoticons were an instant hit, the amount of people using web cams remained restricted and often null in workplaces. The element of gestures and sketching on imaginary surfaces to explain scheme of things was missing in most of the IM software. (They are available in some high-end collaborative tools for engineering application)
Often we need to explain things to people, which can be done faster while sketching or sketches coupled with text, than illustrating it in words. Like explaining the location where you would meet your friend at your busy subway station or explaining the location of your office respective to the popular shopping mall. Besides the informational value, sketching and drawing have also been associated with self-expression and recreation for a long time. After childhood people stop drawing and sketching but they continue to doodle. From a teacher's caricature in the classroom to the boss's caricature in the boardroom, doodles have always been found to satisfy the self-expression and recreational urge.
Increasingly, products have started to address this urge as well. It started with MS Paint and has reached to picture editors in cell phones. Yahoo Doodle appears to be an attempt on similar lines. Professionals in fields like Architectural design, Engineering, Graphics, Fashion etc can benefit a great deal from this version. People can now discuss ideas by sketching it out together. When we are thinking the ideas are held in our short-term memory (STM), which works pretty much like a computer's RAM. During the thinking process it keeps exchanging information from our Long Term Memory (LTM), which works like a hard disk. To be able to think fresh and different, we should be able to keep the information in STM as fresh as possible. Sketches offer a mean to offload your brain's STM of ideas to an external medium. This makes the STM available for fresher ideas as you can always look at your sketch for reference to older ideas. Thus, adding a facility to sketch while people are chatting can encourage fresh ideas or just pure fun. This IM environment also lets you play Tic-Tac-Toe and 'connect the dots' in case you were looking for some less serious applications. There are few restrictions like how well one can draw with a mouse, absence of instant updates at the receivers end over a slow connection. A provision to copy paste existing pictures would help. Albeit the Yahoo! Doodle is a significant step towards instant electronic collaboration.
This article was first published in ZDNet on September 6, 2002.
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