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Maintenance Projects and U&SA
processes & methodologies, software development, usability
November 22, 2003, 07:06 PM
Turns out Dan wrote an article for Boxes and Arrows about a year ago titled "Tackling Maintenance Projects". The article is excellent and I recommend reading it. What I found most interesting, however, is how Dan's advice relates to the impact of software architecture on usability.
Dan draws a distinction between "Atomic Maintenance Projects" (more or less complete redesigns, of potentially both the interface and the underlying implementation) and "Neutron Maintenance Projects" (small changes that serve as point solutions but may not address the larger usability issues). The problem he observes is that often your client thinks they only need a Neutron fix, but after inspecting the interface you realize that an Atomic redesign is necessary to achieve adequate usability. In his words:
And there’s the rub. Often, IAs are left to wrestle with decisions that were made long before their involvement with the project; decisions that people in the company may not even like but are stuck with. Or decisions they have a vested stake in keeping intact. Or decisions various forces in the company (IT, Marketing, and Legal being typical stakeholders) insist must remain, for reasons the IA may or may not agree with.
Our hope with U&SA is that by bringing usability professionals (or designers or information architects or what have you) into the process at the system architecture design stage and giving them the intellectual tools they need to understand how to effectively contribute, we can reduce the need for Atomic projects so that more usability issues can be dealt with at the Neutron project level, which, as Dan correctly points out, is often insufficient given the current state of the practice.
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A Foundation for HCI?
philosophy, usability
November 22, 2003, 12:10 PM
I've written before about Graduate Design Seminar, a class I'm not actually in but which I'm experiencing vicariously through Dan. A couple days ago, I was talking to Dave Holstius, an HCI PhD student who's also taking the class. He feels that the HCII needs a similar class that provides a firm philosophical foundation for the discipline and an overview of its intellectual history. Sadly, there isn't really anyone in our institute who is qualified to teach such a course. We need a Dick Buchanan of our own.
I have no idea where I'd even begin to uncover such a foundation on my own. Do any courses or texts even exist in the world that would trace the history of ideas behind HCI?
Posted by Dan on November 22, 2003 at 02:19 PM
How about starting with Brenda Laurel's The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design? It's not a primer on the history of HCI (no idea what would be--maybe you should write it and make a name for yourself), but it does discuss principles and theories at a high level.
Posted by Rob on November 24, 2003 at 04:45 PM
Thanks for the pointer, Dan; I'll have to check it out when I get some free time.
Regarding the history of HCI: I imagine there would be a lot of crossover with what Dick teaches in Design Seminar, although it may also reach into the history of psychology, human factors, and the philosophy of technology. I'm afraid I'd much prefer to have someone else figure out the exact connections and teach them to me than do all the work required to write one myself, though...
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How the IT Industry Really Works
funny, processes & methodologies, software development
November 19, 2003, 04:29 PM
This cartoon is an oldie (I think I first saw it in "Developing User Interfaces" by Hartson and Hix), but it's worth repeating. It's a great 8-pane summary of the product development communication problems that I keep rambling about on this here forum.
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Competing Definitions of Design
design, language, philosophy
November 18, 2003, 07:54 PM
Dan has a post up about Dick Buchanan's definition of design:
"Design is the human power to conceive, plan, and realize products that serve human beings in the accomplishment of any individual or collective purpose."
Just for fun, let's compare and contrast this with my own stab at defining design:
"a deliberate action prompted by an understanding of the state of the world intended to transform the world into an improved state."
First off, Dick's definition explicitly mentions humans, whereas mine leaves the actors undefined. I think for all practical intents and purposes this is an unimportant distinction.
Secondly, Dick's incorporates a three-stage process into the definition; to design you must "conceive, plan, and realize". Mine doesn't discuss any of the activities that make up design. Perhaps it should.
Next, his specifically mentions products as the output of design. I prefer leaving this undefined, for some design processes have as their output a refined policy or organizational structure, or perhaps a new process for performing some task. These things aren't products unless you define "product" much more broadly than most people do.
Next, my definition calls out "understanding the world" as an essential component of design, whereas Dick's does not. Perhaps this is too prescriptive, since lots of design gets done without any formal attempt to understand the context in which it must fit. I'd argue that designers still require some (possibly incorrect) understanding to move forward with, which often may be based solely on their own assumptions.
Finally, my definition specifies that design attempts to improve the world (in the mind of the designers, anyway), whereas Dick's gives as the aim of design "accomplishment of any individual or collective purpose".
Dick is certainly correct that definitions cannot provide closure on all the important philosophical issues in the field. But it's still interesting to hear what words people choose to define the terms they use everyday. It often unveils subtle, but important, differences in people's understanding of the meaning behind those terms.
Posted by James Spahr on November 18, 2003 at 08:43 PM
My favorite definition (just because of the double meaning and the beauty of it's simplicity) :
Design is a Good Idea
Posted by Rob on November 19, 2003 at 02:05 PM
Sounds like a good definition, in line with the "lively" poetic definitions Dan mentions in his post.
Dick's and my definitions were more philosophical, more precise, but also more boring :). Each is suited for different purposes, really.
Posted by haven on November 24, 2003 at 04:32 PM
When Dick uses the word "product" he is talking about it in the broader sense of the word. He's referring to products, as many of us over in the ID program often do, as artifacts (often confused with product), services, systems, environments, etc. The best way to think about it is product is that which is produced, and it does not necessarily need to be a tangible thing.
Perhaps that clears up that matter a little. As for the rest, we'll save that for a chat over a beer.
Posted by Rob on November 24, 2003 at 04:53 PM
Point conceded. I could quibble with the practice of redefining a standard term to mean something different that it's popular definition, since that invites confusion. But if I did so I'd start down a path of devoting my life to arguing with half the philosophers, engineers, and other skilled professionals that have developed a substantial amount of jargon in their field. Some things you just gotta accept!
Posted by Smriti Gupta on March 12, 2007 at 12:20 AM
To me, the best definition of design still says, "design is a problem solving
excercise. The intricasies like identofications of problems comes engraved in this.
Posted by Kenneth Lynn on September 04, 2007 at 02:57 PM
Design – "the conscious selection and deployment of resources to achieve a specified objective" – is the key activity of the human race. Everything, including survival, depends on the quality of our design ability. We are designing our future. The design of the built environment (Architecture)is of particular importance because of its inescapable effect on our lives. “We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us.” (Churchill). Through the activity and appreciation of design we increase out understanding of our environment and of our place and potential within it. Vitruvius, writing 2000 years ago, identified three criteria essential in Architecture but applicable to all design - usefulness, sustainability and beauty. When we understand the significance of these three criteria we are in a position to make an objective judgement on the quality of design.
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Flexible Designs and the Role of the Designer
design, usability
November 18, 2003, 11:58 AM
My good friend Kerry has a post up on an art exhibit on rethinking the role of design in everyday life. The exhibit includes a project called Felt 12x12, which is essentially a collection of felt squares that the consumer can combine to be anything he wants. This got me thinking about the roles of the consumer and the designer and how much influence each should have over the product.
When designing a piece of technology, especially software technology, one thing you have to decide is the extent to which the end user should be able to configure the product. If you make the product completely rigid and allow for no reconfiguration, then you risk alienating the vast majority of your users who have special needs, plus you lose one of the main advantages of digital computers, their flexibility. On the other hand, if you make the product too configurable, you'll wind up with a jumbled mass of options that are hard to use and hard to maintain (from a programmer's perspective), most of which are rarely needed by the majority of your user base.
I've discussed the problem of designing for end-user customization before, in the context of open source interfaces. As I mentioned then, the HCI and Interaction Design literature tends to emphasize that it is the designer's job to make decisions about the form and function of the product; she should do all the work so that the user doesn't have to think. But the literature tends to approach this from a very narrow perspective; the study from Nielsen only looked into the effects of allowing users to reconfigure the interface's appearance on their time to complete a task. There are many other potential benefits of allowing some user customization, such as improving user satisfaction and supporting tasks the interface wasn't designed for. How much of this truism is the way things must be, and how much of it is self-interest on the part of designers?
What is the role of the designer in society? Is she always tasked with constructing fully-formed user experiences and "canned" design solutions, or must she often instead work to produce "a framework, within which consumers can define shape and form for themselves"? When constructing such a framework, the user's tasks by definition are poorly defined, similar to the problems confronted in designing interfaces to support creativity. Most of our methods rely on these tasks being well defined. Will our methods help us rise to this challenge, or must we develop new methods that better support configurability?
Posted by haven on November 24, 2003 at 04:27 PM
Funny. That's what my thesis is about. Great minds think alike.
Posted by Rob on November 24, 2003 at 04:32 PM
You'll have to explain to me what you're doing sometime, perhaps over beer or something. I keep trying to milk Kerry for information but she claims she doesn't understand it herself ;).
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Live Long, Eat Well
life & times
November 17, 2003, 12:50 AM
At Kenneth's recommendation, I've been making use of Epicurious recently, which is an excellent online resource for recipe ideas if, like me, you're too busy to read cooking magazines and don't own a whole lot of cookbooks. In an effort to salvage my resolution to cook more, I've thrown a couple of dinner parties recently where I made spicy blackened catfish and green chili and monterey jack quesadillas. Both came out pretty well.
The problem is that the only time I'm able to motivate myself to spend the time to prepare something complicated is when I have guests over. So I guess if I want to cook more, I'll just have to throw more parties. I'm sure my friends won't complain...
Posted by Mathilde on November 18, 2003 at 01:32 PM
Nope, certainly won't complain. :-) Thanks again for dinner, it was really nice.
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Posted by Dan on November 22, 2003 at 09:20 PM
I always forget I wrote this article. After re-reading it, it's not too bad. :) Glad you found it useful.