Jared,
I appear to have touched a nerve. My comments below: "If a designer isn't more enlightened about good design than a usability practitioner, than I would have to say they probably shouldn't be designers. I'm not sure why this has to sound like it would be insulting to usability practitioners. Designing is a different process than evaluation. Clearly, both designers and usability practitioners have to understand the principles of what makes a site, or software or product usable, but this doesn't mean that the person who is the usability specialist would be an equally good designer. With all due respect, let me say this: This is just a load of crap. Good design is an end result that is the product of the work of a team. To produce good design, all members of the team need an almost equal understanding of good design. " I have watched well over 100 different teams design web ware, and I have never seen a team where all members of the team have an equal understanding of good design. There are always one or two people who take the lead and create the design. The rest contribute information and critical evaluation to the process certainly, but they do not have an equally broad holistic view of the project - nor do they design. "Interaction designers will know how they contribute to that goal, as will visual designers, but they won't necessarily have cross-over skills. Of course, designing is a different process than evaluation. In fact, I defy you to tell me what the "process of design" is, particularly, as it leads to the predictable and reliable creation of good designs." In a way you are making my point for me here. You can't define the process of design. It is an art, not a science. It is creative, something new comes out of it that is not the result of process, which is the result of the design talent of an individual. "Designing is not a unified, singular process. It's stylistic. It takes a lot of different components. It requires a specific type of culture to do well. It thrives in certain contexts and fails in others. It involves skills from all over the organization. (http://tinyurl.com/2wyjj4) Even the best organizations, have tremendous trouble doing it predictably (Apple's iPhone vs. Apple TV -- both announced on the same day and produced in the same culture, but have very different results). Unless you're a one-person company, more than one person contributes to the final design. I contend that all the members on the team have to have an equal enlightenment about good design (and about how their individual skills and talents will contribute to that good design) for a good design to result." It would be good if they did all have equal enlightenment but it just doesn't happen in the real world. I have seen a lot of design teams take a beginning design that looks like a horse with only two legs and end up with a horse that has four legs in all the right places. Teams like this create end products that are neither really bad nor really good. They are adequate, and fulfill the long checklist of requirements attached to the project. I have seen other teams start with a racehorse and turn it into a camel. The "design process" as you like to call it just means that eveyone's opinion is to some extent honored (usually on the basis of how much status they have in the organization, rarely is it based on enlightenment :). Excellent design gets lost in the process. If you don't have someone on the team who can design elegant excellence, no amount of team process is going to make it so. "I will also say (clearly opening myself to heated disagreement) that designing something is much more difficult than evaluating and incrementally improving something already established. It requires a holistic appreciation of many factors. And it takes talent -- which is not simply the sum of all the skills and experiences the designer has picked up over the years -- it is more than that. *Good* designers are, in fact, more enlightened about good design than *good* usability practitioners and it is that indefinable something that separates art from science that makes it so. I'm glad you recognize this is clearly opening yourself up to a heated disagreement because, again with all due respect, this too is crap. There is virtually nothing in this statement that is accurate. If you believe that designing something is more difficult than evaluating something, (a) you've probably never seriously evaluated anything and (b) you probably should be an evaluator, since design seems so difficult to you. Try being at the leading edge of evaluation for 25+ years and then tell me how difficult it is. Doing a quality job at evaluation is extremely challenging for even the most talented in the field." Sorry, but I disagree. This is an age old debate. But there is no question in my mind that it is harder to write a book than to write a book review. It is harder to make a movie than to write a movie review. It is harder to pull together all the myriad inputs for web ware and software (usability inputs among them) and design an elegant, user-friendly, simple solution that satisfies all inputs, than it is to measure and critique the proposed solution. The people who can design well rise to the top in any design organization, precisely because they *are* more enlightened about designing than other members of the team. "I think your implication that usability practice is about "evaluating and incrementally improving something already established" shows misses what good usability practice bring to the design process. Good usability practice informs the team by providing insights into the team's decision making process, thereby enhancing the quality of the resulting design." I never said that a good usability practice was not extremely helpful. I just said design was harder because it has to include the awareness of usability along with creativity. "Your definition of talent is also incorrect. Talent, by most behavioral definitions, is not the sum of all skills and experiences, which are separate from talent. Talent is an innate capability. You can have two people with the exact same skills (which are learned) and experiences, yet if one is more talented, you'll see results. That's why David Ortiz plays baseball very differently than Alex Rodriguez. Both have almost equivalent skills (as does every major league player) and very similar experiences, but very different talents." I'm not sure what you are trying to say here. It seems to me that you are making my point that design talent crosses over into the indefinable difference between science and art. I never said that talent is the sum total of one's skills and experience - just the opposite. "Designing is not any more an artistic endeavor than usability practice. And good design employs as much "science" as good evaluation does." Here is where I think we diverge the most. I am compelled to offer back to you your elegant phrase, "This is just a load of crap". As far as I can tell, you tend to think there is a design *process* that results in good design. Get the right inputs into the process and out comes a good design. In my experience, a good design process merely enables talented individuals to design well. A good process insures that the designer(s) are not unaware of key criteria for the design. A good design process iterates without losing the magic of the core design. But the outcome of the process still relies centrally on the talents of the designer(s). As I said earlier, if the designer isn't very talented, a good design team may insure that the horse that started with only two legs ends up with four. But if you don't have a talented designer you'll never end up with a racehorse. Of course, these are just my opinions and based purely on my experience doing research and evaluation the field of design for almost 30 years. It's likely I'm not enlightened enough to understand how it's really done, so please assess the validity of my comments accordingly. These are of course my opinions also, based on 15 years critiquing design, managing design, and designing. Respectfully yours, Joseph Selbie Founder, CEO Tristream Web Application Design http://www.tristream.com ________________________________________________________________ *Come to IxDA Interaction08 | Savannah* February 8-10, 2008 in Savannah, GA, USA Register today: http://interaction08.ixda.org/ ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... 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