On Jun 25, 2008, at 8:07 AM, Andrei Herasimchuk wrote:
You want a framework? Go take a design class. Simple as that as far
as I'm concerned.
Two personal anecdotes from design school:
1) My first graphic design class, I remember trying to get the hang of
compositional space and laying out letters and image with the grid,
etc. And I was trying too hard to be artsy. Prof came over, moved the
elements around trying different arrangements (this is all paper
pieces with hand-drawn letters, btw). I was blown away. I asked her
what was she thinking about as she was organizing elements. And she
walked me through a "framework" of person/space/word/image (i forget
the actual words, but similar) which I found fascinating...That
there's a basic framework that guided her design actions in an
intuitive manner because it had become her habit and evolved with her
many years of experience, operating sub-consciously.
At that moment I realized that there is something specific and capable
of being articulated that really separated communicative design from
expressive art, which I found very powerful.
2) Dick Buchanan's graduate design seminar, he wrote out the steps of
a typical UCD process on the whiteboard, going on about the major
steps, etc. When he concluded, I raised my hand and asked, "So if
someone just walked in right now and memorized and did those steps, is
that person then a designer?" And Dick just smiled sneakily, hinting
something about the personal and the "noumenal"... hmmm!
I share these to show that designing actually balances both
"frameworks" and "ingenuity" or "talent" (for lack of a better word)
in a kind of back-and-forth dialogue, left/right brain if you will (a
dialectical method). What we must avoid is heavy handed bureaucracy
and stifling of creativity by forcing designers to march lockstep step
after step, all mandatory, all documented and codified, etc. Else it
becomes a crutch and kills inventive spirit, imho :-)
As for the people who pay the checks? All they care about is getting
a great product. If you design great stuff they don't care how you
did it. Guaranteed.
Execs may care about great products (altho in enterprise i bet they
care more about sales contracts to drive more revenue for the
quarter :-) but I'd guess most designers work day-to-day making and
fighting decisions with middle managers who are much more concerned
about CYA, political power, ego and don't really care all that much
about great products...If they did, they wouldn't persist crappy
legacy tech or absurd features! There in it to protect themselves and
use "user experience" to blame sadly. So we end up pushing "standard
UCD process" with "repeatable methods" as a source of authority to
combat those folks and assert a design's legitimacy...Sucks but
that's reality I bet many designers confront daily.
Uday Gajendar
Sr. Interaction Designer
Voice Technology Group
Cisco | San Jose
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