Persuasion and passion are important and I'm seeing more references to principles of persuasion in design discussions (for example the work of Cialdini). In fact, a solid grounding in persuasion principles should be part of our professional training. I wrote an essay on the use of persuasive techniques for usability practitioners in 2007 issue of the ACM interactions. Methods (or more accurately, the output of methods which can be qualitative or quantitative) should, as you say, provide data and interpretations for discussion and debate and different methods can even provide different sides of the problem (method triangulation).
I profoundly dislike the autocratic application of "standard" methods and like to consider how different methods can examine different angles to a problem. For example, you wrote an excellent essay on how to run brainstorming sessions. Group brainstorming is a complex social environment and hard to do well. There is another technique called brainwriting (which you might have written about) which can be used to gather input when groups are shy or there are political concerns or you have a mix of old and new people. The brainwriting method can complement group brainstorming and often provides an outlet for those who may be anxious in a group setting. So, methods and their output should be used to expose a range of issues, contribute to debate and discussion, and support the triangulation of data that will reduce risk to stakeholders and eventually customers. I very much enjoyed your brainstorming write-up by the way and reference it in a chapter that I've written on brainstorming, brainwriting, and braindrawing. thanks, Chauncey On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 3:01 PM, Scott Berkun <[email protected]> wrote: > True - you didn't - Sorry for criticizing you for something you did not say > :) > > My bias is against teams pretending to quantify the unquantifiable. I like > opinions. I like things that designers believe but can not prove > mathematically, but can explain through argument. Any decision making > process that doesn't make use of conviction, persuasion and passion is one > I > doubt will work out well. > > Decision models/methods are great provided they're fodder - that they're > used to help the discussion and debate, but not to replace it. Too often > managers becomes slaves to methods, and they follow them to the letter > because of the temptation to dodge their responsibility to think and be > accountable: they can blame the method. Or in the case of pure democratic > method, blame the team (You voted for it!). Methods can can easily > encourage > the tolerance for design-by-committee type decisions. > > So in the case of "how many alternatives", I'm a huge advocate of > delegating > the design decisions to the point where a small group of people (possibly > one), can easily figure this out for themselves - based on the resources > they have, divided by the short ordered list of which design decisions are > most important. If no such list exists, they should be motivated to make > one. > > If power is distributed well, you're less likely to need a "method". > > -Scott > > Scott Berkun > www.scottberkun.com > > _____ > > From: Chauncey Wilson [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Monday, January 19, 2009 11:44 AM > To: Scott Berkun > Cc: [email protected] > Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] How many alternatives, concepts, or sketches > are > enough? > > > You make a good point though I didn't specifically mention equal voting at > all. You could have a small group who, as you say, have their necks on the > line or you could have private voting of the 10 top designers in the > country > using polling software or you could generate criteria and have your small > group use the criteria as a starting point for a deeper discussion of the > type you suggest. You mention listing the criteria on the board which is a > great starting point, because many groups fail to explicitly identify > criteria that they are using (that method sounds like the QOC method - > Questions-Options-Criteria - that is described in the "design rationale" > literature.) \ > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
