Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
In response to Can't be done you might offer a work session where together you design how it can be done and also work out an estimate of how much work/time it would take to build it. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41663 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
Hi Elle, I think what may help you is focusing on getting your developers to achieve empathy for your users. One of the best ways to do this is to involve them with your usability testing. Watching four or five people painfully struggle through a user test is extremely motivational to anyone watching: developers/managers/designers/etc Otherwise, a developer without empathy may not be able to rationalize a difficult technical hurdle if they think the product is fine. -Cyrus www.twitter.com/ckarbass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41663 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
My favorite aphorism that applies: Cheap, fast, good. Pick two. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41665 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
Hi, I'm in a transition stage, moving from developer to business systems analyst. In this new role, I'm trying to incorporate some usability guidelines and improve user interaction. I get quite a bit of push back from the developer team members. They claim certain things cannot be done. However, being a developer, I know some things can be done. There was even a point, since I still have access to the environment that I wrote some code to prove it. I cannot go on doing that for the rest of my career. But, I would hate to give up the fight, and allow good interaction design to take a backseat to quick, dirty, cheap development. How do some of you, who have been in my situation, handle these types of resistances, so that your application can be a good and usable one? Thanks, Elle Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
Hi Elle, I like your approach, saying: if you (mr developer) can't do it, I will do it myself. In my experience you only have to say/prove it once or twice and professional developers will take the challenge the next time. Nothing is impossible. Some design solutions are expensive, unsecure or for some other reason not perfect. Invite developers to criticize your design. Let them explain what the technical consequences are and -important- ask them to think of alternatives that are more desirable from a technical view point. In most cases a compromise within the functional and technical constraints is possible. The end result will be a piece of teamwork all team member are proud of. If this strategy doesn't work, I can only advise to hire better developers ;) Don't give up the fight, it's your responsibility to create a solution with the best interaction possible. - Yohan. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
The real stunner in my experience is to say ... The criteria that you are using in order to determine what to do are different from the criteria I'm using. Your criteria are based on technical insights together with your beliefs about what would work for the user. There's a whole discipline devoted to figuring out what users do, what they want, and what we should do for them. There are a whole lot of surprises that come out of looking at things from the users' point of view. For example, in our situation, ... Let's talk about things from both points of view: what experience the users would find most beneficial and compelling, and what we can do for them. I'll keep user behaviors uppermost in my mind, and you can keep technical considerations uppermost in your mind. But we each have to turn to the other to make this work, because we are developing complementary expertise. Here are some things I've laid out that provide a framework that we can work in ... Best wishes, Bruce On Fri, May 1, 2009 at 4:33 AM, Yohan Creemers yo...@ylab.nl wrote: Hi Elle, I like your approach, saying: if you (mr developer) can't do it, I will do it myself. In my experience you only have to say/prove it once or twice and professional developers will take the challenge the next time. Nothing is impossible. Some design solutions are expensive, unsecure or for some other reason not perfect. Invite developers to criticize your design. Let them explain what the technical consequences are and -important- ask them to think of alternatives that are more desirable from a technical view point. In most cases a compromise within the functional and technical constraints is possible. The end result will be a piece of teamwork all team member are proud of. If this strategy doesn't work, I can only advise to hire better developers ;) Don't give up the fight, it's your responsibility to create a solution with the best interaction possible. - Yohan. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org 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 ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
On 30 Apr 2009, at 12:49, Elle wrote: [snip] How do some of you, who have been in my situation, handle these types of resistances, so that your application can be a good and usable one? [snip] The best way I find to get out of these situations is to ask Why? - possibly several times (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_Whys :-) Some of the reasons I discover have included things along the lines of * Time constraints: Well of course we could do Foo if we had 3 months - but it needs to be released next week. * Multi-tasking problems: Well of course we could do Foo, but I'm working on projects X Y too. Boss says project X wins. * Feature prioritisation issues: Well of course we could do Foo, but at the moment that bit of the system is functional - if ugly - and OtherImportantFeature still needs finishing for sales to meet their promises * Skill issues: You can do Foo? How? (just coz _you_ can do it doesn't mean they can :-) * Budget constraints: Of course we could do Foo, but we only have three days of money left * Reward structures: Of course we could do Foo, but that's not a new feature - that's just a UI fix - and we lose our bonus if we don't ship another new feature this month * Organisational issues: You can tell me to do Foo all you like, the only person who can get me to switch from my current task is my boss * Previous experiences: Every time a designer tells me to change something, it comes back to bite us with bad customer reports failed projects (There are a lot of bad designers out there unfortunately. Some really good developers have only worked with bad designers. This can colour their view of the group...) ... and so on ... More often than not I find that the underlying reason for the no makes perfect sense to the person saying it. More often than not the root cause turns out to be a business/organisational issue rather than anything related to the ux/dev folk. Sometimes no turns out to have been the right answer given the whole context. Do your devs have reasons for their no? Cheers, Adrian Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
Sounds like less of a technical issue, and more of a respect issue. You could be a clown transitioning to ringmaster; you could experience the same thing. Read an I/O Psychology book for understanding motivations and finding possible solutions. On Apr 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Elle wrote: Hi, I'm in a transition stage, moving from developer to business systems analyst. In this new role, I'm trying to incorporate some usability guidelines and improve user interaction. I get quite a bit of push back from the developer team members. They claim certain things cannot be done. However, being a developer, I know some things can be done. There was even a point, since I still have access to the environment that I wrote some code to prove it. I cannot go on doing that for the rest of my career. But, I would hate to give up the fight, and allow good interaction design to take a backseat to quick, dirty, cheap development. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
There are no such things as technical limitations. That is a cop-out phrase that people use to avoid change. That said. There is such a thing as financial limitations. It is technically possible to build something JUST LIKE a google search appliance but that returns a REAL total number of results. It would require a lot more power than a GSA comes with, and a lot more thought, and millions of dollars in RD. When a GSA is 1/100th that cost. So it is better to just not have a 'go to the last page' button. Will . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=41665 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
On May 1, 2009, at 3:32 PM, William Brall wrote: There are no such things as technical limitations. That is a cop-out phrase that people use to avoid change. Huh. Someone better tell the poor electron, which has spent all of its existence trying to move faster than the speed of light and never quite getting there. I would think, at some point, you run into limitations of the space- time continuum. That said. There is such a thing as financial limitations. Now, that's interesting. I guess it's been somewhat proven by the federal debt, though not quite. I don't think either of these approaches of declaring what are limitations are really helpful to someone. I'd suggest you look for something that actually holds proverbial water. Jared Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
On Apr 30, 2009, at 12:49 PM, Elle wrote: How do some of you, who have been in my situation, handle these types of resistances, so that your application can be a good and usable one? Elle, What you're describing is an adversarial relationship with developers. You say it can be done. They say it can't. This is a classic opinion war. And, in my experience, opinion wars can not be won. So, if you take this approach, you will always lose. In our research, we've found the best teams step past opinion wars by having a solid experience vision and a good feedback mechanism. The team collaboratively creates a vision of what an aspirational experience could be, sometime in the future. Imagine what it's like to use the design without today's frustrations -- what would that be like? (Note: this isn't 'What would the DESIGN be like?', but instead 'What would the EXPERIENCE be like?') The team then measures the current experience (using techniques like usability testing and field studies). Then it talks about what baby steps could move them in the direction of the vision. This is very different from the You-Must-Do-This/We-Can't-Do-This approach of the opinion war. It's a collaborative and iterative process, where the entire team explores the options. You can see more about what I'm talking about in this article: The 3 Q's For Great Experience Design http://www.uie.com/articles/the3qs/ Hope that helps, Jared p.s. This is also what we're talking about in the upcoming UIE Roadshow: http://is.gd/gxwe -- I'll have a discount code for IxDA folks shortly. Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jsp...@uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: @jmspool UIE Roadshow: Seattle, Denver, DC in June: http://is.gd/gxwe Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Technical Limitation Arguements
moving from developer to business systems Internal move or company to company? I only ask because if it was internal you would know who you are dealing with. They claim certain things cannot be done.If they cannot be done and they have been employed and have say you can be absolutely certain they know what can be done to secure their position. There was even a point, since I still have access to the environment that I wrote some code to prove it. You are totally undermining their authority. I've totally done this before. Or I've done it with out showing then asked if it could be done and when they say no I say how did I make this happen (with that total I am f*cking retard look on my face). Or my favorite is to ask if it is okay if you do it because you know how. Hell no do that want that to happen. I guess you should ask for their advice or alternative solutions even thought you know they are full of sh*t. Their is always more than one way to do something, might as well hear em out. Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
