Thursday, April 20, 2017

"Things That Keep Us Busy - The Elements of Interaction" proofs are sent

Ok, yesterday Lars-Erik Janlert and I sent our final edits to the proofs of our forthcoming book "Things That Keep Us Busy - The Elements of Interaction". If everything goes well the book will be out in August/September. The 'book' is already available on Amazon. And you can preorder it!

Friday, April 14, 2017

Concept-driven interaction design research

Today I carefully read an article that I wrote with Mikael Wiberg and published in 2010 in the HCI journal. The article is titled "Concept-driven interaction design research". It is not always fun to read something you have written a while back, but in this case I was pleasantly surprised. I really liked it!

One reason why I liked it is that since we published the article the field of HCI research has developed and it seems as if the article and its contributions are better suited for today than when it was published.

I also really like the basic idea in the article, that is, that it is possible to use a concept-driven design approach with the purpose of theoretical advancements.   (I think you can download the paper here)

Here is the abstract of the paper:

"In this article, we explore a concept-driven approach to interaction design research with a specific focus on theoretical advancements. We introduce this approach as a complementary approach to more traditional, and well-known, user-centered interaction design approaches. A concept-driven approach aims at manifesting theoretical concepts in concrete designs. A good concept design is both conceptually and historically grounded, bearing signs of the intended theoretical considerations. In the area of human–computer interaction and interaction design research, this approach has been quite popular but not necessarily explicitly recognized and developed as a proper research methodology. In this article, we demonstrate how a concept-driven approach can coexist, and be integrated with, common user-centered approaches to interaction design through the development of a model that makes explicit the existing cycle of prototyping, theory development, and user studies. We also present a set of basic principles that could constitute a foundation for concept driven interaction research, and we have considered and described the methodological implications given these principles. For the field of interaction design research we find this as an important point of departure for taking the next step toward the construction and verification of theoretical constructs that can help inform and guide future design research projects on novel interaction technologies."

Tuesday, April 11, 2017

A forgotten but crucial aspect of designing

One of the most exciting reactions I get when I talk to professional designers about the design process is when I mention what I call the practicalities of designing. With this notion I try to capture all those seemingly 'trivial' aspects of designing that are so easy to forget when we talk about design thinking. The practicalities of designing can briefly be listed as:

Time (not having enough)
Resources (not having enough)
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Information (not having enough)
Knowledge (not having enough)
Competence (not having enough)

Every design process and designer lives with these practicalities. The first two are the most concrete and also the ones that are most often forgotten and neglected. Designing is about projects. A project has some kind of a starting point and some kind of an end point. The process is to a large extent defined in time and by resources. In most cases, time and resources are decided without any deep understanding of the particulars and specifics of the design process in question. It is done during the 'contracting' process (another aspect of designing which is not given enough attention unfortunately).

The three practicalities under the line are maybe less concrete but are equally practical.  When it comes to information, for instance, there are situations during every design process when the designer experiences that there is both too much information and not enough information. And even though every step in the process creates more (useful) information it also leads to a need for even more. Designers struggle constantly with overwhelming (too much) but insufficient (not enough) information.

My point here is that these practicalities (and there are of course others) are not glamorous or exciting, especially not time and resources, but they are crucial and they define designing. To understand designing requires a deep understanding of these practicalities.

My experience is that if you want to talk to designers and be taken seriously you have to show that you understand and respect the practicalities of designing. You have to know what it means to engage in a design process without enough time and resources, with too much and but insufficient information, without enough knowledge and competence, etc. You need to be able to talk about these practicalities in a language that make sense to professionals and make them recognize that you respect all aspects of their practice.


Friday, April 07, 2017

Why designing is all about you and not the method or tool

Working with students and professionals over the years have helped me understand what aspects of the design process that makes designers stressed and insecure. One factor is the role of methods and tools in designing. Common questions I get are "what are the best methods and tools to use in designing?" and "can you do human centered design while being 'agile'?" or "can 'personas' be used when working with highly specialized products?", etc.

The basic assumption underlying all these and similar questions is that a method and tool to some extent can function as a 'guarantor', that is, that the use of the method or tool can promise successful outcomes. It is possible to see this assumption as a hope for increased 'predictability' in the design process. Predictability in this case means a hope that if we use 'method A' then we can with higher certainty predict that the outcome of the process will score higher on some measure of success scale.

This type of reasoning is not strange. Who would not like to see our design attempts to have a higher level of predictability, so we could be more sure of the outcome? The problem with this reasoning is however that it places too much importance on the role of methods and tools and reduces the importance of the designer's judgment. And such reasoning has some drastic consequences. For instance, it means that if we are able to produce better methods with higher level of 'guarantee' the role of the designer goes down, ultimately even disappears.

In a simple schema that we present in our book "The Design way", we show this in simple way. The circles represent the designer(s).

The left side of the figure shows the logic that I described above, that is, that methods and tools (input) is in some logical relationship with the outcome, will influence the outcome. This means that it is possible to control the outcome of the design process by choosing the right 'input' (methods, tools, etc). This implies that using a certain method will with some certainty improve the outcome. This is a way of thinking that I find utterly problematic and quite wrong.

To me, the design process is at its core a process that is governed by the designers judgment, as is shown on the right side of the figure. Whatever the 'input' is (methods, tools, knowledge, etc), it is the designer(s) judgment that form and shape a certain outcome.

So, the answer to the questions I started this post with is that 'of course, methods and tools matter' in designing, they can help designers or be in the way in their preferred way of working, but they can not in any way predict of guarantee any form of quality of the outcome. This means that designing is all about you as a designer and not about methods and tools.

I realize that this is too rich question to discuss in a blog post...maybe I will return to it later.....

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Addition:
After publishing this post I got this wonderful question from Deepak (thanks!).

"Are there methods, tools and processes to improve the "you", i.e the designer and designer judgement ? Or is the process just called life :) - that is every designer lives in a unique combination of circumstances and such circumstances ultimately shape their judgement(due to various conscious and unconscious biases)."

My answer is 'yes'. There are ways (even methods and tools) that can be used to develop, grow, and deepen a designers ability to make judgments. For instance, Donald Schon provides a whole range of ways of thinking suitable for this purpose, and there are others too. So, yes it is definitely possible to develop a designers judgment ability.

Monday, April 03, 2017

Designerly Thinking Workshop Reflections

I am just back after a full day workshop on "Designerly Thinking and Doing" in Chicago last week. It was a great day with wonderful participants who contributed with a lot of insights, comments and questions.

It is as always fascinating to hear the stories from individual designers about their professional experiences in widely diverse organizational environments. The stress and frustation of not being understood, the importance of everyday practicalities related to design practice, the philosophical differences between professional groups, the misconceptions about what the design process requires, etc. But also experiencing the enormous energy and willingness among these professionals to learn more, to keep developing, to take the next step. There is a passion about design that in many cases goes far beyond professional need and organizational loyalty. These professionals not only want to do good design work, they are to some extent addicted to it and need to know how to get there.

Anyway, here is the agenda for the day, even though we did not follow it in detail :-) If you are interested in knowing more, just write to me.

AGENDA
9.00 Who I am and who you are
The day in overview
Discussion, who has been trained in design thinking, what are your experiences, why are you here
Approach of the day, schemas
The design map
No problem, no process, no solution
Design Thinking is not a process that leads to good design, it is all about you
10.00 A brief history of design thinking, what does it look like, some examples
Schools of thought about design thinking
What is designerly thinking as a practical method
11.00 Why engage in design at all
What is it that makes designing appealing
The uniqueness of designing
Design Challenges, risk, courage, no process, overwhelmingly complex, insufficient information,
unpredictability, first intentions, depth, value, judgment,
12.00 LUNCH
1.0 Who am I as a design thinker
How to assess design thinking character and competence.
2.00 Developing your own designerly expertise,
How do you stay aware of the development of the field
How do you keep your competence relevant and how do you develop it
3.00 Design thinking and leadership: Build culture (wide), Organize process (middle), Develop expertise
(narrow),
Creating a design culture in your group, team, section and organization
Overcome organizational pushback when implementing a design thinking strategy

Next step!