Category: Practical Matters

The act of being a professional designer is a process of iteration in itself — demanding ongoing feedback from peers & clients, of course, but also continuous critical self-examination, guided by an attitude of optimistic, if somewhat grudging, improvement. Design is an art of improving things — changing existing situations into preferred ones, as Herb Simon famously declared in his definitive treatise on design ’Sciences of the Artificial’. So it is as well for the designer to reflect and resolve to make adjustments — which requires a healthy does of detachment and humility 😉

/ Looking back

So as I look back upon the past year and ahead to what’s possible this year, I’m mindful of some key aspects that might be of help for you as well. For me, last year (2017) was a year of:

* Re-entering familiar contexts — that of an established yet growing corporate design team with product teams burdened by legacy protocols

* Re-building credibility — as with any new engagement you start from zero, developing pivotal relationships and scoring “quick wins” to build up that “street cred” for more ambitious pursuits later

* Learning new languages (and where to introduce my own vernacular) — As with any new design / product dev context, there is a kind of jargon of words and actions (behaviors) to learn; in this case, heavily Agile-driven and also ideology around story, influence, craft, benefit and value. From “durable teams” to “TPV metrics” and beyond.

* Satisficing and adapting my design goals — every product development context has their own dysfunctions and dramas, so the trick is knowing (or at least sensing with confidence) where and how to satisfice (compromise) effectively.

* Role modeling design leadership — for teams unaccustomed to “designer as partner” (versus “designer as production assistant”), via discourse and delivery, this was a considerable challenge (yet huge opportunity!)

* Cultivating a genuine design ethos — especially for the squad that I lead and how to parlay that ethos (which itself is constantly evolving) into dialogues with my product and engineering peers, to shape a nuanced holistic view of Design

Overall it was undoubtedly a challenging yet exhilarating year of continued growth as a design practitioner and thought leader — there was never a dull moment, that’s for sure! In certain areas there was considerable success, while in others…ehh, maybe not so much 😉

Demonstrating prudent patience, expressing passion in a targeted deliberate manner, being smarter about the intrinsic politics of a highly fraught situation, better balancing of tactics and strategy (and communications to my partners, accordingly), and knowing when to delegate or simply let things go — all were key areas of self-improvement, no question. Gotta keep at it!

/ Looking ahead

Looking ahead to this year (2018), I resolve to improve upon those items, and also aim to pursue the following:

* Help (aka “coach”) product and engineering leaders to get more comfortable with being uncomfortable — it’s a tricky balance of acknowledging one’s expertise and opening up to new (potentially risky or threatening) models of work, but with the aim of improving the team and product and customer outcomes

* Do more cross-functional facilitative engagements (aka “conversations”) going among traditionally siloed teams, via the power of artifacts and disposable designs

* Elevate design practice into more of a strategic art (aka “connecting the dots”), beyond delivering Sketch files and Zeplin specs, that speak to business aims and offering lenses upon those over-arching goals (and processes)

* Network with folks outside of the usual UX arena, to broaden my perspectives and learnings about ways to guide and improve culture, process, innovation, etc.

And of course…write more, sketch more, listen more, and keep iterating on “being a designer”. After all, it’s a persistent journey of reflecting and resolving.

** From Andrei Herasimchuk of Involution Studios, a thoroughly detailed chart of various prototyping tools with a criteria breakdown for when to use which tool for which kind of product (web, RIA, kiosk, mobile, etc.) you are designing for:

http://make.involutionstudios.com/conceptcar/

** From Dave Cronin of Cooper, a superb article summarizing various prototyping approaches, with linked resources and citations as well as examples from Adobe Fireworks:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/fireworks/articles/cooper_prototyping.html

** And from me (ha!) I created a short poster last summer, briefly illustrating a “spectrum of prototyping”, from play to proposal to specification, which is described in this post here.

The popular phrase of the last 8 weeks, since Barack Obama’s historic election and swift announcement of cabinet picks (in particular, Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, and keeping Robert Gates at Defense) has been “team of rivals”, from Doris Kearns Goodwin’s best-selling book about Lincoln’s cabinet (which I just started reading– it’s quite fascinating). But after about the first 100 times of hearing this phrase (as a recovering political junkie I’m exposed to waaay too much media), it occurred to me that this is not really a “trendy new phrase” but it encapsulates exactly what a designer contends with daily on the job–designing with a “team of rivals” bound by a shared common purpose (ostensibly delivering the best possible product) yet guided by often competing interests and goals (feasibility, profitability, usability, aesthetics, etc.).

Digital product development is fundamentally a massive challenge of balancing & coordinating the goals/values/motives of the diverse teams involved (much more so for convergent products: hardware + software + netware), which largely intersect in the “user experience” aspect of the product. Inevitably it seems the lead interaction designer emerges (or should emerge) as the one to primarily mediate, facilitate, and coordinate among the various viewpoints from teammates, to arrive at a sensible solution that satisfies users as much as possible. Basically, shepherding the team and driving the conversation. Why is that? Often in the course of problem discovery and solution generation featuring product analysis, architecture diagramming, and taskflow mapping, the designer needs to develop a “necessary yet sufficient” level of understanding of the linkages among disparate facets of the product to ensure a seamless experience across features, modules, components, etc.

As Henry Petroski says:

Designing anything involves satisfying constraints, making choices, containing costs, and accepting compromises.

Relatedly, Bill Moggridge says:

The convergences of objects, services, environments, and technologies indicate that more and more design problems can only be solved by teams from different backgrounds working together.

And that’s the basic gist in my view when collaborating with rivals…and what makes design so difficult, beyond the pixels and specs. It’s the coordination cost and collaborative effort surrounding the resultant solutions and residual artifacts that really ensure designers earn their paychecks!

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Going a bit deeper, what is it that motivates and grounds the thought and action of diverse teammates, like engineers or product managers or quality assurance (QA)? What’s the rhetorical purpose and philosophic assumption upon which they rest their arguments and positions? Here’s my personal take based upon 8 years of observation and engagement in the Valley at companies like Oracle, Adobe, and Cisco:

Engineer
Logical, analytical, systematic assessment of the technical feasibility, in a quantifiably controlled manner with definitive empirical and repeatable results. Focus on constraints of technical capability given limited resources (memory, processor, API’s, coding practices, etc.)

Product Manager
Focus on business product strategy and portfolio of offerings (SKU’s) in a similarly analytical, quantifiably validatable manner. Cost control, pricing, etc. The steward of the product, gatekeeper of features and owner of business requirements.

QA Engineer
Focus on identifying technical coding flaws/bugs/defects, corollary to user experience goals of “good design” but insufficient by itself. Lots of testing protocols, bug triages, and roundtripping with Dev to ensure “good code”, but not necessarily “good design”.

Technical Writer
Focus on documentation of intended design, making sure it’s thoroughly, extensively detailed with words and images, with substantial review/feedback cycles. Provide inputs for customer service, and user guides/manuals.

Sales Engineer
Technical achievement that leads to good demonstrations of the technology for customer benefits. What can the software/hardware/netware do that supports a customer’s needs and how to customize it accordingly within limits.

Product Marketing
Focus on customer demand and market potential, examining sales and pricing configurations accordingly to ensure profitability of desired solutions. Sell, sell, sell! Channels, registrations, adverts, etc. Also focus on the customer purchase-to-pay, rather than customer experience of the product usage overall.

Of course, these are generalizations, must be taken with several grains of salt :-) Nevertheless, this diversity of perspectives and assumptions of course naturally impacts the decision-making that ultimately renders features and products as shipped/released or not and in what state of completion per original aims.

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Returning to Obama’s “rival”-based cabinet picks, his rationale is to cultivate vigorous healthy debate, hearing diverse and strong opinions from the best and brightest minds, featuring a mix of seasoned experience and fresh insights to address dire challenges facing the nation, which is all well and good. But could things fall apart amid pervasive contention and fractious, even ruinous conflicts (namely big egos that can’t be controlled)??

As Obama stated emphatically (perhaps a bit defensively) in a press conference,

“But understand where the vision for change comes from first and foremost. It comes from me. That’s my job — is to provide a vision in terms of where we are going and to make sure that my team is implementing it.”

I believe that’s the core job of a lead designer for a product’s user experience & design, in command of a compelling vision, leveraging her experience, judgment, intuition, and savvy personality/charisma skills to artfully engage with her teammates and shape their attitudes and behavior–thus corraling them behind the driving product vision, selling them on what is best for the user and the business. It’s not easy, but when you have good trustworthy rivals eager to prove their value, it certainly keeps you on your toes and makes the final result that much more rewarding and memorable!

(Another analogy for basketball fans may be Coach Phil Jackson’s ability to juggle the incredibly strong, fickle egos of superstars–from Michael Jordan to Dennis Rodman, or Kobe & Shaq–guiding them with a vision of becoming championship-winning teams)

I had a good conversation with the Apple Online Store’s creative director last week over some fresh hand-made pizza at Apple’s cafeteria (apparently it’s Steve’s favorite :-) I agree, quite tasty yet not heavy). We met awhile back when I was at Oracle and he’s a Valley veteran (Claris, Adobe, Yahoo, etc. whew!) so he’s a great person to chat with about general job/career issues…

After some chewing and chatting, he asked me, “So, what do you want to LEARN in your next job?” Hmm, a good question! Usually it’s “what do you want to DO in your next job”. Honestly haven’t thought of it that way, but it makes sense. Amid the pressure to “get a good job” at a “brand name company”, maxing out on benefits/options/salary and great promotional possibilities, it’s easy to get lost in the overly competitive drive to land the right job with the right job title, etc. — especially these days amid grim economic times. And thus you lose sight of what’s the educative benefit of the job… What do you hope to gain from it, that will keep you growing, learning, thriving, and evolving as a person, and as a professional? What would stimulate you despite the inevitable mundane corporate rigors, pushing you to the next level of accomplishment and inspire others even?

A good question worthy of serious thought.