My first goal was to make sure the prototype was a complete click-thru of  all the designed pages. Now, this doesn’t mean I made just the main navigation click-able, but I also linked up any cross link opportunities too. Once I verified that all of the pages were linked together and could be traversed, it was time to move on to the next layer of interactivity.

Developing the various states for each page was next. Since I was using Axure, this meant I broke out the Dynamic Panel and used it anywhere particular components of a page changed given the right conditions. This was the part that took the longest, as I had to work out all the various iterations of the same controls.  I didn’t worry too much about the specific conditions needed for the various states, as keeping track of all the logic in my head was distracting. At this stage in the game, it was  important that I got all the finer details of the interactions designed out.

Now that all of the pages were linked up, and the states created, I got started with the really intensive stuff. Getting the detailed interactive logic done was the final layer to my process. The first bits of logic I tackled were those that effected the whole prototype. A prime example of this was the logged in/logged out states, which requires multiple layers of logic to ensure that it properly affected the whole prototype. Once these general logic cases were covered, I tackled the individual cases present in each page and state. These prototypes were of decent size, so I kept a checklist handy to ensure I didn’t miss anything.

Thinking back, even my pager from high school had the ability to customize its vibration. Granted, the pager only had one function so it didn’t need do any logic to determine which vibration sequence to use, but still the ability was there. With an advanced device like the iPhone, it should be easier than pie to put some logic around what sequence the vibration uses based on what context is being called. This capability has to present already, as Apps have the ability to use the vibration of the phone in a variety of ways. Apple, if you’re listening (which I know you’re not) this would be nice to see in 4.x version of the iPhone OS.

What are some ways this type of contextual interaction could help you?

The Philosophy of Function

After looking over chapter seven in Nicomachean Ethics book one, I can’t see how one can relate the final cause to Aristotle’s function argument. The final cause opens the door to giving things in nature ambition, or to some extent desire. It implies that something is drawing an acorn nut into growing into a fully grown tree. There are a lot of unseen forces at work here, to pull a nut into a tree from some place unseen. I see the function argument as something different though, it gives a nut meaning or a man meaning. In the coming paragraphs I will show that there is a way to apply the function argument to nature, how you can apply the function argument to man, and the differences between the final cause and the function argument. These paragraphs will show how the function argument can be separated by the final cause and therefore be free of its scientific objections.

For us to be able to see how nature’s creatures and nature itself has a function we will need to examine various creatures, plants, and aspects of nature that plays a certain function to the world around it. There are many insects around the world that play a key role in their environment. They help protect various planets and help clean their environment around them. Coleptera.org is an organization devoted to the study of everything there is to know about beetles. In there overall description of what beetles are they give examples of what roles they play in their environment. There are a class of beetles that have the function of pollinating flowers and trees. Without this function many flowers would not be here today. Another class of function of a different class of beetles is to clean up the waste of other animals. The dung beetles feed on and reproduce in the dung of plant eating animals. By doing this function they get rid of millions of tons of dung in a year. If the dung beetles didn’t do its function, our forests would have been overrun and smothered with the dung of herbivores. We owe a lot to the function of the dung beetle, and many other beetle species that are out there.

Plants have many different functions depending on what they grow and where they grow. The Rice Unix Facility has a side site that discusses the Staghorn Cacti. The Staghorn has a protective function in its nectar that keeps it safe from insects. This nectar attracts other insects that will attack, remove, prey upon, or parasitize herbivores that would eat the cactus. The function of creating the nectar protects the all Staghorn Cacti from attack. This is a function just like out own eyes, ears, and hands. Since it is acceptable the since the eyes, ears, and hands have functions then so must we. Then it must be acceptable that since a part of the Cacti has the function of creating the nectar then so must the Staghorn Cacti have a function overall.

Finally there are aspects of nature that’s function keeps our world going basically. The North Atlantic Current, or the Gulf Stream, contributes to the stability to much of our world’s weather. What the Gulf Stream does basically according to the history of the Gulf Stream is bring warm water and air from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up to the British Isles. This brings warm weather to the eastern part of Canada and the western part of Europe. Theoretically if the Gulf Stream did not do this then this regions would just be extension of the Ice cap at the North Pole. If the Gulf Stream did not perform this function naturally then all the people that live in these regions would be out of a home. There are many functions apparent in nature if you just take the time to look for them. They are automatic in some cases in others; it requires certain creatures to maintain the balance.

Aristotle claims that the function of man is to be rationional; this is what makes a man good. The accepted way a proving this by showing that our parts have a function so we must have one since our parts do. The argument that seems weak states that since a carpenter or tanner has a defined function so must the man that does the carpentry or tanning. There is no dispute that carpentry and tanning have a function that is their own, but does that mean since someone is doing that function they have a function themselves. I happen to believe that it does for two reasons. The first is easy enough to state and explain. Aristotle says that the function of man is to be rationional, well the activity of carpentry and tanning requires a certain amount of rational thought doesn’t it? When a carpenter goes to plan out a new chair style or chest style is must first sit down and rationally think out how it will look and be built. The design does not just come to him by accident or happenstance. The advance and working of carpentry and tanning require a person that possesses rationional thought to practice. So from my point of view you cannot have one without the other.

Some could say that the act of carpentry or tannery can be separated from the carpenter or tanner. I don’t believe that this is possible, for if you ask any man who has spent his life doing something he will tell you that what he does is as much a part of him as the air he breaths. Aristotle states that to live a life of rationality means living a life of happiness. Well, another great man, Ben Franklin, once said “It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.”(www.brainyqoutes.com) I don’t see how one can say that a man who does carpentry or tannery is not a working man. By using this quote as a basis of an argument, for a man to be happy he must work. To work he must do a craft. Since rational thought is happiness, then working is rational thought played out. The function of carpentry and tannery is then based upon the function of the man, not the other way around.

There are some distinct difference between the final cause and the function argument that you can use the separately. The final cause states that there is some end the drive all action. The action of kicking the table is to get to the end which is kicking the table. It requires to some extent a desire or ambition to get to a certain end. This can easily be seen in the actions of humans and even in some animals. It gets fishy when it is applied to nature. Saying that there is a desire for the grass to grow, that it wishes to grow into a fully grown stalk, can open the door to a lot of superstition. Thought like these could have been the reason why the Native American Indians worshipped nature’s spirits. Many other cultures can see the same idea in their religion or faith.

Function has a definition that is different than a cause though. A function helps or creates an end, but is not depended on the end. I can create robot with a hammer arm, with the clear function of hammering an object. The end object does not matter to the robot because its only has the function of hammering. A river, given enough time, can create a new grand canyon with the current of its waters. The end of the river is not to do this, but its function makes it so. I see a function as a reason why something does something, not every function needs an end for it to happen. A function does not desire or have ambition to do its duty it just does it, because of this you can see the line the separates the final cause and the function argument.

I started this paper with the desire to make a line that would separate Aristotle’s function argument and his final cause. I looked at nature and it inabilities to see what there function is in the overall picture. I looked at the working man and saw how his work is what defines him and vice versa. Finally I looked at my idea of what a cause and a function is and how they can be seen as separate things. I can see how the scientifically community can throughout the final cause, to a certain extent. Yet, I personally can see a difference between Aristotle’s arguments and with the paper I hope you can too.

Work Cited

1. Book: “Complete Works of Aristotle” Edited: Jonathan Barnes. Princeton University Press, 1995.
2. Website: Coleoptera.org, Article: What is a beetle?
3. Website: Brainy Quotes, Benjamin Franklin Quotes.
4. Website: A Natural History of Extrafloral Nectar-Collecting Ants in the Sonoran Desert Rice University. < http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~bws/efns.html >

Embrace Failure

It’s a natural human response to put up our defenses once something goes wrong and we are deemed at fault. This response normally comes out as a series of excuses, attempting to divert the blame to others, or just hanging our head low while the situation steamrolls everyone over. A better response would be taking control, and asking questions like ‘What could I have done differently?’ or ‘What did I miss that lead to this?’ Not only is this the more professional, but it can jump start the conversation towards finding possible solutions.

Conversation Points:

• What kind of policies should be in place to encourage failure?
• How serious does a failure need to be before serious action needs to be taken?
• How does traditional damage control fail to inform project teams and designers on how to avoid the same mistakes again?

Open Minds and Open Ears and Open Hearts

Negatively responding to someone who has made a mistake does nothing to resolve the overall issue. In fact, it makes the whole situation that much worse. Keeping an open mind that everyone screws up every now and then, listening to what lead to the failure, and supporting someone in picking up the pieces greatly is whats need to  improve the situation. This is the keystone to turning everyday design failures into a positive aspect of designing.

Conversation Points:

• What was the worse project/design review you’ve had that did nothing but point out all the flaws and didn’t offer any tips for improvement?
• How do you empathize with a peer on their failure, but still maintain a sense of authority?
• Obviously, there is such thing as failing too much and too often. Where should this line be drawn?

This closes the proposed framework on how to deal with failure as a designer and use our failures to ensure the work we do tomorrow is a vast improvement to the current ‘disaster’ that is causing so much heartache today.

Assign Blame

There are some that believe that a single person can shoulder the responsibility of an entire project. The truth is though, whether a project is large or small this is impossible. The responsibility of a project is a partnership of the team, even if it’s a team of one, and the sponsoring client. The advantage of this shared sense of responsibility is that when something goes wrong it’s possible to pin point who was the cause. There are many dangers associated with calling someone out, but if done in a respectful and constructive manner it can be a great motivator.

Conversation Points:

• How have you dealt with being call out when you were responsible for a project failing, or an aspect of the project going a-rye?
• Have you ever had to assign the blame to a project member? How did you approach them?
• What are some safe ways for assigning the blame to someone?
• Does the emotional risk outweigh the possible benefits of pin pointing the person responsible for a mistake?

Highlight the Success

All this talk about failing and finding faults in people can eventually become too negative. No project is a complete and utter failure. Shedding light on the successes helps give the team, and the client, a positive view on the overall value of a project. It helps bring the team back together, and if the client is involved it makes them feel better about investing in the project. Talking about all the stuff that was a success helps to mitigate the negative emotions that may have popped up over the course of the conversation as well. Yes, Bob might have delayed the project a week due to a database issue, but he really hit a home run optimizing the database making the app super quick. In the end, a nice pat of the back goes a long way.

Conversation Points:

• What is more difficult, highlighting failures or successes?
• What is the proper ‘reward’ for someone being responsible for a big success?
• Should highlighting a person’s success be public or private?

Related Posts:

Part 1 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

Part 3 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

Retrospective

The recent popularity of Agile has helped bring about the importance of a retrospective. Performing a retrospective is a great tool for looking back and identifying the problem areas that occurred over the course of an iteration or project. This activity can, and should, occur throughout the entire course of a project. The earlier problems are identified, the quicker they can be dealt with. This is especially important in the world of design, and software development as a whole, since the longer a problem persists the more expensive it is to fix.

Conversation Points:

• What have been some of your experiences with retrospectives?
• How did you handle the pressure when a problem area was identified that you were responsible for?
• How have retrospectives made you a better designer?
• Have retrospectives ever failed to improve things? Why?

Document Warning Signs

There is little value in identifying our failures if we don’t learn from them. Any failure can be traced to a particular step, or event, that was the catalyst the calamity. Cataloging the missteps that were the ultimate cause of a mistake is great approach to ensure the lesson hits home for a designer. Having this history both helps for posterity, and serves as an early warning system in order to avoid the same mistakes in the future. A designer should look at their book of failures as a matter of pride, proof of all the experience they’ve had dealing with issues that can come up over the course of a project.

Conversation Points:

• How do you keep track of your design failures?
• Why is it important to capture the reason for design failures?
• Should the reasons behind a failure be private or public?
• Is a book of design mistakes as important as a portfolio?

Thanks for all of your responses!

Related Posts:

Part 2 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

Part 3 of The Importance of Failure for Designers

Creating an Accordion Navigation

The image shown above was the base state of the accordion navigation I built. All of the screen elements presented are drawn rectangles rather than any control that comes along with inherited behavior. The base state is the foundation for any animation a designer wishes to built to mimic interactive behavior. From this starting state, a designer can create iterations of the screen and tie the various states together. What happens when switching between the various states is completely taken care of by Blend, very much like the tween functionality in Flash. Below are screen shots of the two other states I created, and the States panel. Notice one of the defined states returns the accordion to the base state, I am unsure if this is necessary but it worked for me.

The SketchFlow Animation Panel works exactly that same way as states, but only allows for a single animation flow. If it’s desired that the interactive aspects of the prototype be conditional, it’s required to use the States aspect of Blend.

Rollover Effects

Providing a rollover effect is a common need for prototypes. The SketchFlow Animation Panel is perfect for exhibiting this type of behavior. On the ‘Countries’ page, the sketched picture circles can be navigated by rolling over the right arrow. Here is a look at the SketchFlow Animation Panel that allows for this type of behavior.

Drag and Drop

Adding the Drag and Drop behavior is as simple as adding a property to a control. With this property added, it’s possible to place the control anywhere on the screen. Blend adds the proper code necessary, behind the scenes, so a designer can concern themselves with exploring the behavior rather than programming it. As you can see from the screenshot, there are many behaviors available that can be added to any control.

Blend is a powerful prototyping tool given that you find yourself in a WPF/Silverlight development environment. It provides the same benefits that many other prototyping tools have for other development environments. So which tool should a designer use? It depends. It all depends on the type of environment you find yourself in and personal preference. Hope you have enjoyed my exploration of Blend and if you find yourself using it one day please share your experiences.

Pros:

Powerful Mapping Module - Flow maps and site maps are key to any design process. Using the SketchFlow Map module, a designer can make either of these very quickly. Blend 3 takes these models a step further by breaking them up into two types. A Screen represents a unique page in the design, allowing for a detailed set up of the overall structure of the site or application. Components are aspects of a page that can be used on many screens throughout the design. The SketchFlow Map module allows for connections to be made between the various screens and components in order to properly showcase the relationships that are involved. The various Screen and Components nodes can be customized via coloring coding in order to convey some deep meaning. In my example, blue nodes are main pages, green nodes sub-pages, red nodes navigation components, yellow nodes UI components, and orange nodes form components.

Components - Creating components that represent shared aspects of the overall user interface is a huge boon. Only having to create a form that is used on half a dozen pages only once not only saves design time, but also removes a lot of repetition in our work. Other applications have a similar concept by the use of master pages, or template, but the downside of these overall frameworks is when only certain aspects of the framework need to be used.

Low-Fi Look and Feel - The name SketchFlow really holds true with the overall style that is applied to produced prototypes. Though it is obvious that they were created with the aid of some program, the prototypes look down and dirty enough to really get the message across that this is just a concept. Though I haven’t tried it yet, during the demo of Blend3 it was stated that user defined controls can be created and the sketch style applied to them in order to maintain the low-fi look.

Behavior Set Up - A prototype isn’t really a prototype unless it has some level of interactivity. Setting up a simple click thru is as simple as can be. Through the use of the animation module, some pretty slick behavior is possible to set up without needing to get into the code. But, if you happen to have some basic skills in C# or VB.net, it’s possible to add some pretty complex behavior as well.

UI Control Library - The library of controls that comes included in the SketchFlow style covers just about any standard control you can think of. Included with all the standard controls are simple shapes that may need to be used for a variety of reasons. When prototyping is complete, and approved, a developer can simply remove the Sketch styling and all controls revert to standard Windows styling and are ready to be hooked up. (In theory)

Adobe Import - Blend has the ability to import any layered file from either Illustrator or Photoshop.  Each layer gets inserted into the Blend project as a user control, which upon import is just an image. Once imported though, you can tell Blend that this image of a text box is an actual text box, and poof it’s a text box and all the styling from the image is retained. The has great benefits for the interaction designers, visual designers, and user interface developers that work closely together.

Animation - Todd Zaki Warfel has a great quote regarding prototyping, ‘If you can’t make it, fake it.’ The animation capabilities in Blend3 allow you to fake just about anything, depending on your animation skills and maybe some C# or VB.net knowledge.

Right Click - Inside the Blend3 environment, right clicking is really your best friend. The majority of the settings and commonly used functions are available via this little context menu. This is also the main method for which to set up any type of click-thru behavior you want presented in the prototype. Denny Payton, who gave the Blend3 Demo, made that comment ‘If you are not sure how to do something in Blend3, just right click.’

Annotation Feedback - Any prototype created in Blend3 can be packaged as either a Silverlight application, or a WPF application, and shared among the project team, stakeholders, or used for some user testing. The method of annotation is great, as people can grab a virtual pen or highlighter and mark directly on the prototype, these annotations are stored with the actual project for review later. A message box is also available for more detailed feedback and all is captured in the project files for reviewing later.

Test Data - Lorem Ipsum only gets you so far when adding content to a prototype. Plugging in real world sample data can be done in a variety of ways. If you happen to have a functional test database, tables from the database can be bound to any control. Something that was removed in Blend2, but added back in Blend3, is the ability to bind to an external XML file. The real gem of Blend3’s test data capabilities is creating some on the fly, and storing it locally to the project. This way drop downs and list controls don’t have to be empty and the data inside them isn’t hard coded.

Cons:

Buggy - During the course of creating my prototype the application bombed out twice. Now, some might say crashing only twice doesn’t sound that bad, but any crash is bad in my eyes. At first, when creating the sitemap, somehow two of the nodes had become linked together. Moving the most recent one would also move the last selected, the solution came during one of the crashes when the behavior went away when I reloaded Blend. Though the layout of the framework is pixel perfect between the various screens, some UI controls still jump around in the produced prototype. For someone who is a perfectionist in this regard, it drove me batty!

Interaction Design of Blend3 - For some reason, someone thought that the most common use of the scroll wheel is to zoom in and out of the both the Design module and the SketchFlow Map module. Eventually, I found the setting that allows you to rebind what the standard behavior is for the scroll wheel and my frustration eased. The only way to remove a node or connection in the map module is by right clicking and choosing remove from the menu. The delete key is completely ignored from this aspect of the UI. This caused many mental ‘WTF?’ moments.

Structuring Site Map - While the SketchFlow Map module provides great value for visualizing the structure and flow of a site, it’s easy to create a very complex and confusing map for something more than a simple site map. It becomes difficult to follow the connection lines with the crisscrossing of each other, or placing component nodes in a meaningful location when they are shared by many screens. Hopefully, in future versions this module gets a bit more flushed out.

Component Placement - Creating common aspects of the user interfaces once, but using them in many places, is a great advantage for any designer. But, the component has to be placed individually on each screen it’s linked to. This can make the prototype look clunky since the same component might jump around as the prototype is traversed if not placed exactly right. This could be easily fixed if the background size of each component was the same as the overall size of the interface. When linked to a screen, the component gets  automatically placed in the proper place.

Screen vs Artboard Size - There is a huge disconnect between the size of the screen and the artboard that contains the UI controls. Now, I understand this disconnect is in place for detailed animations, but it would relieve some confusion when creating just a simple interface with no animation if the sizes were tied together. For the prototype that I created, it wasn’t until I ran the project that it became apparent that the screen size did not match the interface I had created.

Grid System - Though Blend3 has an underlying grid system you can use to place controls, it isn’t possible to create grid lines on the fly that are shared across different screens. This was the other reason why when the prototype was ran, the screen components would jump around on me. It’s possible to customize the underlying grid system, but it is application wide rather than limited to just the project.

Adobe Import Limitations - The way Blend3 imports the files from Illustrator or Photoshop put a huge burden on the designer working in those applications. The layers need to be set up so each UI control has it’s own layer and the layers are organized in a detailed manner. Now, having organized layers in either Photoshop or Illustrator is the ‘right’ thing to do, but sometimes time just doesn’t allow for it. It’s a good step in the right direction, but still needs a bit of work.

Word Export - Axure is hands down the best when it comes to turning a prototype into spec, Blend3 is taking it’s best stab at it too. The downside being that the produced document is very flat and only creates the images of the user interface. It can be argued that any spec is better than none, but there’s some good information you can attach to controls when they are being placed that don’t get exported into the document. Again, good first step and it will be interesting to see how this feature gets flushed out in the future.

Annotations Limitations - While being able to annotate directly on the prototype is great for gathering feedback, but in Blend3 it’s limited. Annotations are not store per instance of the prototype, but shared across different uses. This pretty much limits prototype review to internal teams and maybe key stakeholders. Allowing the annotations to be shared while performing user testing raising the risk for bias and invalid results. This seems like a simple enhancement to this features, and hopefully become available one day.

Media Sketch Controls - Though the control library available in the SketchFlow part of Blend3 provides almost any ui control you would need, it is missing a few. Generic placement boxes for media, like pictures or videos, are missing. Requiring the designer to use the generic shapes and text to put in placeholders. Granted, you could create a user control to fulfill this need, but it would be nice for generic media controls to be available out of the box.

Repackging Prototype – One of the promoted benefits of using Blend is to create a prototype or interface that could be used in either a WPF or Silverlight application. Sadly, it isn’t possible to just repackage a project into one of these formats when using SketchFlow. So, if you create a kickass prototype in WPF and want to host it as a Silverlight app in order to get some feedback, sorry that’s just not possible. (Like I wanted to do!)

Overall Thoughts

Seriously, kudos to the designers and developers at Microsoft for getting Blend to such a state that you can do create some kick ass prototypes. Though it has some flaws, like any piece of software will, it provides some great benefits for designers. The value could really be seen for any designer working in a Microsoft development environment, creating Silverlight apps or Desktop apps using WPF. The need for other prototyping tools like Fireworks or Axure that don’t necessary provide good output for developers in this type of environment could be replaced by using Blend3 with Sketchflow. I’m not saying one tool is better than another, but when you take into account the environment the project is being developed in, one tool may be more beneficial than another.

Images from the prototype I created

I’m exploring all the various methods people use in order to deal with and, more importantly, learn from their failures. Since many of my readers are designers, I wanted to ask you about your methods. Do you have a methodical retrospective at the end of a project? Do you learn from your failures when they happen? How does failing affect your design process and drive you to a better design? Do you fear failing, or do you look forward to it?

Thank you for your feedback!

photo credit: Rocky X