Do you consider an architect a designer? Is the work of an industrial designer design? If you answer yes to either of these questions, than why is it that some people define the act of design for the digital world to only belonging to the visual side of things? I’ve recently been criticized for calling myself a designer, a user experience designer to be exact. One of my favorite quotes regarding the ambiguous definition of design is “Design’s fundamental role is problem solver”. While this is a great definition of design, it doesn’t really help to justify calling myself a designer, even though my primary role is to solve problems. (Note: The actual title that is prescribed to me is meaningless. What matters to me is the fact that I am recognized as designer, and that the work that I do is design.)

In the work that I do everyday, I try to solve problems for clients, their customers or users, and the problems that plague my own life. What is it about my work that makes me a designer? The key is in the steps taken to create a solution, and more importantly the intent behind that solution. Before a final solution is every discovered, many iterations are explored through sketching and modeling. This ensures that all possible angles are covered, and the problem space is throughly explored to get past the obvious answers and get to the truly extraordinary. Why do these activities make me a designer? Because it’s the same general process, and a proven process, that other ‘designers’ take to creating creative solutions. This process isn’t new, in fact I’d wage it’s been around for centuries thought I don’t know of any source to back up this claim. The fact that some will dismiss this activity as not design simply because it doesn’t result in a rich visual simply doesn’t add up. Not saying that visual design, or emotional design as I like to think of it, isn’t design. As it’s just another slice of the design pie, and all I’m asking is to be included in the pie.

While the process that I follow is important, it pales in comparision to the intent that goes into the solutions I create. Intent is what separates design from art. Artists create as a means of self expression, where designers create based on the expression of others. One argument that I’ve been given as to why I’m not a designer is the fact that I perform research before every thinking about a possible solution. My response to this is that for something to be considered designed, it must have research (‘research’ includes both design and user research) to both inform and validate the decisions that went into the creation process. Without research, your acting more like an artist than a designer. The research is what guarantees that the end result is an expression of the people that will be consuming the solution, and not solely that of the creator.

So why am I a designer? It’s because I throughly explore the problem space of an issue through research, modeling, sketching, designing, and validation using time tested methods that have lead to innovative discoveries, products, and solutions time and time again. It’s because I’m not the audience for the objects I create, rather it’s those that will ultimately be interacting with the solution that is the true audience. It’s because I want to make the world better, and what would make it better for myself may not make it better for you.

Ohh, did you answer ‘No’ to the first two questions? Then there is no hope for you.

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

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

Designing A Unified Experience – Kim Goodwin gives an outstanding overview of design. Great video to check out.

Todd Zaki Warfel – redUX DC ‘09 – Todd gives us a great run down of the workshop he gave on prototyping at the IA Summit back in March.

So You Wanna Be A UX Designer Part 1 – Beginning of the roadmap to success for any UX Designer. If you care about UX and haven’t seen this yet, check it out!

Being An Experience-Led Organization – Johnny Holland delivers up yet another gem.

Understanding Critical to Being Understood –  Rather than playing the give and take game, converse with each other and great something great.

247 Web Usability Guidelines -  Monster list of heuristics to consider when reviewing a design.

What kind of Questions intrigue you?
When I start out trying to solve a new design problem, my mindset is normally around what does a person need to do in order to accomplish their task? What kind of tools can I put into their hands that make their job/life easier and more fulfilling? One of the aspects that make us all human is our ability to create and use tools. It is my responsibility as a designer to create the tools in such a manner that the person it was meant for can easily pick it up and run with it.

The process of designing new tools easily leads to exploring new and exciting ways of doing something. It is common to assume that you can never be 100% sure how a person is going to use a product. During the design process, I want to explore the ‘what ifs’ to see if there is any missed opportunities or something completely unexpected. You never know how far the rabbit hole can lead you sometimes.

What kind of Problems and Domains excite you?
I love helping small businesses solve their problems. Normally, they don’t have the resources or money to hire a designer, even though they sorely need one. They are experts when it comes to the products and services they provide, but when it comes to branding, user experience, and web presence it’s unchartered territory for them.

My other interests make me out to be a masochist. The constraints the come along with working in heavily regulated industries or in the education field fascinate me. If you can create something revolutionary with so many factors working against you, then there is nothing keeping you from being a rock star. The challenge of it all just draws me in, regardless of the emotional and mental stressors that are abound to occur.

As if I haven’t stretched my interests out enough, the way people use products inspire much of my daily voyeurism. Watching someone struggle with something gets the gears turning and starts me thinking how it could have been improved and why certain decisions were made about the products design. Many times I start to curse the ‘designer’ for either missing something obvious, or just being lazy.

What kind of Artifacts do you like to work on?
There is a special place in my heart for prototyping and wireframing. I constantly try to learn about new methods of creation, or tools to use. The earlier a design can be looked at, played with, or tested helps get to a better design. My process always starts with either a piece of paper or my moleskin where I can do a complete brain dump of all the possible ways to solve the problem I am tackling. Once I am happy with a sketch, or series of sketches, it is off to whatever prototyping tool I have handy. (Recently it has been Fireworks.)

Though I love doing prototypes, wireframes, and sketches, it is hard for me to do them effectively without some visual documentation to guide me. Getting a clear understanding of the domain though site maps, flow diagrams, and user task flows help me understand all the minor nuances which spark the creativity needed to get to the actual design. I would be lost without these tools and sometimes find myself in a very Zen state while creating them.

What Activities and Phases do you prefer and excel at?
I got started in the user experience business mainly doing user research and traditional usability studies. Though I have moved on to being a designer, I still remember my roots and find great value in the lessons I learned. Every time I sit down with a new group of people to learn how and why they their thing, I learn something new. I learn about their behavior and expectations, but more importantly I learn something about myself. This leads to so many great design insights that it still amazes me that some companies don’t see the value in it.

The natural next steps from doing all the good ole fashioned user research and analysis is coming up with the conceptual design. This phase normally eats up huge chunks of my moleskine and is by far the most fun. It naturally feeds into the designs I ultimately create and gives me the background to effectively defend my designs.

What Purposes motivate you as a designer?
This question is the easiest to answer for me, improve the human condition. Granted this is a fairly broad goal, but a total worthwhile one. As a designer, I strive to help people with the problems that they have. Another aspect is getting out and helping others in the design community. It is selfish for me to learn all these great things about people, methods of solving possible common problems, and not share that knowledge with others. Since so much about user experience is either self-taught or learn as you go, it is important for me to give back to the community that has helped me grow and learn.

The other aspect of being a designer that motivates me is to try and make the world a bit more playful. Recent devices like the iPhone, Wii, or the proposed Project Natal showcases how much meaning an interaction can have if there is a sense of playfulness to it. Interactions don’t HAVE to be boring. Yes, it may take a little extra time and money to make it playful, but the resulting experience makes it worth the cost.

So that is the type of designer that I am, or hope to become. The real challenge is finding a place in the world where I can do all of this, and also evolve into maybe something different 5 years down the road. Regardless, I have some boundaries I can work within and bring meaning to my career. What are your answers to these questions? Either post them below or put them up on your own blog. Think of it as your own little manifesto as a design.

photo credit: A-dit-ya

40 Helpful Resource on User Interface Design Patterns – Smashing Magazine serves up this great collection of all the patterns you will ever need.

Feedback. The Creavity Killer – Very nice 12 step program for those that find themselves always on the defensive with their creatations.

Wabi-Sabi and Experience Design – The zen of design. Enough said.

The Time of User-Centered Design Has Come and Gone. Time to Move On – Thought exploration on why UCD fails to innovate. Very compelling.

Design Rule #1 To Live By – “Know the project brief inside and out, clarify any questions with your client or project manager before beginning”

The Carefully Designed Experience of Kinder Eggs – My first experience with Kinder Eggs was when I met my wife back in high school, and I still love them to this day.

photo credit: stuartpilbrow

Oldie but goodie: When I’m asked to design a bridge … – Dave Malouf offers some great starter points for attempting the Mozilla Design Challenge.

The Life Cycle of a Wireframe -Nick Finck gives us some insight of on all the stages wireframing can take, in all its glory.

10 Signs of a User Focused Design -  If you are in the business of User Experience, this is a handy check list to keep you honest.

30 Essential PDF Documents Every Designer Should Download – Just another hammer(s) for your toolbox.