Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Separating the Design from the Designer
I do a lot of prototyping at Tangoe. The nature of software development and interaction design in a complex field like telecommunications necessitates that I go through multiple iterations of a UI before it becomes finalized. There are times when I’ll be 12 iterations in to a particular prototype and someone will come up and imply that something shouldn’t be a certain way. When I first started, my usual reaction was to go on the defensive immediately. I’d attempt to explain why said current design was great, etc. As I worked, I realized that there was (and is) value to be had in such things: something about a mock up I designed wasn’t meeting the expectations of my viewer!
When you’re a designer (of anything, not just graphics), you invest your time, effort, and passion in to creating something, all the while understanding that it will be met with a mixed response from your audience. Some folks will love it, some will hate, and others will be indifferent. There’s an important lesson all designers must learn: realize that the design is not the designer. When someone critiques a mock up, an image, etc. that you made, remember that it’s not a personal attack (or, conversely, explicit praise for you). The feedback they are presenting is about the design, not about you.
Nowadays, I make a conscious effort to separate myself from a design. To use the cliched analogy about uncovering an elephant in a block of marble, you’re just freeing the elephant from the marble. Try to see things from many points of view, rather than just your own. Some of the best changes in my mock ups have come from stepping back and trying to walk in someone else’s shoes, be it a coworker’s or a user’s. I ask myself “What are they expecting that my current work isn’t providing?”
Just remember, the next time you’re working on a project and someone critiques some of your work, try to see it from their point of view. You might learn something that makes your work a little better.
The Three Pillars
Rob (one of our new developers at Tangoe) and I had a great conversation about the various viewpoints and perspectives one has to take in to account when developing software. Essentially, there are three different entities whose wants and needs you need to balance: the business itself (management), the development team, and the users of your application. Ultimately, the goal of the business is to make a profit on its product. The developers want to implement functionality efficiently. The users need the product to match their views of whatever task they need accomplished.
The subject came up because we were discussing one of the major features in the Scrum software development methodology: the product backlog. The features and fixes that bubble up to the top of the backlog are highly dependent on these activities of these three groups. In our case, we were talking about redesigning UI elements and navigation. Rob and I both agreed that we needed to implement these redesigns eventually, but that the business (management) needs some sort of justification to do so. There’s a limited amount of time for each release, and you need to make a strong case to get any large piece of functionality included in the development cycle. On the surface, what sort of benefits does the business see in reworking the navigation when we could be expanding our feature selection? I mentioned that this is where things like user research come in to play; perhaps one would discover that the navigation is increasing task times (and hurting productivity in the app) by 20%. This translates directly in to cost savings for the customer and provides the business justification for the redesign.
The take-away is this: whenever you get frustrated with how someone interprets and prioritizes a request you make, try to keep in mind that there’s a delicate balance in place. The time and ability of the development team to implement functionality, the profit-seeking goals of business, and the needs of your users are all competing for your attention. Try not to neglect any of them!