[IxDA Discuss] design by committee??

[Sabine Junginger]

> I'm encountering much more difficult issues when redesigning existing 
> products where there are many problems, little to no conceptual integrity,
> but developers are *defensive* of their existing work.

You might have already tried this, but from my experience it is very effective to demonstrate the consequences of the conceptual *dis*integrity from a user's perspective, documenting the resulting disconnects and detours in terms of the user pathway. Many developers do not understand these consequences until they hear it directly from the people they think they know so well. Once you introduce the user, user pathways and user experience, the tension is no longer between the old "designers" (which is what most developers consider themselves to be) and the new design experts, but about the need to make it easier and more enjoyable for people external to the organization to use their products. 

We did this at Carnegie Mellon during the Domestic Mail Manual Project for the United States Postal Service. Here, seasoned experts from the postal service  headquarters with an incredible capacity for small print learned to view the world through the eyes of their customers. Our user research produced arguments that were difficult to ignore. The issues became visible and audible while none of the designers ever said "you guys did a terrible job and we are here to rescue the situation."

It is still important for a redesign project to establish and to agree on vision early on. As John's example beautifully shows, this allows the design team to keep things in flux--or as Gehry would say, "liquid"--for as long as possible, rather than forcing decisions on details upfront that would forestall a genuinely different approach or distract from the core purpose.  

Sabine
°·..·••


 
> So, rather than retreat, I suggest a proactive stance for design. I am not
> sure what you are referring to as your "background in development." Are
> you talking about product development as in a PDMA sense or are you 
> talking about
> 
> [Russ]:  product development - specifically, programming/software engineer
> many years ago
> 
> 
>