[IxDA Discuss] Learning to design - critiques

[Sarah Bloomer]

Hi Donna,

Interaction design, ah yes! I call it "something magic happens" to
describe getting from analysis to design. That is, how to take all that
feedback and information and make sense of it.

Before you get into peer critiques, your team probably needs to learn
how to make design choices, that is, you may want to do some training
with them in interaction design. They need to learn that interaction
design isn't pretty-ing up screens, that each decision should have a
reason or rationale behind it.

Here are a few ways to do some quick training:

1) After you establish your goals for the system you're designing,
brainstorm design solutions to meet those goals. You can use a simple
table format to do that. Karen Donoghue has a good one in her book
"Built for Use".  

2) Come up some possible goals for an existing site or web app (eg. look
at how well Telstra allows customers to learn about mobile plans, or
take an existing internal web application and critique that). This way
they may start to develop an eye for design by analyzing how effective
the design is at meeting those goals. Plus you're allowing your group to
safely critique designs before they move into critiquing each other's
work. What I like about doing this is your team will begin to build up a
set of design ideas (or what not to do) by looking critically at other
designs. 

3) One 'safe' way to do peer critiques is to fall back on your
application's goals. Again, the idea is to have rationale behind each
design decision, so that your critiques don't end up being about what
people "like".  I like to make sure the goals are visible during any
design reviews, and we constantly checking against the goals. "If we do
the design this way, it means we are going against Goal X, while it's
helping with Goal P". 

4) Another way to critique a design is by using activity scenarios.
Write stories that describe the user experience you are aiming for and
then walk through the design. But instead of capturing findings as
usability findings, start to brainstorm design solutions
collaboratively. 

Hope that gets you started.

Sarah

PS I looked up the Schon book on Amazon, and while it looks interesting,
I don't think it's going to help you with this exact issue.

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Donna Maurer
Sent: Monday, July 31, 2006 6:29 AM
To: discuss at ixda.org
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Learning to design - critiques

[Please voluntarily trim replies to include only relevant quoted
material.]

Hi IxDers

I started today at a new contract leading a new UCD team on a hugely 
important project. In doing so discovered that some of my team are fine 
at UCD techniques (interviews, paper prototype testing, usability 
testing) but are completely missing the vital element in the middle - 
interaction design!

I have some strategies to work through this, and something I want to try

is to incorporate the idea of peer critiquing. This is something I know 
is often done in design & visual arts training but, not having grown 
from either of those areas, don't know a lot about it.

I need some places to start reading or smart people to chat to. I'm 
trying to get my hands on a copy of Schon's 'the reflective 
practitioner' but am not sure where else to start. I'm not even quite 
sure how to phrase my question...

TIA

Donna


-- 
Donna Maurer
Maadmob Interaction Design
e: donna at maadmob.net
web: http://maadmob.net/maadmob_id/
book: http://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/


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