[IxDA Discuss] Disagreement among UX designers

[Dave Cronin]

A coupla comments interspersed below:

> From: Karen Smith
> Sent: Friday, November 10, 2006 1:00 PM
> Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Disagreement among UX designers
> 
> When you have diagreement in the UX team on specific designs, 
> how do you usually resolve the issue?
> 
> 1. Test with users
> We don't usually have direct access to users. Sometimes, 
> conceptual designs cannot be readily tested. Even we have a 
> test, the way to interpret data is different among team 
> members.  What you see is what you think.

We always try to bring it back to the users, but there's another way to
do this than usability testing. We believe that to get good
collaboration both within and outside design teams we need a shared
understanding of:

Who the users are... ( by performing qualitative user research and
modeling users as personas)

...and what they need (by developing scenarios that imagine future
usage, and deriving needs or requirements from these)

We try to come to agreement about these before anyone starts drawing
anything. Without this kind of common ground, its difficult to identify
the source of disagreement-- is it about who the user is, what they
need, or how that need is satisfied? 

It is often presumed that a disagreement about design solutions concerns
the latter, but often the disagreement really stems from a lack of
consensus about those first two questions.
 
> 3. Get more opinons
> Discuss the issue with systems engineers/business analysts, 
> subject matter experts and development team. However, team 
> members can still hold their opinons. People only seek the 
> information that support their views.

We use "The 15 minute Rule." If a design team spends 15 minutes
disagreeing about something, they are obligated to get up and find
another person to involve in the discussion. 

They must explain the problem in terms of the user, their needs and the
proposed solution. If this happens, we often find that it is the case
that no one was right and the disagreement has arisen from the fact that
the team hasn't struck a good solution. Also, frequently the team finds
the right solution in the course of explaining the problem.

Hope this helps.

-dave

__________

Cooper | Humanizing Technology

David Cronin
Director of Interaction Design

office (415) 267 3504
mobile (415) 699 3036
dave at cooper.com | www.cooper.com

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