[IxDA Discuss] Cramming what we do into a few hours

[Nasir Barday]

I do this every 6 months for our new engineering classes. If I have
only an hour, I cover roughly what Dan outlined. If I have a second
hour, I dedicate it to something interactive. I'll start with
something small, like a group design crit of one view in an app. Then
I walk them through the process as if we were to design the thing
correctly from scratch (e.g. "after a contextual inquiry, a design
research team came up with the following. Let's make somethingon the
whiteboard.")

Eventually it becomes design-by-committee and some opinion wars break
out. That's when I have people recall the last time that happened to
them, how much it sucked, and how we as IxDs/UX professionals can help
avoid them and be more effective. Below the surface, the talk is a
sales pitch for how my team can make their jobs much easier.

Oh! And depending on how set-in-their-ways/experienced your audience
is, you'll want to play up the fact that there is no "right" way to
implement the process, e.g. you recognize that full-blown contextual
inquiries are not always necessary or feasible, that the design
process is itself "designed" for each product group depending on
personalities, roles, etc.

- Nasir