[IxDA Discuss] Trying to educate my design team

[Jorge Arango]

Hi Michael,

On May 2, 2008, at 10:02 AM, Michael Dunn wrote:

> I am looking for resources
> that might aid me in this- books, web articles, powerpoint or keynote
> presentations, etc. I've already compiled a small collection of  
> such, but
> would like to pick the collective brain on this matter.  Any  
> suggestions?

In my company we've tried different approaches to this issue. One that  
we've found particularly useful is to do old-fashioned design  
critiques -- we gather around the projector and look at designs we  
like / don't like, and then analyze them (sometimes down to the code  
level). Team members are welcome to suggest sites they like or don't  
like; this helps make the discussion more relevant to them. Of course,  
this assumes that there's a senior member of the team willing to serve  
as mentor to the process.

Another fun technique is to watch design-oriented movies together, and  
then discuss them and how they relate to our work. My team and I have  
enjoyed Helvetica, Sketches of Frank Gehry, and a few others. The cool  
thing about this exercise is that few of these movies talk  
specifically about design for the web, but design is design, and we  
can find different ways of thinking about some of the problems we're  
facing.

Hope this helps...

--
Jorge Arango
home: http://jarango.com
blog: http://jarango.com/en/blog
work: http://bootstudio.com