An Important Time for Design (A List Apart)
Reading this:
Design as partner
If we want to really show what design is and what it can do, we need to get design elevated to the partner level. Partners have major equity stakes, real decision-making power, and are involved in product development from the beginning. The design team must feel that it has both the authority to make product decisions and the responsibility for the outcome of those decisions. If good design has an important role to play in the future of the web (it does), designers should work on their own terms and with a fair share of both the risk and the reward (read: cash money) set aside for them.
… and discoverying this: http://rockhealth.com/
Practice Fusion, the leading provider of health records software for medical professionals, has published a nice recap of their user conference, Connect11, where Alan Cooper spoke about the role of interaction design in health care. Among the questions answered - “what do you get when you cross a computer with a doctor’s office?”
At the 13 minute mark, Stefan Klocek presents a prototype of Practice Fusion’s new iPad app.
Via Cooper Journal
[Book] Sketching User Experiences
This is a book about process and design. Divided into two parts, Bill Buxton engage you (designers, product managers, business executives, etc.) in a analysis about methods, processes and business careers from a historical point of view.
It brings other fields of the industry into the emerging User Experience with Sketching as the starting point of new ideas and as a way to lead the new product requirements for innovation.
It makes you think about your role and your company culture reminding us:
how important innovation is to the future of your company, the role of design in this, a recognition that innovation cannot be ghettoized in the research or design departments, since it is an overall cultural issue, and awareness of the inevitable and dire consequences of ignoring the previous three points.
Buxton stops when talking about Design when makes distinction between Interface Desgin and Experience Design (may we say design for experience?), when clarifies why Sketches are not Prototypes and disagrees with D. Norman who stated “We are all designers”.
Reducing things to such a level trivializes the hard-won and highly developed skills of the professional designer.
It is not a how-to book, although there’s a complete section about techniques to create sketches, with best practices where the main messages is: think, create, share and test.
Personal opinion
When reading this book I have had always the feeling of mixing things and not going into the real root of any point. I would love to have the two parts of it into two different books with a more deeply detailed materials where to learn more about the author’s ideas.
Nevertheless, for me, it has represented a creative way of learning tips to introduce simple, fast and cheap sketching techniques into my daily work at the same time that I have considered the need of innovation not only in products but also in the process itself.
In order to create successful products, it is as important (if not more) to invest in the design of the design process, as in the design of the product itself.
By the way, digging into his web site you can take a look to this interesting and inspiring device collection (in HTML or Silverlight).
Non-Violence conceptual map
Non-violence conceptual map of the spanish social movement 15M
[Book] Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things
The Norman’s book Emotional Design: why we love (or hate) everyday things is certainly praised by designers and non-designers.
Truly, it has made me a better person (I would never say that I’m now a better designer since I’ve just read a book). But yes, that’s the positive feeling you can get after reading it. You will feel like an alive and creative animal which understand the emotions through design and technology.
The book is full of examples, (figurative) pictures, experiences, and situations to illustrate why without emotions, your decision-making ability would be impaired.
There’s a kind of anachronistic tone in his view of design. He splits it in three different levels:
- Visceral: visceral design is about the initial impact of a product, about appearance, touch, and feel.
- Behavioural: is about use, about experience with a product: function, performance, and usability.
- Reflecive: is about long-term relations, about feelings of satisfaction produced by owning, displaying, and using a product.
explaining why attractive things really work better: beauty and usefulness are inside everyone’s mind when we look at objects. Even if we would dislike something there’s always a strong emotion behind which affects to the interaction and the perception.
So interesting, so recommended… and ready for the next one.
Social Design
Has the design a social mission? Personally, I believe that art has nowadays a strong commitment with our society; more than ever an artist cannot afford be a purely contemplative being. Should the design follow the same trend?
Blanksy, an artist that I love by his compromise with the need of denunciation and critic, has an important presence in the Wall of Shame built in Palestine. Apparently, not all palestinians have agreed with Blanksy’s vision of the reality, nevertheless they’ve contributed to express their feelings and to tell the story by using the same tool: the creativeness.
In regards of design, we can see more pieces of popular expressions like the #15M movement - also known as “Real Democracy Now” - which have provoked the contribution of such many different people - not only designers - and has used the design among social networks and public demonstrations.
This combination of support, talent, need, and commitment, is rising up as part of the ethic of a designer with his/her own profession.
There are, actually, communities dedicated to provide the designer’s talent to any NGO which need it.
I think that even UX/UI designers should be part of this tendency not forgetting the difference between the private and the public, and bringing back some forgotten concepts such as software libre, creative commons, and responsible consume. Now, when we seem to be safe.
