1. I'm fascinated by how the official design of something is often completely redesigned by the people doing the actual work.
Example: at doctor's office today I filled out forms explaining why I was there.
Reality: doc asked same questions and took notes, w/o reading the form.
2. The mismatch is that the *designer* has assumptions about the real world that they never check. Even after their design is in the world.
Architects are notorious for never visiting their buildings after they're finished. Also true for many kinds of design, tech & beyond.
3. The system or product works, but only because it's the front line workers, often uncredited, who are the glue holding it together.
I think of grocery store clerks teaching people how to use the self-checkout machines. Or the IT department training ppl how to use Google Docs.
4. The best designers are curious about the gaps - they want to know who is filling them in and how, maybe, their next design wouldn't require so much assistance to work well.
But much design is like those office forms - the designer doesn't know it's not really working.
5. In the tech world one data goldmine is customer support - what features and scenarios generate the most calls?
But too often design is detached from that data. @automattic has every new employee work in support for weeks b4 they start their job. Every org should do this!
6. Whenever I see a design gap, I think about:
- Does the designer know this exists?
- Did they learn from it?
- Did they try to close the gap through an update?
- What made that hard to do?
- What culture incentives/disincentives influenced them?
7. I think often about @JaneFultonSuri's book Thoughtless Acts - and how inventive everyday people are in filling in gaps in their daily lives.
But there are gaps in every app and hi-tech thing too.
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Study decisions, not just ideas. It's decisions and the people who make them that define how ideas are evaluated.
If you only care about ideas you'll stay mystified and angry about why "the best" idea never gets chosen.
Study decisions. Learn how to influence them.
I've read many books on decision making but this one had the most powerful impact on me.
For the approach he takes alone, studying front line workers making life and death decisions, it's a worthy read.
Sources of Power, Gary Klein
Have you ever kept a decision journal? Here's how it works.
When you have a big decision:
1. Write down your thoughts about your options. 2. And your rationale for deciding. 3. Then decide. 4. Experience the outcome. 5. Review 1 & 2 - what can you learn now? write it down
1. We have 5 basic senses - then why don't designers and experiences use all of them?
It's always fun to step back and ask this question, which often leads down the path to SMELL-O-VISION.
2. It sounds like a joke but Smell-O-Vision was one of many attempted innovations to improve the movie theater experience.
Like many attempted innovations, many approaches were tried. Some tried to pump in scents into the theaters, but the timing was a problem.
3. Others tried a simpler approach, using "scratch and sniff" cards - Instructions would appear on the screen telling you when to use which one. Clever.
1. All of the ideas in How Design Makes The World are encapsulated in these four questions every product team should ask regularly. #design#ux#designmtw
2. Many projects have requirements, schedules and cool ideas, but forget to focus on improving something specific for real people. Or get lost along the way.
Good teams refresh the real goals often, like a lighthouse.
3. We're all prone to forgetting our biases and designing for ourselves.
If we don't go out of our way to study our customer's real needs, and how they differ from our own, we will fail them and possibly not even know until it's too late.
1. When people say "innovations happen faster today than ever before" ask:
Does this person know anything about the history of innovation?
It's an impressive sounding statement rarely challenged since we like to hear it. But it's misleading in several ways that I'll explain.
2. The pace of change is not the same as scale.
For example:
The shift from hauling water on your back to indoor plumbing is HUGE. The shift from iPhone 10 to 11 is SMALL.
Have there been shifts as transformative to your quality of life as plumbing recently? I doubt it.
3. We love Amazon for Prime delivery and consider it a breakthrough, but in 1900 Sears had the same business model: huge catalog + ship anywhere (thx to new railroads).
You could order an entire kit for a house and thousands of Americans did.