Users, Designers, Engineers

Mithat Konar

2011–10–13

Topics

• You versus the user
• Designer-thinking

You versus the user

You versus the user

• Interface design isn’t about you.
• Interface design is about what works for your users.
• Mithat’s maxim: You are not a typical user.

Typical ‘me-centric’ mistakes

• “It makes sense to me.”
  • So what?
  • “Know thy users, for they are not you!” [Tidwell]
• “The user needs to think about what s/he is doing.”
  • No, s/he doesn’t. Worse — s/he won’t.
  • Mithat’s maxim: The easier you make it for someone to do something, the more they will do it.
• “It’s just a face. It doesn’t really have an impact on function.”
  • Ugly things don’t get used.
  • Pretty things get used.

You versus the user

• Successful design is user-centric, not thing-centric.
• Successful design also balances what are typically conflicting requirements.
• The next section will help us understand this better.

Designer-thinking

Designer-thinking

• Nigel Cross, Designerly Ways of Knowing
  • The sciences and the humanities have been recognized as the two primary educational cultures.
  • Design is the third culture.

Three cultures

• Core languages
  • Humanities: literacy
  • Science: numeracy
  • Design: modeling
• Core phenomenon of study
  • Humanities: the human experience
  • Science: the natural world
  • Design: the human-made world

Three cultures

• Core methods
  • Humanities: analogy, metaphor, criticism, evaluation
  • Science: experiment, classification, analysis
  • Design: modeling, pattern-formation, synthesis
• Core values
  • Humanities: subjectivity, imagination, committment, concern for justice
  • Science: objectivity, rationality, neutrality, concern for truth
  • Design: practicality, ingenuity, empathy, concern for appropriateness

Design processes

• Designers and scientists think, work, and solve problems differently. (Lawson as reported by [Cross])
  • Scientists: problem-focused strategies, optimizing
  • Designers: solution-focused strategies, satisficing

Design processes

• Solution-focus makes sense for design.
  • Scientists can say, “more time is needed to get to the truth.”
  • Designers are constrained to develop things that work in limited time.
  • Science and scholarly problems are (artificially) well-structured.
  • Design problems are often ill-defined, ill-structured, ‘wicked’.

Design processes

The scientific method is a … problem-solving behaviour employed in finding out the nature of what exists, whereas the design method is a pattern of behaviour employed in inventing things of value which do not yet exist.

Science is analytic; design is constructive.

(Attributed to Gregory in [Cross]; emphasis added)

Design processes

The natural sciences are concerned with how things are … design, on the other hand, is concerned with how things ought to be.

(Attributed to Simon in [Cross]; emphasis added)

Design processes

To base design theory on inappropriate paradigms of logic and science is to make a bad mistake.

Logic has interests in abstract forms. Science investigates extant forms. Design initiates novel forms.

(Attributed to March in [Cross]; emphasis added)

Designerly thinking

• Different cognitive skills:
  • Deductive and inductive reasoning traditionally used everywhere.
  • Designerly thinking requires constructive reasoning as well.

Designerly thinking

• Designerly thinking tends to focus on pattern synthesis rather than pattern recognition.
  • Solution doesn’t pre-exist awaiting discovery or recognition.
  • Solution must be actively constructed or synthesized.
  • Often around an ordering principle (or principle of organization).
  • “Abstract patterns of user requirements are turned into concrete patterns of an actual object.” [Cross]

Designerly education

• Patterns and ordering principles are difficult to notate.
  • Unlike math and natural language
• Makes theorizing and meta-conceptualization difficult.
• Makes concept-based design education hard.
• Therefore most design teaching is ‘hands on’.

Notes

Cross, Nigel. “Designerly Ways of Knowing.” Design Studies 3, no. 4 (1982): 221–227.

Tidwell, Jenifer. “Organizing the Page: Layout of Page Elements.” In Designing interfaces. 2 ed. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly, 2011. 131–189.