Design Process

System-centered Design

A Technology-First approach
Still necessary if we have legal or security concerns

• What can be built easily on this platform?
• What can I create from the available tools?
• What do I as a programmer find interesting to work on?

Design Thinker: Designers who create

• Technical Implementer: Implement as specified
• Mothodical Engineer: Solve problems, follow a methodology
• Innovative Designer: Think beyond obvious, Create beyond the problem

Designer-centered Design

Expert designers dictate solutions

• Designers leverage expertise to anticipate user needs without listening to users
• Users can't see past what they know - they rely on familiar experiences so they can't produce innovation

User-centered Design

Putting users first

• Prioritize real user needs and abilities
• Prioritize their work environment and context
• Prioritize the tasks they aim to complete

User-centered System Design

User-centered system design begins with understanding the domain of work or play where people interact with computers.
The goal is to facilitate human action by designing systems that support engagement and usability.

Three key assumptions:

• Good design directly satisfies user needs
• Design is a collaborative process between designers and customers. It evolves based on changing user concerns, with specifications as a natural byproduct.
• Continuous communication between customers and designers is essential.

Different roles of users

• User: Uses the final product and provides feedback based on real-world experience
• Tester: Evaluates early-stage prototypes to identify usability issues
• Informant: Shares insights and feedback on existing technologies or prototypes
• Design Partner: Collaborates actively with designers, contributing ideas and refining solutions

IDEO Human-Centered Design Process

1. Understand the problem area
   • why do we need a new design and how to come up with one
   • produce a small set of key ideas, general orientation
2. Observe potential users and customers
   • fictitious character maps
   • know the potential users → create persona
3. Visualize and Predict (Ideate)
   • brainstorm, sketching, prototyping
   • detailed scenarios or storyboards
   • depict the interactions between users and the new device (design)
4. Evaluate and Refine
   • user testing, feedback
   • iterative, agile approach
5. Implementation
   • Develop the final solution based on validated insights

Understand and Observe

Contextual Inquiry

Understand user behavior in real environment with actual field study
Involves in-depth observation and interviews of a small sample of users to gain a robust understanding of work practices and behaviors
Focus on real people & constraints using notes, documentation, recording, screen capture, eye-tracking, etc.

• Context: Observe users in their natural environment, not in artificial lab settings
• Partnership: Treat users as co-researchers, allowing natural discussions rather than controlling the session
• Interpretation: Develop a shared understanding of the work through user feedback
• Focus: Maintain clear research goals to guide observations and discussions

Interviews

• Stakeholders: align goals and business constraints (budget, schedule, etc.)
• Subject matter experts: develop an ongoing relationship with experts
• Users and customers: define goals, problems, etc.

Listening to user is important!
But there are many pitfalls of user interviews...

• User may struggle to express their needs
  • Focus on goals first, tasks second (don't divide into specific action)
  • Users are neither designers, nor experts (don't ask what is possible)
• Designers might influence users
  • Don't push a cool idea
  • Don't push what you have been working on
• Encourage storytelling
• "Could you show me?" Ask users to demonstrate their process
• Perpetual intermediates - most users stay at an intermediate level
  • Marketers design for beginners
  • Programmers design for experts

Don't ask questions like these!

• Leading question: don't lead the respondent toward a postiive response
• Binary & vague question: don't ask a yes or no question; it can't explore why
• False dichotomy: don't force a choice between two groups
• Unclear & overly broad question: make users to focus on specific factors
• Ambiguous question: specify criteria for selection
• Biased question: don't assume anything

Sketching and storyboarding

We've observed user workflows, we need a way to organize this.

Sketching/Storyboarding visualize key steps in a user's journey through key frames.
It illustrate interactions in context - it shows how users interact with their environment or the system.
We can present and refine storyboard: play storyboards to gather feedback from users and designers.

Visualize and Predict

Brainstorming

• One conversation at a time
• Stay focused on the topic
• Encourage wild ideas
• Defer judgement
• Build on the ideas of others
• Be visual
• Go for quality

Each time the lifecycle is completed, the number of ideas gradually decreases.