Blind Mountain Climbing Nathan Kane UI designer & developer My UI design process, and how you can help
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Blind Mountain Climbing
Nathan KaneUI designer & developer
My UI design process, and how you can help
Solve user problems while meeting business goalsMy goal as a designer
A design process is the mixture of two activities
INPUT
INSTINCT
INPUT INSTINCT
The product design process is knowing which questions to ask who, when
INPUT & INSTINCT
Trust your gut or talk to someone?
INSTINCT
INSTINCTWhere does it come from?
EducationExperience e.g usability conventions
Design philosophy
INSTINCT
1. Generate ideas 2. Doing design (sketches, mockups, prototypes) 3. Implicitly weighing tradeoffs—there are millions of micro-decisions in every design, and there is no such thing as a perfect design
What is it?
INSTINCT
+It’s fast It’s fun It’s easy It’s never wrong* Source of creativity, discontinous ideas It can inject soul, personality, humanity It differentiates the best designers and designs Few boundaries Everyone has it
*until Input is solicited
-Predicting human behavior in a vacuum is hard False empathy (bias toward “scratching your own itch”) Lack of expertise in certain specialties
INPUT
Consult the experts
Consult the expertsCore product team
Business partnerSuperpower: Knows the business model and how customer problems map to creating a healthy, growing enterprise. Weaknesses: Seeing the implicit or broader context for design decisions.Nickname: Product manager, marketing manager
Where found
Lots of meetings Chat (sometimes) Business reviews
EngineerSuperpower: Knows and increases the scope of what’s possible Weaknesses: Empathy for the non-technical. Caring about beauty or fine details.Nickname: Developer
Surrounded by monitors Chat (all the time)
Consult the expertsNon-core team
Other designersSuperpowers: artistic preference Weakness: Expertise in / caring about business or technical matters
Nickname: Visual designers, writers, illustrators, prototypers, competitor products
Usually wearing trendy scarf Critiques
Design reviews
Data peopleSuperpowers: answering behavioral usage questions, setting up tests
Nickname: analyst, data scientist, analytics person
In Excel
Where found
Consult the expertsNon-core team
Senior leadersSuperpowers: aligning you to long-term strategy. Providing the engineers to build your design. Motivating other teams to help you.
Nickname: Directors and above
Big offices Big reviews
Weaknesses: understanding constraints. Thinking tactically.
Target customer or userSuperpower: Knows their own problem and derivative enhancements of current solutions. Knows if they understand something.
Weaknesses: anticipating future behavior or knowing what they want. What they say is not necessarily what they do
Follow-me-homes Usability lab / usertesting.com Customer care or sales Every person ever
Where found
What’s better than input from the experts?
Real use• How can we get to real use as quickly as
possible to test hypotheses? • Are we measuring the right things?
Designs are like genetically-modified birds
It’s hard to know when creating them if they’ll thrive in the wild
INPUT
+• Enhances anticipated success of a design • Answers unknowns • Aligns the design to other external priorities • More brains on a problem • Gives priority and visibility to your work and
reputation
-• Slow • Unpredictable • A lot of work • Resource-intensive • Can distract or overwhelm when low
quality or irrelevant • Can damage morale • “Design by committee” results in safe,
conservative, boring design
THE ROLE OF TIME ON DESIGN
Design quality/probability of
success
Hard or ambiguous problemEasy or clear problem
Problem is presented
Days Weeks Months Years
Problem to solution
What is the problem?
What are some potential solutions?
Which solution will be effective?
Is the solution effective?
Product designer
INPUT-HEAVY INSTINCT-HEAVY INPUT-HEAVY
Anthropology
Answer-seeking tactic Business model
analysis
Sketching on pen/paper
External inspiration
Usage analytics/reporting
Input from the experts
Prototyping
EXPLORATION REFINEMENTUNDERSTANDING
Design is like blind mountain climbing
Best solution for this problem
Start here
First place you explore
INPUT INSTINCT
The product designer’s responsibility is knowing which questions to ask who, when
INPUT & INSTINCT
Trust your gut or talk to someone?
Advice for how to contribute to the design process• “I like” is not useful input. Instead, use “It works…” or “It doesn’t
work…”, which downplay personal preference and focus on the goal of the design.
• We get a lot of input. The designer must triage, focus, & decide imperfectly to make forward progress. So, while your input is always processed, the design may not move in your desired direction, because we’ve weighed other input (and our own instinct) agains it.
• Design is inherently imperfect. Everything is iterative. We “satisfice” and do our best. However, better solutions tend to come from from better-defined problems.
• Timing and timeline are critical. Particularly the time from problem selection to delivery matters greatly. Communicate known problems (business or user) as early as possible, and keep us updated on any and all timing updates. Also, be available for questions (on chat preferably).
And my biggest piece of advice to business folks
FRAME THE CHALLENGE (and not the solution)
“We need a link on the stage of the Customers tab”
BAD“Our users don’t know how a payments service could save them time, and if more of them did, it could increase revenue by $5M”
GOOD
End
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