Monthly Archives: May 2010

You, Me and Users: UX Designers and Developers Tussle

Posted on by
Reply

I never been to any Book Club meetings before, it was my first time there. I attended UX Book Club San Francisco on the evening of May 26th 2010, it was about a book name Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko. Very intriguing book. Part theory, part practical and stories of the experts.

The topics that discussed were from the book context as I remember few were Data and Process.

Data as in web analytics data are mere representation of the usage but not the usability counter. It don’t capture the User Behavior, there likes or dislikes. Although the Usability Tests are there where you can observe the user and capture the accurate interaction conundrum or satisfaction.

Processes is like defining the path how a User will go from point a to point b. However these days applying something similar to Six Sigma is a big NO. Fast paced era needs fast paced process. As one of the participant pointed to the Agile Development Method. Where releases are in small chunk. Approvals are small chunks too. However it is not quite easy to get all the thing involved in an development to be catered in an agile context. As one of the member said and I kind of agree with her that You need to define the complete framework. For instance if we are taking from features perspective then do not try to implement them all at once, and ask the business owners to approve it at once. We should have release cycle for two weeks for let say only two to three feature. This will keep the standards of end-products very high. And as I personally saw where I work that our product that was developed from agile perspective has 0.001% support issue.

While discussing about the Interaction Designer role and why most of the time Project Manager, Business Owner and most of the Development Team does not put them on priority. At that point I felt that there is a need of a bridge. Double-Decker Bridge like Bay Bridge but not weak one.

I at that point did have my say. Developers and Interaction Designer are doing the something except there perspective is different. They both are fluent in there Design Pattern language. Coding is art. So does crafting product behavior. Coding a piece of module is an art too, developers do need to code in a way that it don’t hurdle the future enhancement which lead them to carefully pick the Design Patterns in such a harmonic way that I am dead sure people from the other side will be amazed. Same thing goes for Interaction Designers, there mindset is totally toward the usefulness with ease. Their observation of the user behavior is really intriguing and artistic then putting there research in to a desirable form and combing with the developers effort for sure it will create a very useful, desirable and emotional product. Why we love Gmail rather than Hotmail? Why some who are not in favor of Dancing Bear are lean toward iPhone than Google Android? Why we want elegancy? Even at Target Store people love to get there prescription? Why Boxee Media Center is much more usable then the Windows Media Center? It is the work of Interaction Designer and Developers. Not just one entity but two working together.

I told the group a story of a two construction worker, it goes like this:

a curious person was looking at a construction site, there he saw couple of construction workers building something. he went to “constructor worker a” and asked him, “what are you doing?” the worker replied “oh, I am constructing a building where I need to put the cabling modules, sewerage system, heater and ac and ventilation etc”. then that curious person went to another worker “construction worker b” and asked him the same question ” what are you doing?” he replied… I am building a church.

Now you see both groups are doing there job and they are doing perfectly. One group is really focused in to the inner and other is working on the outer side, that group is also trying his best to get the perfect aura of the end result. However they can’t live without each other they need each other.

How to make Developer to see the goal of Interaction Designer? Very simple Interaction Designers should pull them take them 30,000 feet and show it to them that’s what we are building. Same thing developer do with UX peeps, take them in to a wonderful world of coding and show them the MVVC pattern, how it is really benefiting the designer, and developers.

See one group trying to build a robust engine for Ferrari another group creating an exterior and the behavior. There path is  parallel, it is a two lane street they have to make sure they are sync and holding each other hand. If any of them fail. Blame will be on both of these groups, on a team. Instead of Developers or Interaction Designers.

For that purpose go play with android and iPhone. iPhone works superbly well because Hardware, Software and Interaction is extremely taken care of. On the other hand Android software is awesome. However hardware and interaction around it is poor. So overall Google Android is complex. Where as iPhone is superior. Simple. Here blame goes to Everyone who worked on Android not on one group only.

Hope we in coming days will lead to a path where we understand each other.

May the ease be in our life and in those who we work with.

Get inspired be inspired.

If you don’t love it, you’re going to fail – Steve Jobs

Posted on by
Reply

I love what I am doing that is the reason I wakeup everyday and my brain is always fresh with new ideas, new passion of my job and bright future I am seeing in my NaanMap endeavor.

I start viewing the interview Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg conducted with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Apple CEO Steve Jobs at the D5 conference on May 30, 2007.  It is full of the precious gems, and subtle but obvious hints what they are envisioning and what is it for us as a consumer of the digital age.

I am going to paste a very superb piece of advice they gave to a Business Owners / Entrepreneurs / Starters in general:

Rob: Thanks, Steve and Bill. Rob Killion, here with my business partner. We’ve got a 100-person Internet media business. I’m wondering what would be the single most valuable piece of advice you’d give us to even attempt to create some of the value that you guys have done in both your very impressive companies.

Bill: Well, I think actually–it may be in both cases–correct me if I’m wrong–the excitement wasn’t really seeing the economic value. You know, even when we wrote down at Microsoft in 1975, “a computer on every desk and in every home,” we didn’t realize, oh, we’ll have to be a big company. Every time, I thought, “Oh, God, can we double in size?” Jeez, can we manage that many people? Will that feel fun still? You know, and so every doubling was, like, okay, this is the last one. And so the economic thing wasn’t at the forefront. The idea of being at the forefront and seeing new things and things we wanted to do and being able to bring in different people who were fun to work with eventually with a pretty broad set of skills and figuring out how to get those people those broad skills to work well together has been one of the greatest challenges. You know, I made more of my mistakes in that area maybe than anywhere, but, you know, eventually getting some of those teams to work very well together. So, you know, I think it’s a lot about the people and the passion. And it’s amazing that the business worked out the way that it did.

Steve: Yeah. People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing and it’s totally true. And the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained period of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people, actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up, you know, being “successful” in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, oftentimes, it’s the ones [who] were successful loved what they did so they could persevere, you know, when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit because they’re sane, right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it?

So it’s a lot of hard work and it’s a lot of worrying constantly and if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail. So you’ve got to love it and you’ve got to have passion and I think that’s the high-order bit.

The second thing is, you’ve got to be a really good talent scout because no matter how smart you are, you need a team of great people and you’ve got to figure out how to size people up fairly quickly, make decisions without knowing people too well and hire them and, you know, see how you do and refine your intuition and be able to help, you know, build an organization that can eventually just, you know, build itself because you need great people around you.

Hope it will help you a lot.