Sunday, October 08, 2006
Synergy
Watching TV while kid wrangling this morning, and there was this show on one of the main droid based channels.
The show was about improving your business and so on.
One of the key points that came out of that show was that excellence in customer service is the responsibility of everyone in the supply chain, from the guy / gal who orders the pens, through to the client who pays the bills. Everyone.
The way they described that an organisation can achieve this excellence in customer service was to first understand what the requirements of their clients were. Then to analyse the gaps between what the organisation provided thus far. Then design and implement solutions to resolve those requirements.
Now I may be a bit on the special side, but doesn't that sound awefully like the basis for User Centred Design?
- Gather requirements from Users.
- Review current solution against requirements.
- Design and implement processes / procedures / products / services to address shortcomings and requirements.
I guess my overall point here is that many people dismiss User Centred Design as being only relevant to the technolgy world. WRONG.
The base principles of the methodology are highly appropriate for pretty much anything I think.
Originating from when man first discovered that the piece of flint he used to hunt cut his hands when he used it, so he wrapped some hide around the base of it to protect his hand.
Don't forget your users. They pay the bills.
The show was about improving your business and so on.
One of the key points that came out of that show was that excellence in customer service is the responsibility of everyone in the supply chain, from the guy / gal who orders the pens, through to the client who pays the bills. Everyone.
The way they described that an organisation can achieve this excellence in customer service was to first understand what the requirements of their clients were. Then to analyse the gaps between what the organisation provided thus far. Then design and implement solutions to resolve those requirements.
Now I may be a bit on the special side, but doesn't that sound awefully like the basis for User Centred Design?
- Gather requirements from Users.
- Review current solution against requirements.
- Design and implement processes / procedures / products / services to address shortcomings and requirements.
I guess my overall point here is that many people dismiss User Centred Design as being only relevant to the technolgy world. WRONG.
The base principles of the methodology are highly appropriate for pretty much anything I think.
Originating from when man first discovered that the piece of flint he used to hunt cut his hands when he used it, so he wrapped some hide around the base of it to protect his hand.
Don't forget your users. They pay the bills.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
Until now I've obviously missed the darned point.
There are some things in life that you need to relearn.
I relearnt something just two days ago.
I used to run Macs. Then I ditched them to go PC (hiss). Obviously this was driven by the PC ability to work well in a larger scale environment.
So when I was at the WDO6 (www.webdirections.org) conference, I got the opportunity to use a Mac powerbook pro, and a g4 powerbook.
I was smitten.
Then I attended a presentation from Andy Clarke and Mark Pesce, they both spoke about design, and its capability to invoke emotion within the viewer / user.
Now, based upon many years in the Government design space, I've come to realise, that I am perhaps missing something. What.
My background in industrial design seemed to force me down and engineering style of approach. While being highly effective, I discovered something.
Any design work I've done in recent years has been technically excellent. Highly user focused, and perfectly functional. (not that I've done that much actual design work recently because of my role these days but anyway)
Problem is, despite all these things making the interfaces effective, they are not successful. Truly successful.
I'll swing over to a real world example.
I bought a compaq laptop last year. I went into the shop, picked it in about 10 minutes on spec and price. Paid and left.
The day I got back from WD06, I bought a MacBookPro. Didn't even think twice. Had to have one.
I had this ridiculously intense emotion welled up within me after having used one for a very very brief period of time.
O.K. point coming up..
An effective design is well engineered. It meets the need of the user, it delivers what it has to, and it does so in an elegant and refined way.
A truly successful design does all this, AND invokes the right emotions in the user, to establish some form of emotional response and maybe attachment to it.
Macs do this. Particularly the notebooks. Every Mac owner I know "LOVES" their machine. They speak fondly of it, what it does, how it looks, how it feels to use, how they like to use it. The uniqueness of it even.
PC owners (and I'm one of them) don't have this something special in their eye when they talk about their viao or tecra notebook.
And there's the difference. The emotional connection is established and the success of the product is established, not just because of what it does, but what it IS.
I love my new Mac. I've had it for 3 days. I loved it before I even owned it.
Jobs did his... Ahem job with the Macs. He's earned my $3000 bucks.
Design is more than the discipline and dedication to technicalities. Its as much that as it is getting it to FEEL nice, to be what the user wants it to be, and to establish a partnership with the user, as well as meeting its functional needs.
Requirements engineering has a friend. His name is ART.
There are some things in life that you need to relearn.
I relearnt something just two days ago.
I used to run Macs. Then I ditched them to go PC (hiss). Obviously this was driven by the PC ability to work well in a larger scale environment.
So when I was at the WDO6 (www.webdirections.org) conference, I got the opportunity to use a Mac powerbook pro, and a g4 powerbook.
I was smitten.
Then I attended a presentation from Andy Clarke and Mark Pesce, they both spoke about design, and its capability to invoke emotion within the viewer / user.
Now, based upon many years in the Government design space, I've come to realise, that I am perhaps missing something. What.
My background in industrial design seemed to force me down and engineering style of approach. While being highly effective, I discovered something.
Any design work I've done in recent years has been technically excellent. Highly user focused, and perfectly functional. (not that I've done that much actual design work recently because of my role these days but anyway)
Problem is, despite all these things making the interfaces effective, they are not successful. Truly successful.
I'll swing over to a real world example.
I bought a compaq laptop last year. I went into the shop, picked it in about 10 minutes on spec and price. Paid and left.
The day I got back from WD06, I bought a MacBookPro. Didn't even think twice. Had to have one.
I had this ridiculously intense emotion welled up within me after having used one for a very very brief period of time.
O.K. point coming up..
An effective design is well engineered. It meets the need of the user, it delivers what it has to, and it does so in an elegant and refined way.
A truly successful design does all this, AND invokes the right emotions in the user, to establish some form of emotional response and maybe attachment to it.
Macs do this. Particularly the notebooks. Every Mac owner I know "LOVES" their machine. They speak fondly of it, what it does, how it looks, how it feels to use, how they like to use it. The uniqueness of it even.
PC owners (and I'm one of them) don't have this something special in their eye when they talk about their viao or tecra notebook.
And there's the difference. The emotional connection is established and the success of the product is established, not just because of what it does, but what it IS.
I love my new Mac. I've had it for 3 days. I loved it before I even owned it.
Jobs did his... Ahem job with the Macs. He's earned my $3000 bucks.
Design is more than the discipline and dedication to technicalities. Its as much that as it is getting it to FEEL nice, to be what the user wants it to be, and to establish a partnership with the user, as well as meeting its functional needs.
Requirements engineering has a friend. His name is ART.
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Web Directions 06. not a bad piece of kit really.
There are particular people there who I've met before, and many I've never met. All of which were utterly fascinating people.
Some particular people were highly valueable to me, and luck prevailing will remain to be.
I learned a lot about myself through reflection, being the sort of person I am. Specifically about my life goals, and who I am, what I want from life, and where I am placed these days.
My life goals are driven by my catch phrase question "why?", why am I doing what I'm doing, why do I want these things?
My primary goal is, and forgive me for being a big softy, but "to make the lives of the people who I connect with, more rich for having me in it". or something like that anyway.
A very close friend of mine said I would likely hit SES within the next 5 years. On one level, I hoped he was right. From that position, I could do much good for the government, and the public to which it serves.
With that still playing on my mind, I went to the conference, and met an extrodinary person who also seemed to think I was also destined for more.
With these two key moments in time captured heavily in my heart, I thought deep and hard about what I was doing with my approach to getting more from what I have done. Successes, failures, or other.
Do i really want to be in the senior executive? is that going to make me come home and feel fulfilled? can I really change things from there?
No. No not really. Maybe, but not likely.
So my more tangible goal was to rethink my approach to helping / enrichening peoples lives.
- can I do this through improving the pathway which technology is developed, and how its managed?
- can I do this through mentoring key people in my life, by sharing everything openly and honestly with them?
- could I perhap make better use of this electronic connective tissue to expose what I know, and allow both myself and those around me to test what I know, collaboratively.
- Should I consider a pathway for myself that includes lecturing again?
- what were last weeks lotto numbers?
These things all mean something.
Up until now I've really only focussed on one person or small group of people at a time. I'm changing my goals. Changing them to refocuss myself more on my direct professional community, and benefiting it. Perhaps that's where I'm destined to make change. Perhaps that's how I can share what I've learned from my time at enterprise level.
This journey is there for me to take, I'll take it and see what it leads me to. My goals remain the same, just my path to getting there is different.
More on goal setting later I guess.
Thanks for reading,
Keep your users in mind.
There are particular people there who I've met before, and many I've never met. All of which were utterly fascinating people.
Some particular people were highly valueable to me, and luck prevailing will remain to be.
I learned a lot about myself through reflection, being the sort of person I am. Specifically about my life goals, and who I am, what I want from life, and where I am placed these days.
My life goals are driven by my catch phrase question "why?", why am I doing what I'm doing, why do I want these things?
My primary goal is, and forgive me for being a big softy, but "to make the lives of the people who I connect with, more rich for having me in it". or something like that anyway.
A very close friend of mine said I would likely hit SES within the next 5 years. On one level, I hoped he was right. From that position, I could do much good for the government, and the public to which it serves.
With that still playing on my mind, I went to the conference, and met an extrodinary person who also seemed to think I was also destined for more.
With these two key moments in time captured heavily in my heart, I thought deep and hard about what I was doing with my approach to getting more from what I have done. Successes, failures, or other.
Do i really want to be in the senior executive? is that going to make me come home and feel fulfilled? can I really change things from there?
No. No not really. Maybe, but not likely.
So my more tangible goal was to rethink my approach to helping / enrichening peoples lives.
- can I do this through improving the pathway which technology is developed, and how its managed?
- can I do this through mentoring key people in my life, by sharing everything openly and honestly with them?
- could I perhap make better use of this electronic connective tissue to expose what I know, and allow both myself and those around me to test what I know, collaboratively.
- Should I consider a pathway for myself that includes lecturing again?
- what were last weeks lotto numbers?
These things all mean something.
Up until now I've really only focussed on one person or small group of people at a time. I'm changing my goals. Changing them to refocuss myself more on my direct professional community, and benefiting it. Perhaps that's where I'm destined to make change. Perhaps that's how I can share what I've learned from my time at enterprise level.
This journey is there for me to take, I'll take it and see what it leads me to. My goals remain the same, just my path to getting there is different.
More on goal setting later I guess.
Thanks for reading,
Keep your users in mind.
Thursday, July 27, 2006
Ergo-geeks.
I'm not the first to say this.
I certainly won't be the last.
The IT world, for all its wisdom appears to be catching up with the rest of the world.
Human Factors are coming to be recognised, nay sought after lines of expertise within the technology development world.
Technology for all its wow and wonder, has repeatedly failed the citizens to which it was built for.
Why?
Like many things. "If I can't use it,.... it sucks and i'll buy the competition."
I like many many other professionals from all walks of life have found that we have a role to fill. The role to make technology products better than what they are.
There are many things I want to talk about. Most of them business related. Some of them culturally related. Some of them, just me having a blurt about something I found interesting.
Included tentatively:
- What do I have to do to get my boss / organisation to recognise that I don't just push graphics around?
- My tasks are complex, why am I the only one who sees that?
- Technology has been developed successfully without my help before, so why should they implement Human Factors Integration?
- How do I integrate Human Factors tasks into a technology development lifecycle?
- Standards? aren't they something that you write to constrain and contain the scope of developers to get 'creative' in bad ways?....(here's a hint, used correctly... NO).
and much much more.
(i'd type it, but dinners ready and its food time.)
Good night everyone.
I'm not the first to say this.
I certainly won't be the last.
The IT world, for all its wisdom appears to be catching up with the rest of the world.
Human Factors are coming to be recognised, nay sought after lines of expertise within the technology development world.
Technology for all its wow and wonder, has repeatedly failed the citizens to which it was built for.
Why?
Like many things. "If I can't use it,.... it sucks and i'll buy the competition."
I like many many other professionals from all walks of life have found that we have a role to fill. The role to make technology products better than what they are.
There are many things I want to talk about. Most of them business related. Some of them culturally related. Some of them, just me having a blurt about something I found interesting.
Included tentatively:
- What do I have to do to get my boss / organisation to recognise that I don't just push graphics around?
- My tasks are complex, why am I the only one who sees that?
- Technology has been developed successfully without my help before, so why should they implement Human Factors Integration?
- How do I integrate Human Factors tasks into a technology development lifecycle?
- Standards? aren't they something that you write to constrain and contain the scope of developers to get 'creative' in bad ways?....(here's a hint, used correctly... NO).
and much much more.
(i'd type it, but dinners ready and its food time.)
Good night everyone.
Not convinced this guy is right or wrong. I expect ill informed and perhaps a little intollerant of change.
All the same, he makes some good points, if a little inconcieved.
http://www.baddesigns.com/
Worst case... it's another opinion from someone who gives a damn.
All the same, he makes some good points, if a little inconcieved.
http://www.baddesigns.com/
Worst case... it's another opinion from someone who gives a damn.
Are we just over complicating what we do or is this for real?
Gosh, you know I was working with a Business Analyst today, who was helping me model our processes for how we implement human factors work into the development life cycle within my organisation. (Australian Government)
I though, "yeah sure, this should only take about 1 hour or so ... surely!"
so, 3 hours later, we've gone through the high level tasks and outputs of the initial planning / synthesis phase of an application development projects lifecycle.
I've covered off level one and two lo fidelity prototyping, hi fidelity prototyping, electronic test mule development for User testing, performance metrics, decision making models, risk evaluation models, treatment plan development, asset creation and management, site visits, card sorts, screen specifications, wireframes, style specifications, interaction models, patterns and pattern management techniques, hell the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and ... you get the idea.
Tomorrow we're going over the execute phase, and what tasks are involved there. Another long conversation with much posturing and pointing at documentation, spread sheets, and hand drawn sketches I expect.
So I gets to the end of a long winded email to a person who struck me as someone to keep an eye on in the future (see inspiration). And I started thinking....
" you know, I've been doing this for 10 years or so now, in government and private, and government again. And does it all boil down to the 4-5 pages of scribbles of A3? NO!!! I could have rabbitted on for another 3 hours or more if it were feasible to do so."
"so if I can rubbish on about the intricacies of user centred design practices to this BA, and actually have it make sense, there must be heaps to this"
"if that is so, am I over complicating the issue? Can't we just make screens look pretty? Don't we just make graphics and pretty coloured text and buttons? Doesn't all the hard work get done by the technology developers?"
Nah.
Its complicated. Its fiddly. Its involved and emotionally taxing.
I love it. its a hoot.
ciao colleagues.
Gosh, you know I was working with a Business Analyst today, who was helping me model our processes for how we implement human factors work into the development life cycle within my organisation. (Australian Government)
I though, "yeah sure, this should only take about 1 hour or so ... surely!"
so, 3 hours later, we've gone through the high level tasks and outputs of the initial planning / synthesis phase of an application development projects lifecycle.
I've covered off level one and two lo fidelity prototyping, hi fidelity prototyping, electronic test mule development for User testing, performance metrics, decision making models, risk evaluation models, treatment plan development, asset creation and management, site visits, card sorts, screen specifications, wireframes, style specifications, interaction models, patterns and pattern management techniques, hell the list just goes on and on and on and on and on and ... you get the idea.
Tomorrow we're going over the execute phase, and what tasks are involved there. Another long conversation with much posturing and pointing at documentation, spread sheets, and hand drawn sketches I expect.
So I gets to the end of a long winded email to a person who struck me as someone to keep an eye on in the future (see inspiration). And I started thinking....
" you know, I've been doing this for 10 years or so now, in government and private, and government again. And does it all boil down to the 4-5 pages of scribbles of A3? NO!!! I could have rabbitted on for another 3 hours or more if it were feasible to do so."
"so if I can rubbish on about the intricacies of user centred design practices to this BA, and actually have it make sense, there must be heaps to this"
"if that is so, am I over complicating the issue? Can't we just make screens look pretty? Don't we just make graphics and pretty coloured text and buttons? Doesn't all the hard work get done by the technology developers?"
Nah.
Its complicated. Its fiddly. Its involved and emotionally taxing.
I love it. its a hoot.
ciao colleagues.
Inspiration statement.
==warning!!! Warm and fuzzy stuff ensues==
I met a person the other day.
In line with this day and age, I have no idea what she looks like, or anything really about her. I do know this.
- guts.
- community / environmentally sensitive.
- starting out in IT.
- appreciates finer points of this world.
- knows people, what they do and why.
- is still figuring out her journey in the world.
Why on this green earth am I writing this?
Well. Simply. I got to speaking with her about a work related issue, and well she inspired me to actually start submitting things to this blog.
Because of that 'catalyst' I've decided to make a change also. I'm not going to pass on my knowledge in a one to one way like I used to. (not that I'm going to stop doing it, I'm going to expand on what I do). I'm going to write down and expose what I know, hoping it helps more people.
Help or confuse, I'm not sure, but anyway.
Expect more from me, more on human factors issues, my thoughts experiences, concerns for the future.
Likely expect a lot of unintelligible dribble and some astoundingly poor grammar also. Time is an issue, so some certain finer points of ... Well... The English language simply must be sacrificed for the greater good.
==warning!!! Warm and fuzzy stuff ensues==
I met a person the other day.
In line with this day and age, I have no idea what she looks like, or anything really about her. I do know this.
- guts.
- community / environmentally sensitive.
- starting out in IT.
- appreciates finer points of this world.
- knows people, what they do and why.
- is still figuring out her journey in the world.
Why on this green earth am I writing this?
Well. Simply. I got to speaking with her about a work related issue, and well she inspired me to actually start submitting things to this blog.
Because of that 'catalyst' I've decided to make a change also. I'm not going to pass on my knowledge in a one to one way like I used to. (not that I'm going to stop doing it, I'm going to expand on what I do). I'm going to write down and expose what I know, hoping it helps more people.
Help or confuse, I'm not sure, but anyway.
Expect more from me, more on human factors issues, my thoughts experiences, concerns for the future.
Likely expect a lot of unintelligible dribble and some astoundingly poor grammar also. Time is an issue, so some certain finer points of ... Well... The English language simply must be sacrificed for the greater good.
Friday, June 23, 2006
What this blog is all about
The purpose of this blog is essentially to capture my rantings about the world in which I work.
I'm an interface design manager, working for the Australian Government.
Working in the Australian Government alone presents its own challenges, that are sometimes unique but mostly exaggerations of existing issues in the design world.
What am I wanting to say, well today I'm not so sure. But I'm sure that will evolve over time.
I'm a firm beliver in development through challenge, and community knowledge.
Am I the smartest cookie out there. Not likely. In fact, very much so.
Do I seek to be the most knowledgable person out there.... no not really either. I'm just like most people.
Perhaps this blog is a bit about design therapy rather than anything else.
I'm an interface design manager, working for the Australian Government.
Working in the Australian Government alone presents its own challenges, that are sometimes unique but mostly exaggerations of existing issues in the design world.
What am I wanting to say, well today I'm not so sure. But I'm sure that will evolve over time.
I'm a firm beliver in development through challenge, and community knowledge.
Am I the smartest cookie out there. Not likely. In fact, very much so.
Do I seek to be the most knowledgable person out there.... no not really either. I'm just like most people.
Perhaps this blog is a bit about design therapy rather than anything else.
