Last night the Columbus Society of Communicating Arts brought Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path in to speak about “Delivering Long-Term Design Value in a Short Term World”. One of my co-workers is the co-president of the group, and there were quite a few of us from work showed up to hear him speak.
I’m most familiar with Jesse as “the guy who coined the term AJAX” and crafted that picture of the elements of UX (from which actual development is notably absent). I was interested to see how he would cater to his design audience.
I’ve taken courses in “color theory” and “branding and identity” but I still associate design with “making things pretty”. I really enjoyed the talk as it helped me to appreciate that there’s much more that goes into effective design.
We went through the requisite examples of great product design (iPod, Target medicine bottles), but Jesse focussed not solely on the products but on the entire system.
Jesse asked the audience what the greatest complement to receive on a design would be. Evidently, it’s “I can’t live without it”. He talked about revolution, fundamentally changing the user experience. Cameras used to be very complicated, and then kodak came along and dramatically simplified things. It was one of those cases I love to think about: the users didn’t know what they wanted, until it was presented to them.
He spoke of how to deliver value to clients in terms of a triangle. At the base (initially), it could be achieved via technology. (his example was WordStar). The next level involves adding on new features to offer value (example: Microsoft Word with all toolbars turned on). The last level hinged on the experience offered to the client. In this case, he showed the newer design for MS Word, with the ribbon. The idea was that you didn’t need to clobber the user over the head with everything you had to offer; rather you could design something elegant that simply provided them with what they really needed/wanted. I’ll admit, I wasn’t so sure about this example, since I know the ribbon was met with much skepticism at its introduction. Perhaps that was due to users’ experiences with MS products, it’s hard to say.
He also suggested that too often we build products with data at the core, with a layer of logic over top, and finally a shell of a UI. But this is not inkeeping with how users see the product, which is “UI” with “magic” underneath. He encouraged designers not to limit themselves on what we’re told the technological limitations are.
He then shared charmr, which was a project they dreamt up just to flex their creativity in the medical field. They prefaced their presentation on this revolutionary tool for people with diabetes by stating that the technology did not yet exist for this to become reality. The ideas were great, and when they shared their ideas on youtube, they were met with great enthusiasm. But my practical side was stuck on the idea that they were limited by technology. I waited until the end of the lecture to ask “at what point do you have to reconcile with the limitations imposed by technology, and give up part of your dream to achieve part of it?”. His thoughtful answer was to first inform yourself as to whether they barriers you’re being told exist truly are barriers, and then to decide what is worth fighting for. A vague answer to be sure, but an acceptable one.
Some other audience members asked about the level of consumer insight to seek out, and I liked his answer that he “doesn’t ask the customer where they want the button, [he] asks what they want to get out of the experience (motivation, feeling)”. I think that’s what makes this fun: it’s about figuring out how to deliver on that, not on how to build a better mousetrap…
Related posts:
- Subscribe to the RSS feed
- Get Email updates
- Tweet This
- Stumble It
- Add to del.icio.us
- Share on Facebook
- Email to a friend
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
“He also suggested that too often we build products with data at the core, with a layer of logic over top, and finally a shell of a UI. But this is not inkeeping with how users see the product, which is “UI” with “magic” underneath. He encouraged designers not to limit themselves on what we’re told the technological limitations are.”
Wow. Did he tell designers how to magically pull data out of the air? Pardon my sarcasm, but I fight this sort of silliness every day. It’s irresponsible to create design that represents data that doesn’t even exist, or requires a whole new process to support it, when working against tight deadlines and a fixed budget. It must be nice to live in Jesse’s world.
He wouldn’t tell “designers” how to access data: that would be the job of a developer, to actually get to the implementation details. This is precisely what prompted me to ask at what point the designer has to give up part of his vision to achieve any of it.
More from author