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HCI VISTAS, VOLUME-II, 2006-2007 | |||
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Are we going to take the tide? | ||
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Article INS-12./Oct. 2006 |
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This is a very important phase in the world of User Interface (UI) design.
More and more software product companies have begun to realize that they no longer have the luxury of designing just a functional differentiator and remaining ahead of their competitors, since almost all competitors today have similar products. This simple and plain rationale is now becoming a reason for companies to push for UI design. (Personally, I am surprised how little we learn from our environment since this reasoning had been valid for products like cars, washing machines, TVs and other products since a long time ago 'it just took such a long time for the software product guys to understand this from their hardware counterparts' better late than never though.)
While the above should mean good news for UI designers, there is a lot that UI designers need to figure out before they can take up the opportunity. The traditional waterfall model of 'sequential' user-centered design is a dead process. With faster release-to-market cycles and agile programming methods, the rather long and sequential design process needs to be re-modeled.
There are two ways to look at it:
Route 1: If you want to align the user-centered design process with the software process, then, it becomes necessary that you improvise on the user-centered process you work with. You might want to keep the user at the center of your mind (figuratively speaking) while designing, but you will probably not get time to keep the user right at the beginning of the process, since the engineering team will just not wait for the one month while you do this and then bring them your wireframes a weekend before the company wants to release the product to the market. Practicality calls you to be 'agile'enough to realize that you need to spend more time in using your scattered user-experiences from other assignments and start designing upfront while conducting your user studies in parallel to refine these iteratively. It's difficult (it might involve an 18-hour job while getting paid for just 8) and it requires very careful execution.
Route 2: The other way, is to shout at the top of your voice that agile processes are just a developer's half-baked way of doing exactly what user-centered design does design iteratively. And you are probably right- but who's listening? If you see the larger picture, you would realize that in all practicality,
'what's right' has more to do with the number of people who support that view, rather than what's right in any absolute capacity.
Therefore, it seems practical that you would take Route 1 and earn your bread. As far as the Indian scenario of doing this is concerned, let's have a look at the factors involved to make Route 1 successful and yet do world-class design:
1. Methodology:
I hear a lot of talk on user-centered methodologies for this-and-that software processes and I wonder about the naivety of the talk. We will
all agree that any design process is a matter of 'understanding', 'conceptualizing', 'implementing' and 'testing' no matter what clothes you
put on this basic skeleton, its going to remain the same. The proof of the pudding is in the execution of the methodology and that by
itself is an iteratively learning process, gained from experience (easier said than done, I agree).
In the 'agile' mode, you would need to be flexible enough to adapt to a particular development process and yet be rigorous enough, for
example, to understand what aids your understanding of the user and what doesn't.
In India, surprisingly, even experienced UI designers don't understand the value of rigor and tend to become too 'easy' on the analysis
part before design the result is 'blind' design. On the other hand there are others, who are so stuck-up with analysis (mainly because
they are not hands-on designers), that they almost never sit down to do the actual design the result is an 'unromantic', 'non-exploratory'
and 'obvious' design solution. This needs to change - the designer will need to bring about a suitable marriage between the left and the
right brain.
2. Capability:
This is the problem area. India is viewed by the rest of the world as a bunch of non-value-adding dumb implementers, who do exactly
what they are asked to do and nothing more. The software guys have set this expectation and we will need to change this.
As designers we have probably been trained to be more independent-minded and therefore, hopefully, more communicative. However, our
much vaunted English-speaking skills are very much like our famed cricket team's batting line-up we fail when it's really required. Rarely
are we able to communicate effectively during power sessions with top management where we can be in a position to positively influence
design strategy and direction. Also, our much enthusiastic design 'fundas', which we otherwise discuss very openly as if we are going to
change the world, seem be in self-doubt in such situations.
This lack of confidence is viewed by the rest of the world as a lack of capability. We will need both the exposure and a certain bravado to
get us out of this confidence deficit. Without this, though we might have it, our capability will always be in doubt.
3. Exposure:
That we are amongst the most intelligent amongst the world, I have no doubt. If you live amongst a ten billion, you ought to
be, because everyday is a struggle to survive and be fit. Everyday is a 'jugad' and doing this continuously means that your brain cells
need to function at the fullest capacity.
However, that by itself is not enough. One knows only if one sees things and if one remains in one's own 'well', one can only know so
much and therefore use one's brain cells within that limit. It is therefore necessary to get 'exposure'. Companies who hire designers and
keep them bound to their computers for 18 hours a day and expect them to do world-class UI design obviously need to see this simple
truth.
Indian UI design teams/groups/companies need to send their UI designers and especially the 18-hour working graphic designers to
'inspiration' trips around the world. For the middle class graphic designer, his/her organization will have to open the eyes to the world for
them-
You can't expect a person to live 'middle-class' and design 'world-class'!
4. Academics:
With every failure we face in the industry, we tend to blame our schools for not equipping us correctly. We need a re-think on this one
way to look at this is that the broad-based empirical orientation we get in our schools might actually be a good way of opening our
minds, while the other way is to investigate if it's too general to impart any specific training that would be used in the industry.
I personally support the former and think that our schools do a good job of orienting us into a design culture, and then it's left to us how
we apply that imbibed thought process when we move into our specific fields in the industry. However, it' possible that the exposure to
real situations might be limited in school, and that can only improve if all of us (the Profs, the students and more importantly the alumni)
make a conscious effort of creating a stronger interaction between academia and industry. ( This is a topic that needs more discussion)
5. Organizational Dynamics:
This is another important factor, but would need so much space that I would rather talk about this in a separate insights paper. Having
said this, I will only mention that we manage this so poorly, that people become disillusioned as designers and become 'nomads'
wandering from one company to the other. And the only thing people in management do is to blame it on this one single word called
'attrition'.
6. Cultural factors:
I think the most important cultural trait we have, as Indians, is the fear of failure. We like to be cocooned within our comfortable and
incrementally successful lives, and often avoid any risk that might jeopardize this comfort. And so, when it comes to taking those 'leaps
of faith' we just avoid taking them.
Design, is almost always a leap of faith and if we avoid risk, either in doing design, or in other related activities like restructuring our
strategy, re-visioning our methods, recruiting the right people or in our approach to what we do, we are doomed to lose in the long run. We must realize that we have competition not just from a more resilient and larger China, but also from other countries like Brazil and the countries of the erstwhile USSR. And they are not pushovers.
In my experience, cultural differences are more in our minds than in the physical space. Yes, differences do exist and biases are there but it's our mind that enlarges them and stops us from conquering them. I suggest that we start thinking of ourselves as part of a global community and look for opportunities to reach out to people with an open mind rising above our biases.
7. Living Design:
Design is not just a profession and it cannot be -
it has to be lived everyday with passion.
Every year I notice wannabe designers come out of design schools with enthusiasm in their eyes and a flutter in their pony-tails- you can
smell the attitude and hope in them. And yet within a year, it's all gone- disillusionment taking over what the schools sought to imbibe in
them. Such a sheer waste.
Agreed, that the industry environment is not all that 'romantic' as it had seemed at school. Agreed, that it's difficult to even find someone
with whom an 'intelligent' conversation can be made. Agreed, it's difficult to keep the pony-tail fluttering. But that can't be the end of
everything.
For a UI designer, the pony tail and its accompanying style statements are nice, but just not enough; the flutter in one's hair has to move
into one's heart and mind before one can actually sit down and grind through the unglamorous hard work of compiling and understanding
relevant and irrelevant data to and converting them into design that works for the target users.
If one's just out of design school, it might be nice to keep up the romantic ideals by dusting away at them while having to work on the
constraints at hand. If one's experienced, it might be worthwhile to revisit 'hope' once in a while and keep the candle of self-belief burning.
For those who have been making individual efforts to move to usability and UI design or have moved into this field without any formal
education, I know that the difficulties are multiple. You really never know how much you have moved into it and how much more needs to
be done- the options aren't easy as well. Neither is it easy to get the job one wants. It might be worthwhile to actually invest in a formal
education or else look for a credible training where you can get an understanding of the thought process. All of this is of course, easier
said than done- but it needs to be done.
Unless one can keep the romance of living design alive, design will at best be patchy improvisations- sometimes the patchwork working
out well by chance and at other times pathetic and completely out of context. In the Indian UI design scenario, this is even more
important because we have the extremely difficult task of designing for contexts that are not ours and we need extremely fertile and
imaginative minds to capture contexts that apply to faraway lands and their people and yet be able to reach out to them.
There must be other factors too- and all I have written will be worthwhile if it can ignite others to think those that my mind has not been able to map.
In conclusion, the design of everyday things has been happening since long ago, ever since civilization needed them (much before God sent Don Norman to enlighten us about it). But the design of information and the digital world is just happening- and it's a choice before us, if we are going to be a part of how that is designed. With much of the technical implementation happening here in India, it just makes common sense that we should play a part in deciding how that gets designed- after all we constitute almost a half of humanity that will ultimately use this information (albeit second hand, after the first world has used it for sometime and made it either fashionable or mandatory for us to use it).
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Saumitri dabbles in design of the interface kind and its various synonyms. Part-time he surfs forums for understanding what people think about design and usability. At other times he tries and convinces clients that Indians can do world class user interface design. | |||
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