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Interaction Design Ramblings

Notes from the field


Design Studio Workshop - Instructions and Timing
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[info]lanehalley

What’s a design studio workshop?

A design studio workshop is a creative exercise that helps a group of people explore concepts and build shared understanding of a problem. Working from a shared context, individual team members sketch solutions to a problem, discuss them as a group, and then iterate concepts to improve them. The outcome of a design studio is a deeper understanding of a problem space, and a starting point for deeper discussion about the elements of the right solution.

The objective of a design studio is to explore the problem space and generate ideas. We may not necessarily produce a complete solution in one meeting. Feel free to explore crazy ideas and have fun!

Mature drawing skills are not required to participate! All that’s required is a willingness to participate.

How does it work?

This session 90 minutes, remind the participants to please arrive promptly so we can get started together. 

Introductions (5 minutes)

Review timing for workshop
Arrange group into teams
Set context by reviewing persona and scenarios
(note: you need to create the context prior to this meeting, best if the team already knows this material)

Individual Drawing (20 min)

Each person creates rough storyboards that illustrate the scenarios.
Feel free to use paper, pens, stickies, tape and scissors. Get creative!

Presentation in groups (15 min)

Within your group, each person explains their solution to the group.
During this time, the other people can take notes, but there’s no conversation/comments/questions
The group is responsible to get through all concepts in the allotted time.

Discussion in groups, record feedback (15 min)

Each team discusses all the concepts one at a time.
Comments are in the form “This part is working because…” or “I don’t see how Sandy would accomplish this….”
Record comments on each individual sketch (stickies are helpful for this)
The group is responsible to get through all concepts in the allotted time.

Converge, redraw new concept as group (20 min)

Elect a person to draw the group concept
Each team collaborates to produce a concept sketch that represents the best direction produced by their group.Note: sometimes this new concept may include elements from several concept sketches, other times the group converges around one concept.

Presentation ( 15  min)

The last 15 minutes, each group presents their converged sketch to the other group.
During this phase, capture any issues or comments about unsolved issues, areas for further exploration/research, et

Congratulations! You’ve now completed a design studio workshop!


stuff I read
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[info]lanehalley
Cooper Journal
IxDA discussion
Mark Hurst’s Good Experience
Adaptive path newsletter

To keep up with the interactive/agency space

To keep up with the development/Agile space

And I follow the twitter stream of IxD professional friends.
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Interaction Design job boards
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[info]lanehalley
Reposting some Interaction Design resources and places to post jobs.

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Mark Hurst has paid postings on his site and newsletter.
 
 
The Interaction Design Association has a jobs posting area.
 
 
The AIGA might have some postings, but it's less focused on IxD, and more on general design
 
 

 

 

 

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Design as facilitation
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[info]lanehalley
At the IxDA Interaction '08 event in Savannah, I heard many stories about how interaction designers are taking stakeholders out on customer site visits, doing collaborative synthesis, working through design problems with developers. Why? Business stakeholders and developers don't have the same skill set or motivations as interaction designers, but there's something about using our methods to work through problems together that helps everyone be on the same page. They don't have to learn to be interaction designers to benefit from the techniques we use.

Interaction design provides great solutions, but it also is necessary to facilitate those solutions into the organization. I don't believe that the people who provide those solutions should be the "boss," they have to be the guide, leading people to the right place. Just as we can't justify our design decisions "because we think so" we also can't own the design, it has to be a owned by everyone who contributes to solution we're building. Interaction designers must use our skills to identify the problem, find a workable solution and get it all into peoples' heads before anything will happen. We have to engage and inspire the organization to get something good built.

In this spirit, I like the idea of figuring out how IxDs can collaborate more with developers because it helps create better understanding of the design and sense of ownership. Now, exactly what "collaborative design" means and where it fits in the process is open for debate, but I feel there's something in there that could work. The "big design doc" approach is problematic for many companies, and I'm thinking about ways we could do it better. It worked well in a recent project where the document followed the design, rather than the other way 'round. I think we could use more collaboration time with the development team on most of our projects, starting as early as the framework. I think there's great value in communicating more about the problems our framework is trying to solve, and leaving some of the implementation details up for healthy discussion. I think we could meet with different stakeholder groups separately to address different concerns, as well as together to build mindshare.

So...I guess at the root I see this as a design communication problem. How do we get developers to understand and believe in our designs so things are built properly? Part of the solution may be to facilitate them into it, rather than dictate to them.

Best Careers?
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[info]lanehalley
Some positive press, even if the description is bit of a mash-up. Oh, and um..when does DESIGN happen?

From US News & World Report.

"Usability specialists make sure that products, especially technical ones, are easy and pleasurable to use. How? First, they observe and interview potential users to identify their needs and preferences. After a prototype is developed, they watch and interview potential users again and suggest revisions. Not surprisingly, the job outlook for usability specialists is strong. The number of new, complex products is proliferating, and many of them demand a usability specialist."

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