The power of prototyping:
Most of my work is a set of disposables rather than deliverables, and I celebrate this.
I like the three questions that Chris asks himself:
- What’s the quickest, cheapest thing I can create to help make the next design decision?
- What can I create to best demonstrate the essence of the concept?
- How can I most effectively share the thinking behind the design with decision-makers?
My presumption that one should examine evidence before reaching a conclusion, rather than using it to support a conclusion, was not even an idea they could understand well enough to reject.
I am not against trying to be persuasive. That is a necessary art. But I was shaken they could not conceive of any use of information other than persuasion.
Here’s the transcript of Paul’s excellent talk at this year’s UX London:
How designers can record decisions and cultivate a fun and inclusive culture within their team.
Unlike many people, I’m not particularly worried about AI replacing peoples’ jobs, although employers will certainly try and use it to reduce their headcount. I’m more worried about it transforming jobs into roles without agency or space to be human. Imagine a world where performance reviews are conducted by software; where deviance from the norm is flagged electronically, and where hiring and firing can be performed without input from a human. Imagine models that can predict when unionization is about to occur in a workplace. All of this exists today, but in relatively experimental form. Capital needs predictability and scale; for most jobs, the incentives are not in favor of human diversity and intuition.
Unless we know why someone made a decision, we can’t safely change it or conclude that they were wrong.
Working in a big organization is shocking to newcomers because of this, as suddenly everyone has to be consulted to make the smallest decision. And the more people you have to consult to get something done, the more bureaucracy exists within that company. In short: design systems cannot be effective in bureaucratic organizations. Trust me, I’ve tried.
Who hurt you, Robin?
The story of Jack Garman and the 1202 alarm—as covered in episode two of the 13 Minutes To The Moon podcast.
Next time you’re faced with a decision, ask yourself: how can this decision be made on the lowest level? Have you given your team the authority to decide? If you haven’t, why not? If they’re not able to make good decisions, you’ve missed an opportunity to be a leader. Empower, enable, and entrust them. Take it from NASA: the ability to delegate quickly and decisively was the key to landing men on the moon.
This is an excellent case study!
The technical details are there if you want them, but far more important is consideration that went into every interaction. Every technical decision has a well thought out justification.
A remarkably practical in-depth guide to making ethical design decisions, with enjoyable diversions into the history of philosophy throughout.
A lovely outlook on designing with progressive enhancement:
There will always be users coming from places you didn’t expect, using devices you didn’t test for.
Mikey compares a few different decision-making processes (and in the process describes the fundamental difference between the W3C and the WHATWG).