{"id":543,"date":"2011-03-14T15:56:09","date_gmt":"2011-03-14T21:56:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.techory.com\/blog\/anatomy-of-a-design-decision\/"},"modified":"2011-03-30T08:19:55","modified_gmt":"2011-03-30T14:19:55","slug":"anatomy-of-a-design-decision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/?p=543","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Design Decision"},"content":{"rendered":"<strong>Presenter<\/strong>\r\n<span class=\"pres_name\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uie.com\/about\/consultants\/\">Jared Spool<\/a>,<\/span> <span class=\"pres_title\">Founding Principal<\/span> <span class=\"pres_company\">User Interface Engineering<\/span>\r\n\r\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.uie.com\/brainsparks\/sxsw-2011\/\">Video and Slides for this presentation are available at Jared's site<\/a>.\r\n\r\nHow do designers make decisions? Gray\u2019s Anatomy book, 1858 describes the entire human body. This changed medicine by giving everything a word and a name. Anatomy: a study of the structure or internal working of something. We are missing this for design.\r\n\r\nNew York Times vs. Havenworks.com vs. Etsy\r\nDesign decisions went into all of these sites. Many decisions were made \u2013 all of the little decisions determine the design. The choices we make take our designs in one directions or another. We never talk about those choices, or the decisions made to go in one way or another.\r\n\r\nJason Fried from 37signals\r\nHe makes decisions for him. They only design for themselves. This type of design works.\r\n\r\n<strong>Self Design\r\n<\/strong>When we design something for our own use\r\n\r\nWorks great when:\r\nOur users are just like us\r\nWe regularly use it just like our users do\r\n\r\nCondition: you have to use it every day \"dog fooding\". If you find something frustrating, you will fix it for you and everyone else.\r\n\r\n<strong>Unintentional Design\r\n<\/strong>When the design just happens on its own\r\n\r\nWorks great when:\r\nOur users will put up with whatever we give them\r\nWe don\u2019t care about support costs or pain from frustration\r\n\r\n<strong>Design Decisions Styles<\/strong>\r\n\r\nYou can move from unintentional design to self design and start using it.\r\n\r\n<strong>Genius Design\r\n<\/strong>At a certain point you stop getting things out of research and just build based on experience. When we\u2019ve previously learned what users need\r\n\r\nWorks great when:\r\nWe already know their knowledge, previous experiences and contexts\r\nWe\u2019re solving the same design problems repeatedly\r\n\r\n<strong>Activity-Focused Design vs.. <strong>Experience-focused Design<\/strong>\r\n<\/strong>List Users and Tasks those users do.\r\n\r\nActivity-focused design can only get us so far.\r\n\r\nExperienced-based \u2013 Six Flags thinks about activities, Disney thinks about the experience.\r\n\r\n<strong>Design based style guides do not work.<\/strong>\r\nRule based decisions prevent thinking. They are not informed decisions. Design doesn\u2019t work that way. Design wants\/requires thinking.\r\nThis FAILS on exception cases. Things fall apart when there are no rules. Teaching a bit of design is actually better.\r\n\r\nPair good design organizations with poor designer organizations to create \"The Process\" or \"Recipe.\" Sometimes we confuse process with methodology (being able to do something over and over again).\r\nDogma also plays in and is a faith that certain things just work.\r\n\r\n(on the other side of the spectrum\u2026)\r\n\r\nTechniques are the building blocks that go into every step of the process (they need to be practiced). There are also tricks, which are techniques not quite used the same way.\r\n\r\nThe best companies did not have any dogmas or methodologies. The worst had a lot, and when they got stuck, they didn\u2019t know where to go. Best used techniques and tricks, worst used rule and faith-based decision making.\r\n\r\n<strong>Design Patterns<\/strong>\r\n\r\nThis is what we\u2019ve done, and what has worked. Educate one pixel at a time. No hard fast \"rules\" that you must follow.\r\n\r\n<strong>Discoveries about Design Decision Styles<\/strong>\r\n<ul>\r\n\t<li>There is a place for every style of design \u2013 every one has its purpose.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>Great designers know which style they are using.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>Great designers use the same style for the entire project.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>Great teams ensure everyone uses the same style.<\/li>\r\n\t<li>The more advanced the style, the more expensive it gets.\r\nAgencies can\u2019t go beyond Genius Design\r\nActivity-focused and experienced focused must be done in-house<\/li>\r\n\t<li>The more advanced the style, the better the design.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<strong>What kind of designer do you aspire to be?<\/strong>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>PresenterJared Spool, Founding Principal User Interface Engineering Presentations@uie.com to get a copy of slides from this presentation. How do designers make decisions? Gray&#8217;s Anatomy book, 1858 describes the entire human body. This changed medicine by giving everything a word and a name. Anatomy: a study of the structure or internal working of something. We are [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[30],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=543"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":587,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543\/revisions\/587"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/techory.com\/sxsw\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}