Jared Spool is the CEO and founder of User Interface Engineering, a usability research organization. He is a prolific speaker and noted expert in the field of usability and user interface design, as well as the author of many books and most recently "Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work". You can find more on Jared here.
We asked Jared the following questions:
1. Jared, as CEO and Founder of User Interface Engineering, I have to ask for your opinion on the many terms in use in our field: Interaction Design, User Experience, User Interface Design, Usability, Human Factors, Web Design, etc. Why "User Interface Engineering" and not "User Interface Design" or one of the others?
I don’t think the words are very important. After all, what is marketing? Can you clearly tell me what a marketing person does? I bet, if you were to describe what you think the "average marketing person" did, then showed that to anyone in the marketing department at your company, not a single one would cop to doing what you wrote down. In fact, they probably have as much trouble explaining what "marketing" is as we have explaining what "user experience" is.
And it’s not unique to business. Beyond what licensing regulates, what does a doctor do? What does an artist do? The names are associative to what’s been done, not to any concrete notion of a role or area of responsibility. That’s why territorial arguments are present everywhere.
So, as a new VP of User Experience, what will define you is what you do, the impact you will have on the customers, products, and bottom line of the business. You, and any manager, can define the meaning of your group’s title by the examples of what it does.
So, which term is best? The one you use.
2. I know that you have significant corporate experience. With regard to design (or user interface engineering), who makes the decisions? Who is responsible for the final design? The final color scheme? The information architecture? Input from a variety of individuals is key, but someone must make the final call, and subjective elements can be challenging. After all, someone did create "hot dog stand".
I’ve been a Mac user for two years. Despite 18 years of Windows use preceding that, I’ve managed to successfully put the memory of Hot Dog Stand far behind me. Thanks for bringing it back.
Why are you focusing specifically on aesthetics? Of all the things a skilled visual designer brings to the table, aesthetics are the least important. And of all the things a team needs to focus on to create a solid design, aesthetics are pretty low on the scale.
You don’t have to go any further than Craigslist to see that you can build an awesome experience with low-grade aesthetics. And history is littered with the carcasses of high grade aesthetic products that weren’t useful, usable, desirable, effective, or delightful beyond the initial exposure.
A skilled visual designer will certainly add aesthetics to the solution. But, if they are good at what they do, they’ll focus on the visual priority and communication of the information. Any aesthetic decisions must be in the service of that visual communication. If it communicates effectively, it’s a good aesthetic choice. If it doesn’t, it isn’t, no matter how sexy it looks.
So, maybe the least important person in the organization should decide on aesthetics, to allow the important decisions, surrounding the overall experience to be decided on by people who know what they are doing.
If the "head of design" is focused on making the call on aesthetics, I’d be willing to bet the organization produces crap for products. There’s about 99 things the head of design should be putting ahead of aesthetics.
Probably the first thing I’d recommend any "head of design" to focus on is the feedback mechanism that the organization will use to determine if the design is working for them. How will they tell, at any stage in the design process, whether the design is working. Our research shows that organizations with a strong feedback mechanism will rely on that to make their ultimate decisions, not any single individual. This will make it much easier to push good design forward faster.
The second priority of a "head of design" is to help the organization realize a solid experience vision. The vision is the stake in the sand that everyone walks to. When a solid experience vision — one that answers the question, "What will the experience of using our design be like five years from now?" — is omnipresent in the organization, part of the organization’s DNA, then all decisions gravitate towards that vision. Each person faced with a decision that impacts the design can ask, "Is this solution getting us closer to the vision or farther away?"
The goal with having strong feedback and a solid vision is to reduce the need for centralized authority to make all design decisions. In an organization of any but the smallest size, centralized authority becomes a bottleneck, losing all effectiveness. Empowering solid design thinking throughout the organization is far more effective, though a hard challenge (especially when such thinking hasn’t existed before).
3. Teams seem to be looking for cheaper and faster ways of validating designs. Usability is often perceived as being very expensive. So, does usability testing need to shed a few pounds? Let me just ask outright: usability testing: hot or not?
Usability testing, in its most basic form, costs basically nothing. It’s a simple process. You sit next to someone and watch them experience your design.
Any associated expense comes from adding rigor to the process. Rigor doesn’t have to be expensive, but it can be.
Think of it like painting a house. One can do it practically themselves, saving a lot of money, but it will probably take a lot of time and, without the proper tools, not produce a high quality result. But it’ll get the job done.
The question is how much is quality and time worth? There is a relationship to how much you invest and the quality and speed you’ll get back. Buy some ladders, get better quality brushes and rollers, higher quality paints, and a little help from some unemployed college students, and you now can deliver a better quality paint job.
The same is true with usability testing. Smart investments improve the quality.
But, here’s the thing that makes it different from painting a house: It may be a mistake to hire someone to do the usability testing for you.
The primary benefit of any usability testing project isn’t the report at the end or the list of recommended changes. Our research shows it’s the exposure the team has with observing real users work with their designs. The more exposure, the better the products that come out.
If you hire out your usability testing, well, it’s sorta like hiring out your vacation — it gets the job done but you don’t quite get the best experience.
So, the biggest investment in usability testing isn’t the money required — that can be pretty inexpensive. It’s the time. Our research shows that the teams at the most effective organizations spend at least two hours every six weeks watching users interact with their designs. That’s every member of the team.
And that experience pays for itself very quickly. The team now knows what it’s like to use the design. They know what changes had the impact they’d hoped, and which ones fell flat. And they see how small, nagging problems can add up to ruin an otherwise innovative solution.
It’s very cheap to get started with testing, if you’re willing to make the investment.
On the other hand, if you’re really concerned with expense, I recommend you build a completely crappy product. That’s always going to be the cheapest solution. (And, interestingly enough, if you want to make it really crappy, you can do it really quickly too.)
4. Traditional software teams typically consist of architects, coders, testers, managers, and writers. Should designers (or user interface engineers) be the sixth element commanding an equivalent slot, or should they be called in to service the core team on an as-needed basis? Are user interface professionals someone you take home to mom, or a cheap booty call?
I don’t know what a "traditional software team" is. I’ve now worked with dozens of organizations, each with dozens of teams. They are like snowflakes. No two are alike.
In importance, the skills on the team far out weigh the roles of the individual team members. Teams developing web sites need solid information architecture skills. However, there’s no requirement that an information architect be on the team. Teams need solid interaction design skills, but they don’t need an interaction designer.
The question isn’t "should a designer be on the team?" The right question is, "does the team need solid design skills?" The answer to that question is a resounding yes, if you want to end up with a high quality design.
Who on the team should have these skills? Everyone. The best teams focus on cross training team members so they are always improving on the necessary skills. This way, the team becomes more flexible and agile, ready for any challenge the organization throws at them.
Focus on skills, not roles, if you want to produce quality results.
5. If you could name your favorite current trend in Web design, what would it be?
Asking me for a favorite trend would be like asking me for a favorite compass direction.
Loading ...
9
comments