It tracks through these logical and sensible steps:
- Understand the problem – what’s broken with chart styling in Excel at the moment (hint: they all come out looking boring)
- Paper prototype – explore ideas quickly on paper – it’s cheap
- Wireframe mock-ups in low-fidelity tool (eg. PowerPoint) – start to solidify the design and start testing it with users
- Interactive prototype – what’s it really like to use?
- Hi-fidelity mockup – how does the whole thing work together?
Not every design would need to go through each of these steps, but the overall process is important. And it’s also efficient. I think we really need to move from a business cultural where every early idea needs a hi-fidelity mock-up and that’s the only way business stakeholders can understand the design. It’s too costly. We spend more time polishing one earlier idea when we could be quickly exploring lots and lots, and then refining to one or two polished ones.
I think we like to pretend design process is linear and deterministic. It’s easier to sell that way. And perhaps if you zoom back far enough it is. Some of the time.
But there’s always seems to be more going on. Like the instincts you follow very early on about design details you’re not meant to be thinking about for another 3 phases. That gut feel for what’s going to make this app kick-arse that emerged even before you fully understood the business problem at hand.
Finally, someone’s articulated this. And it rings true to me.
When I do a design project, I begin by listening carefully to you as you talk about your problem and read whatever background material I can find that relates to the issues you face. If you’re lucky, I have also accidentally acquired some firsthand experience with your situation. Somewhere along the way an idea for the design pops into my head from out of the blue. I can’t really explain that part; it’s like magic. Sometimes it even happens before you have a chance to tell me that much about your problem! Now, if it’s a good idea, I try to figure out some strategic justification for the solution so I can explain it to you without relying on good taste you may or may not have. Along the way, I may add some other ideas, either because you made me agree to do so at the outset, or because I’m not sure of the first idea. At any rate, in the earlier phases hopefully I will have gained your trust so that by this point you’re inclined to take my advice. I don’t have any clue how you’d go about proving that my advice is any good except that other people — at least the ones I’ve told you about — have taken my advice in the past and prospered. In other words, could you just sort of, you know…trust me?
The full article is well worth a read (spotted in this post on Bokardo).
