Design Studio – Usability research and analysis

17 May 20096 May 2009

Validating your development method

If you tell someone about a great idea, and they say “That’s a great idea,” it’s not a pattern.

If you tell someone a great idea, and they say “Yes, we do something like that too,” that’s a pattern.

Exactly! That’s why I speak about Five Sketches™ at conferences and professional development sessions. And that’s why I post and write about everything I come across that’s similar to Five Sketches™.

Design Studio was the first undeniable indication that we’ve solved a problem that others in software development and web development are experiencing. That’s because the Design Studio method is very similar to Five Sketches™. Two completely separate teams, in different countries, came up with nearly the same solution to their respective design-process challenges. Design Studio was developed at Jewelry TV by Jeff White and Jim Ungar.

I do that, too!

Here are some more methods and techniques that are similar to parts of Five Sketches™.

Low-fidelity generative design. There’s a huge benefit to exploring and evaluating a range of interaction concepts while involving both business and technology partners. This is, in effect, the divergence stage of generative design advocated by Bill Buxton, and done with low-fidelity. Adaptive Path does this with sketchboarding. Five Sketches™ does this by using mixed teams to separately sketch five ideas per participant, and then iterating from there.
Parallel design. This is supported research and advocated in the book of guidelines from Usability.gov. To ensure parallel design, Desiree Sy at Autodesk uses interns to prototype 10 or more design solutions to a design problem.
There’s much more that’s already been posted on this site. Use the Search box on this site to look for posts about generative design, design studio, creative hacks, Leah Buley, Bill Buxton, Scott Berkun, Jeff White, and Jim Ungar.

15 March 200913 May 2022

Generative design vs. Five Sketches™

© Leah Buley, from her presentation on SlideShare Leah Buley talked about generative design at the South by Southwest Interactive conference today [in March 2009]. Buley feels design methods are lacking in the set of professional tools we use for software development: “We don’t have so many good, reliable, repeatable design techniques.” I agree with her.

Buley tells how, in her first design session at Adaptive Path, she was handed a pen and paper, and told to sketch. The point was “to crank out a lot of ideas in a short time.” That’s what generative design is all about: saturating the design space with ideas. Design programs teach generative design, but there’s no generative design taught in programs for developers, QA staff, technical communicators, product management, or marketing.

There are already several design methods for software development teams to choose from, including Buley’s wonderful grab bag. Others I know of are Five Sketches™ (obviously) and Design Studio, both of which focus on the complete process of producing a design, start to finish, with all its challenges. Microsoft’s Bill Buxton told the UPA 2007 conference that he insists on generative design, and I’d love to see that in action. Each method differs slightly, but they all work because….

Why do they all work? Because of generative design. Generative design addresses what Buley calls her “dirty secret.” She freely confesses, about her design work before Adaptive Path: “I had very little confidence that what I was presenting as the design was in fact the one, optimal solution to the problem.” My experience teaching Five Sketches™ tells me that once you’ve participated in a generative-design process, you’ll know that you can have that confidence.

A related question: when will computer science programs teach Basic Design Methods to developers?

13 February 20086 May 2009

Design Studio vs. Five Sketches™

I came across a software-design approach similar to Five Sketches™. It’s called Design Studio, and was developed in the USA. I was intrigued to learn about Design Studio. When separate teams develop a similar response to the same challenge, it validates both solutions. In this case, the challenge is to support software developers as they design the mental models, interaction, and GUI for their products.

Video no longer available Design Studio was presented at a 2007 conference, and you can watch it on video: but the BrightCove video is no longer available to watch.

If you have information about Design Studio, please comment, below. Found it! Jeff White and Jim Ungar presented their Design Studio method at the IxDA 2008 conference, in a presentation titled User Interface Design in an Agile Environment: Enter the Design Studio.