1 Goal-Directed Product and Service Design

Digital Product and Service Design

Goal-Directed Design

• Origins of Goal-Directed Design
• Components of Goal-Directed Design

2 Assembling the Team

The Design Team

• Interaction designers
• Visual interface designer
• Industrial designer
• Design team lead

Close Collaborators

• Project owner
• Design engineer
• Business or systems analyst
• Subject matter expert
• Usability tester

Other Product Team Members

When You Don’t Have the Ideal Team

• Understaffed design team
• No design engineers or subject matter experts
• No clear project owner
• Too many people in working meetings

3 Project Planning

The Ideal Project Starting Point

Determining Your Project’s Parameters

• Revenue or cost focus
• Desire to innovate
• Length of time horizon
• Understanding the problem before solving it
• Willingness to invest
• Risk factors

Developing the Project Plan

• Research
• Modeling and requirements definition
• Framework definition
• Detailed design
• Ongoing support

4 Research Fundamentals

Benefits of Doing Research

Barriers to Doing Design Research

• “It will cost too much and take too long.”
• “We already did market research.”
• “Our subject matter experts know the users.”

Components of Design Research

User Research Methods

• Usability testing
• Focus groups
• Individual interviews
• Direct observation
• Combining observation and interviews

The Research Team

Essential Research Skills

• Active listening
• Capturing the data

5 Understanding the Business

Identifying Stakeholders and Scheduling Interviews

Officially “Kicking Off” the Project

Conducting Stakeholder Interviews

• Getting started
• Things to watch out for
• Topics applicable to most stakeholders
• Marketing stakeholders
• Engineering stakeholders
• Sales stakeholders
• Senior executives
• Subject matter experts
• Other product team members

Project Management for Stakeholder Interviews

When You Can’t Interview Stakeholders

6 Planning User Research

Identifying the Number and Type of Interviewees

• Step 1: Identify likely roles
• Step 2: Determine the base number of interviewees per role
• Step 3: Multiply for important factors
• Step 4: Trim the sample and incorporate other factors
• Step 5: Adjust for no-shows and poor interviews

Introducing the Practice Design Problems

• Consumer device and service: LocalGuide
• Business application: Room Finder

Recruiting and Scheduling

• Enterprise site visits
• Recruiting individuals
• The interview schedule

Dealing with Challenges

7 Understanding Potential Users and Customers

Interviewing Customers in a Business Environment

• Useful questions for customers
• What not to do when interviewing customers

Interviewing and Observing Prospective Users

• The interview setting
• Essential techniques
• What not to do in user interviews
• Structuring the user interview
  • Getting started: introductions
  • Essential interview topics
  • Observation and the guided tour
  • Wrapping up the interview
• Dealing with challenging interview circumstances
• Project Management for Interviews
• Between interviews
• Staying sane

Team roles and responsibilities

Communicating outside the team

8 Example Interview

(Interview transcript with running commentary)

9 Other Sources of Information and Inspiration

When You Have Less Time

When You Have More Time

Supplemental Research Methods

• Public-space observation
• Mystery shopper
• Diaries
• Surveys
• Web analytics and customer support data
• Focus groups
• Card sorting
• Competitive products and services
• Literature and media

10 Making Sense of Your Data: Modeling

Synthesizing Stakeholder Findings

• Topics to cover
• Handling controversy
• Preparing to communicate stakeholder findings

Analyzing Customer and User Data

• Qualitative analysis
• Quantitative analysis
• Explanations and relationships
• Risks and opportunities
• Preparing to communicate your user findings

Project Management during Modeling

11 Personas

Definition and Uses

• What personas are good for
• Why personas work
• What personas are not
• How many personas do I need?
• How often do I need to create personas?
• Personas who aren’t users

Creating Personas

• Step 1. Divide interviewees by role, if appropriate
• Step 2. Identify behavioral and demographic variables
• Step 3. Map interviewees to variables
• Step 4. Identify patterns
• Step 5. Define goals
• Step 6. Clarify distinctions and add detail
• Step 7. Fill in other persona types as needed
• Step 8. Group and prioritize user personas
• Step 9. Develop the narrative and other communication

Validating your personas

When Time Is Limited: Provisional Personas

Persona Pitfalls

Project Management for Creating Personas

12 Defining Requirements

The Problems with Requirements

• Requirements cannot be “gathered”
• Requirements are not features
• Requirements are not specifications

Generating Effective Requirements

Sources of requirements

Types of requirements

The process for generating requirements

• Brainstorming
• Scenarios
  • Why use scenarios?
  • How Goal-Directed scenarios differ from similar tools
  • Crafting effective context scenarios
  • Extracting requirements from scenarios
• Other Requirements from User Personas
  • Mental models
  • Environments
  • Physical and cognitive characteristics
  • Skills and knowledge
  • Goals
• Requirements from Business and Other Needs
  • Customer persona goals
  • Stakeholders
  • Lawyers and regulations
  • Competitors and media
  • Accessibility
  • Sustainability
• Experience Attributes
  • Step 1: Compile desirable qualities from research
  • Step 2: Group related qualities into clusters
  • Step 3: Refine and filter clusters
  • Step 4: Optimize terms to guide visual decisions
  • Step 5: Choose the best term from each cluster
  • Step 6: Describe and optimize relationships
  • Step 7: Develop additional communication tools

Project Management for Developing Requirements

13 Putting It All Together: The User and Domain Analysis

Typical Structure

• Introduction of the project parameters
• Research activities: what you did
• Research findings: what you learned
• Personas
• Context scenarios
• Requirements
• Next steps

Developing an Effective Document

Developing an Effective Presentation

Conducting the Meeting

• Before the meeting
• Delivering the presentation and leading the discussion

Project Management for Developing the U&DA

14 Framework Definition: Visualizing Solutions

Essential Principles of Framework Definition

• Consider the whole system at once
• Learn by sketching and failing
• Focus on structure, not details
• Design for the long term

Process Overview for Framework Definition

• Process for design on a novel platform
• Process for design on a known platform
• Process for designing services

Project Management for Framework Definition

• How many directions to explore
• Planning your time

Essential Skills for Framework Definition

• Sketching and storyboarding
• Collaboration
• Capturing what happens in meetings

15 Principles and Patterns for Framework Design

The Importance of Context

Principles for Form and Behavior

• Design values
• Minimizing unnecessary work

Patterns for Form and Behavior

• Organizing objects and activities
• Combinations of patterns
• Organizing by nouns or verbs
• Additional ways to manage real estate

16 Designing the Form Factor and Interaction Framework

IxDG and IxDS: Define Data Object Types and Relationships

Full Design Team: Define Possible Functional Elements

• Functional elements in product design
• Functional elements in service design
• Making decisions

Full Design Team: Define Possible Platforms

• Input and output methods
• Other form factor considerations

Full Team: Brainstorm with Sketches

• Brainstorming for software on a fixed platform
• Brainstorming for services and new platforms

ID: Refine the Form Factor

IxDG and IxDS: Define the Interaction Framework

• Develop a first draft of the framework
• How to approach specific design situations

Full Design Team: Iterate Form and Behavior Together

Typical Challenges in Designing the Framework

Project Management for Defining Platforms and Frameworks

• Internal design team check-ins
• Project owner, SME, and design engineer review
• User feedback

17 Principles and Patterns in Design Language

General Principles

• Visual information + context = meaning
• Visually communicate what elements do
• Have a purpose for every element and a reason for every decision
• Repeat elements for unity
• Be decisive, but use the smallest effective difference

Patterns and Principles for Specific Elements

• Color
• Size
• Shape
• Line weight and style
• Type
• Texture
• Images
• Materials and manufacturing
• Signature elements

18 Developing the Design Language

The Process of Developing the Design Language

• Look for inspiration
• Determine how many directions to share
• Determine what elements to represent
• Decide what choices best represent primary attributes
• Adjust for context as needed
• Begin to render the studies
• Adjust for secondary attributes as needed
• Review, iterate, and finalize options to present

Example: NetApp

Example: Executive Telephone

Project Management for Design Language Exploration

19 Communicating the Framework and Design Language

Preparing Stakeholders for the Meeting

Crafting the Story

• Project summary and expectations
• Review key personas and requirements
• Introduce the big ideas and major anatomy
• Show how it works using scenario storyboards
• Revisit anatomy in more detail
• Describe how the design serves persona needs
• Introduce the design language(s)
• Discuss and get agreement on direction and next steps

Managing Your Time and Preparing for the Meeting

Conducting the Meeting

• Presenting the material
• Facilitating discussion and handling concerns

20 Detailed Design: Making Your Ideas Real

Essential Principles of Detailed Design

• Collaborate, collaborate, collaborate
• Drive to complete detail, but maintain a systems view
• Touch everything a second time after it’s documented
• Design for the appropriate time horizon
• Settle the big issues quickly
• Consider the cost-benefit equation
• Reinforce the experience attributes

Process and Project Management for Detailed Design

Expanding the team

Integration with engineering methods

Typical detailed design tasks by role

Drafting a work list and detailed project plan

21 Detailed Design Principles and Patterns

Principles: a Bit of Science, a Bit of Common Sense

• Communicating Flow, Priority, and Relationships
  • Map visual flow to workflow
  • Align elements for readability and simplicity
  • Use visual properties to establish a clear hierarchy
  • Use visual properties to establish association
• Communicating Data: Information Design
• Using Icons to Communicate about Objects and Tools
  • Making icons recognizable
  • Making icons understandable
  • A summary of useful icon guidelines
• Text and Type
  • Type size
  • Additional principles
• Widgets and Data Entry
  • Use widgets appropriate to the task and input method
  • Allow flexible input even in bounded widgets
  • Use custom controls only with good reason
  • Considerations for touch screens

Managing Large Data Sets

• Search versus categories
• Detailed queries

Audible and Speech Interfaces

• Personality, emotion, and anthropomorphism
• Minimizing frustration

Products Involving Safety Concerns

Accessibility

“That Little Extra Something”

22 Detailed Design Process and Practices

Evolving the Interaction Design: Round One

• Supplemental research
• Detailed design meetings
• Additional iteration through individual work

Defining the Visual System: Round One

• Incorporating early stakeholder feedback
• The visual system first draft: archetype screens
• Continued expansion and evolution
• Personas, scenarios, and experience attributes
• Shared Image Files

Evolving the Industrial Design

• Refining the form and materials
• Refining color and surface details
• Appearance models as design and communication tools

Design Reviews and Collaboration

• Within the design team
• With design engineers, SMEs, and business analysts
• With other stakeholders
• Remote collaboration

Iteration After Feedback

Common Challenges During Detailed Design

• Framework flaws
• Unavailable or unhelpful SMEs or engineers
• Shifting assumptions and constraints
• Team member time management
• Consistency within a brand or product family
• Uneven depth

Using later work to improve earlier work

23 Evaluating Your Design

Why, When, and What to Evaluate

Types of Evaluation

• Focus groups
• Expert reviews
• Usability testing

Comparative evaluations

24 Communicating Detailed Design

The Form and Behavior Specification

• Background
• Executive summary
• Personas and critical requirements
• Product or service overview
• Interaction framework overview
• Scenarios for each interface
• Overview and details for each screen or function
• Visual system or style guide

Ways to expand or cut back: the F&BS as a product roadmap

Qualities of an Effective Spec

• Prescriptive, not suggestive
• Clear and professional, not pretentious
• Unsurprising
• Persona-focused
• Standardized
• Effectively formatted

Documentation Process and Practices

• Documenting as you go
• Managing images
• Technical review and document QA

Documentation tools

Presenting Detailed Design

• Structuring and delivering a stakeholder presentation
• Comprehensive walkthroughs

25 Supporting Implementation and Launch

Supporting Software Construction

• Asset production
• Questions and reviews

Supporting Hardware Manufacturing

Common Challenges

• Specification as suggestion
• Insufficient engineering skills or resources

26 Improving Design Capabilities in Individuals and Organizations

Realizing Your Own Design Potential

• Academic programs
• Self-education
• Experience and mentoring

Expanding Design’s Role in an Organization

• Characteristics of successful change efforts
• Instigating change from the bottom (or the middle)

Concluding Thoughts