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Do you know your teams goals? Not the typical goal of delivering a project on time and under budget. Their personal goals, what they hope to get out of a project.
Before a project kicks off, I chat with each team member individually to understand their goals. It varies widely from trying out a new technology, learning a new domain, taking more of a client facing role etc. Once I know their goals, it allows me to look for opportunities on the project that align with them.
My experience has been that people tend to make more of a connection with the work. It becomes personal, they push themselves. It’s not just another project, it’s their goals.
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Jer Thorp walks through his process of how he created a recent visualization for popular science magazine. Part of his process that I find interesting is he says, “This is a really common approach for me to take – building small tools during the process of a project that help me solve specific problems.”
Another interesting point is that is says, “My working process is riddled with dead-ends, messy errors and bad decisions – the ‘final’ product usually sits on top of a mountain of iterations that rarely see the light of day.”
Part of what I love about design is it is about exploring and allowing the process of solving the problem to be organic.
http://blog.blprnt.com/blog/blprnt/138-years-of-popular-science
TweetAn experience map is a holistic view of all of the touchpoints or interactions people have with a brand. It enables you to determine a number of key factors:
Read more:
http://uxmag.com/articles/experience-maps-identify-inefficiencies-and-opportunities
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The majority of the products and services we use have no lasting impact in our lives, they are a means to an end. We only think about and talk about those that either don’t meet are exceed our expectations.
I noticed a couple of patterns while taking my family to Disney’s Magic Kingdom.
1. Highly orginaized and clean
2. The employees communicate effectivly and are freindly.
2B They are also passionate – people who are not in the parade sing and dance, they want to be there.
3. Easy to navigate around the park, I did not have to think.
4. When they took photos of my kids there was no pressure to purchase them immediately.
5. It is the unexpected that brings delight. Walk down main street and out of no where appears a marching band.
This is the key, it is about exceeding exceptions with the unexpected. That is what creates memories.
TweetIt is not another project, this one is going to be game changing. It will revolutionize how people think about the subject, change the way they work, shake up the industry and position us as global leaders in the space. People will line up to spend $350,000 for an annual subscription!
Make yourself nervous, uncomfortable and unsure. Challenge your thinking and each decision you make.
Is this product revolutionary? Game changing? Does this design make people think $350,000?
Set higher goals and stretch to reach them.
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That person is stupid. The client is stupid because he shot down my idea. The developer is stupid because he is pushing back on the worlds most beautiful design. The designer is stupid because she cares about the UI being pixel perfect in IE 7.
It could be our client, team member or anyone else we interact with. Regardless who it is – Stupid is the kiss of death. Stupid means we have lost respect and we are no longer doing our best thinking and work.
In most cases people make what they perceive to be rational well thought out decisions. It may not a case of stupidity, rather it is we don’t see the other persons perspective and there is a break down of communication.
When situations or people start to feel stupid try to understand two points:
1. What does the situation look like from their perspective?
This calls for empathy.
2. How can you get them to clearly articulate their perspective?
You have to draw them out, then reason on the situation.
The quicker you can make this happen, the sooner you will realize just how smart people are.
TweetWhat comes to your mind when you think of quality?
For many of us it is our craft. We think of quality in terms of the code we write or our ability to follow a process such as Agile; the more story points we complete in a sprint, the higher our quality.
High quality craftsmanship and process are the foundation of what we do. Celebrate if a high level of quality has been achieved. It is no small feat.
When we only view quality through the lens of process and craftsmanship we miss out on a higher level of quality which is the quality of design. The quality that gets people to purchase a product, it delivers delight to the users and they talk about it with their friends.
People don’t buy a products based on technology stack or the process that was used to build it. We buy products because of they way they look and feel, the problems they solve, the delight they add to our lives, how they make us feel when we use them. In short, the experience we have when using the product.
The quality of design. It is what separates Apple from Dell, the utilitarian from a master piece of art.
The quality of design digs deep to understand the underlying problems, it’s curious, almost nosey wanting to know who is using the product, their goals and how they behave. Its relentless, constantly asking questions, challenging assumptions, generating ideas and testing them with users to see how well they work. Its obsessive with details because it knows good is the enemy of great.
It is not easy, does not happen by chance and will never be achieved unless it is the driving force behind your products.
Its goal is to solve the right problems, deliver an experience that delights the users, it creates ROI for the business and strengthens the brand it represents.
It sells products.
What comes to your mind when you think of quality?
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It is much easier to follow direction than to blaze a new path. To join another project and do what we perceive as what is expected from our role. To limit ourselves, our growth, our opportunities by creating our own boundaries. Or even worse waiting for someone to give us permission to do something.
Heres the beauty. We don’t have to get permission, please do something amazing and inspire us. Our projects can be as challenging as we can make them, we are in control, we are driving the solution. Leverage a new technology, a new process, a new interface paradigm.
Push it as far as you can. Create the role you want, just do the work and then it is yours, you don’t have to ask.
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When a new project starts, there is excitement around finding the answer to the eternal question of what problem are we trying to solve? Once we identify the problem, we switch gears and strategize the solution. Only to find months later the project did not have the impact that we planned for.
One of the contributing factors could have been fools gold. We solved a problem but it’s not the right one, its not the core. It just resembles a problem.
Avoid fools gold, dig deeper by asking “why” and reframe the problem. Here is an over simplified situation, a client says, “We need a mobile shopping app for our customers.”
You respond with “Why?”
Because we need to reduce the cost of retail space.
Ok, now we are getting some where.
The origanl problem:
Build a mobile shopping app
Reframed problem:
Reduce the cost of retail space.
Continue to dig by asking why.
Asking why is one tool to get you deeper into the core of the problem. Reframing guides you along the way to solve the right problem that will deliver the most impact.
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