Design for complexity

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Transcript of Design for complexity

Page 1: Design for complexity

Hello@lextant

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Designing for ComplexityWhat did I get myself into?!

@lextant

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Why is Designing for Complex Systems Difficult?

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We buy our own insurance online, we book my own flights, we manage

our own finances on our phone. But we’ve never given someone an MRI

before. Learning that domain is a bit harder, and takes more time.

The stakes might be higher – you’re designing something that people use

to do their jobs, or to make sense of large sets of information in order to

make critical decisions.

You don’t have a mental model for the system. You likely have never

used something like this before, and don’t have a frame of reference and

aren’t familiar with the goals that users have.

You might not have that understanding yet, but you will.

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Build an UnderstandingDon’t Freak Out

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You have the skills and the know-how to do this! LEAN ON YOUR TEAM, talk it through with them. Some of our best work is done when working with a design partner.

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Anatomy of an Ideal Experience™

EMOTIONS 1 2 BENEFITS

3 FEATURES

4 ATTRIBUTES

The Thing is not THE THING

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You have to focus less on the tool, and more on the goal that the tool is meant

to enable. It IS about how we make people feel, and creating an emotional

experience for them.

Your design lives in the real world – start to understand what situations,

behaviors, emotions it exists with. Understanding these larger goals can be

just as important as considering specific features.

You have to understand a user’s story. Know the kinds of decisions they will

need to make. Know what they need in order to make those decisions. Know

how they want to feel. So, how do we do that?

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Build an UnderstandingBuild an Understanding

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Our best work is informed by user research, and a deep understanding

of goals that users have (both in and out of a system), and the emotional

drivers behind those.

Start with the questions that we have about people and their experiences.

Do we have questions about the ecosystem of people

and services? Or about their mental model of an experience?

When you’ve done this research, you’ll have built understanding about

users’ work processes and goals. From that, you’ll find patterns and

themes to provide you with the framework for a design solution.

But you’re not done!

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Keep Building an Understanding

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Design is how you begin to understand it for yourself, and

uncover more questions that give you deeper understanding.

You may have questions that your team didn’t anticipate at the

beginning. Maybe you have older research, and some new user

goals need to be accounted for.

Research doesn’t just end when design

begins. THE LINE IS FUZZY.

Keep asking questions. Admit what you know and especially

what you don’t know.

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For the things you don’t know, what do you do?

Start with doing some insight mining to extract all the knowledge

that can get locked up in organizations.

Reach out to your subject-matter experts, to the sales teams,

to the support teams.

Your IA is going to force you to inventory all of these sources of

information to understand how they all fit. Make sure that you’re

working with blueprints of the experience instead of pushing pixels.

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Take advantage of being a layman.

Our role as designers is to ask the questions that others are afraid to ask.

JUST DO SOMETHING! Getting a reaction gets you closer

to an answer. Just trying something and beginning an iterative

process is a kind of research, and a good way to build up from your

base level of understanding.

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Build an Understanding Zoom Out

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Don’t be afraid of going back to the drawing board.

Allow yourself to step back and think at a more architectural or

structural level, and use that process as a tool to bring the goals and

needs of a user to life in a tangible way.

The risk that you take in trying to make something

fit is greater than just taking a step back.

Taking a fresh look at the architecture or thinking about the structure

in a new way might just be the thing that you need to see things in a

new light. It doesn’t mean that you are starting over.

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“Test early and often” is extra important when

working on complex systems. While we have learned a lot about

the goals of people using these complex systems, we aren’t

experts in the field yet so user testing and concept evaluation is

critical to making sure that the right information is represented

at the right time.

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Build an UnderstandingIn Conclusion . . .

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If it is done right, there isn’t an end to the process. Know that it doesn’t end with you – it moves on

through development, then out to users.

Step back to see if your next project can help solve some of the

needs that were out of scope for your primary effort.

When you find yourself saying,

“What did I get myself into?!”

Remember that it isn’t about the thing. Your goal is to craft a

desired experience that lets people focus on what’s important

to them and help them accomplish their goals.

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THANK YOU:-)

[email protected] I [email protected]

@lextant