April 7, 2009 at 12:23Prototyping for IT: designer thinking, metaphors among algorithms
First published on usability.by
I am creating prototypes of IT products and want to share the secrets of my kitchen - write some articles on how the introduction of the prototyping phase can transform your development process or even your IT business as a whole.
In my first article I want to talk about things that may not be noticed or underestimated by the heads of development departments, design departments, business analysts, help find lost opportunities and suggest some moves, invite you to look into design philosophy. The need for prototyping most often grows out of the need to make the phase of collecting information and writing technical specifications (TK, specifications, vision) [1] more visual and more transparent, but I want to talk about less obvious things.
I contrast the prototype and TK, in contrast to show the individual properties and qualities of the prototype and everything that it can grow. Show the positive side effects of using prototypes that reveal themselves even before using prototypes in usability testing.
'Why,' said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it.'
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland The
properties of thinking determine the properties of the products created by this thinking. Compare the thinking of the analyst creating the TK with the thinking of the designer [2] creating the prototype. Design methodologists and theoreticians Lowson (Lawson) and Peng (Peng), conducting research and experiments to highlight the specifics of design activities (as opposed to analytical or humanitarian), found that the following points are characteristic of a designer’s thinking:
Let us dwell on the last moment. The content of good TK is similar to a set of algorithms; a prototype consists of primary idea models.
The introduction of the prototyping phase into the development process introduces messages (and the ability to exchange them) into the communication field of the project in another language - the language of metaphors (metaphorist pattern, Peng). To speak in such a language for so many (including your customers) is more natural and productive than in the language of formalized descriptions or instructions.
But most importantly - messages "written" in this language are everywhere.
These messages inspire designers, fuel their creative energy, stimulate communication and reduce stressful backgrounds. I like Sidorenko’s design theoretician’s wording: “objects are a form of knowledge regarding how certain requirements are met and how certain problems are solved. [...] An invention is often ahead of the theory, the sphere of creativity and execution, as a rule, is ahead of the sphere of understanding - technology leads to science, and not vice versa. Designers have the ability to simultaneously “read” and “write” in material culture: they understand what the subject is saying and can create new objects that embody new messages. ”
Think about using prototypes when you will use words to describe a project: satisfaction, a series of solutions, the result in any case, a quick response to a request, the ability and courage to change the interpretation of the problem, an intuitive model-idea. Prototypes can become the basis for using messages in the language of metaphors, help project participants read and borrow them in the outside world - the Web, related disciplines, from authoritative "authors", anywhere.
In the next article, we gather a forum of opinions around the prototype and competitive prototyping.
1 - here I use synonyms
2 - I generalize in this role many positions in the name of which are UI, UX, IxD
Bryan Lawson - “How Designers Think, The Design Process Demystified”, 4th edition, 2005, ISBN – 13: 978-0-7506-6077-8, ISBN – 10: 0-7506-6077-5
Prototyping for IT
I am creating prototypes of IT products and want to share the secrets of my kitchen - write some articles on how the introduction of the prototyping phase can transform your development process or even your IT business as a whole.
In my first article I want to talk about things that may not be noticed or underestimated by the heads of development departments, design departments, business analysts, help find lost opportunities and suggest some moves, invite you to look into design philosophy. The need for prototyping most often grows out of the need to make the phase of collecting information and writing technical specifications (TK, specifications, vision) [1] more visual and more transparent, but I want to talk about less obvious things.
I contrast the prototype and TK, in contrast to show the individual properties and qualities of the prototype and everything that it can grow. Show the positive side effects of using prototypes that reveal themselves even before using prototypes in usability testing.
Designer thinking, metaphors among algorithms
'Why,' said the Dodo, 'the best way to explain it is to do it.'
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland The
properties of thinking determine the properties of the products created by this thinking. Compare the thinking of the analyst creating the TK with the thinking of the designer [2] creating the prototype. Design methodologists and theoreticians Lowson (Lawson) and Peng (Peng), conducting research and experiments to highlight the specifics of design activities (as opposed to analytical or humanitarian), found that the following points are characteristic of a designer’s thinking:
- Analysts resort to a systematic research strategy to find the rule , while designers are inclined to develop a series of solutions and, gradually filtering out many of them, find the one that meets the requirements; it is more a process of satisfaction than optimization , it is an attempt to create a number of satisfactory solutions, and not one optimal one .
- Analysts choose a strategy that is concentrated around the problem , designers - around the solution , because The problems that a designer faces are often poorly formulated and poorly structured, these are problems for which they often do not have all the necessary information and there is not even hope for its appearance, so a result-oriented strategy is more productive.
- The designer counts on finding a satisfactory solution as quickly as possible, and not on a long analysis of the problem.
- It is common for a designer to change a problem in order to find a solution, a design is constructive, he does not study things as they are, he deals with things as they should be, creating models is more important than the process of their realization.
- The designer is busy searching for a capacious metaphor , the analyst for generalizing the rules, formulas, and algorithms .
Let us dwell on the last moment. The content of good TK is similar to a set of algorithms; a prototype consists of primary idea models.
The introduction of the prototyping phase into the development process introduces messages (and the ability to exchange them) into the communication field of the project in another language - the language of metaphors (metaphorist pattern, Peng). To speak in such a language for so many (including your customers) is more natural and productive than in the language of formalized descriptions or instructions.
But most importantly - messages "written" in this language are everywhere.
These messages inspire designers, fuel their creative energy, stimulate communication and reduce stressful backgrounds. I like Sidorenko’s design theoretician’s wording: “objects are a form of knowledge regarding how certain requirements are met and how certain problems are solved. [...] An invention is often ahead of the theory, the sphere of creativity and execution, as a rule, is ahead of the sphere of understanding - technology leads to science, and not vice versa. Designers have the ability to simultaneously “read” and “write” in material culture: they understand what the subject is saying and can create new objects that embody new messages. ”
Think about using prototypes when you will use words to describe a project: satisfaction, a series of solutions, the result in any case, a quick response to a request, the ability and courage to change the interpretation of the problem, an intuitive model-idea. Prototypes can become the basis for using messages in the language of metaphors, help project participants read and borrow them in the outside world - the Web, related disciplines, from authoritative "authors", anywhere.
In the next article, we gather a forum of opinions around the prototype and competitive prototyping.
Notes:
1 - here I use synonyms
2 - I generalize in this role many positions in the name of which are UI, UX, IxD
Related Literature:
Bryan Lawson - “How Designers Think, The Design Process Demystified”, 4th edition, 2005, ISBN – 13: 978-0-7506-6077-8, ISBN – 10: 0-7506-6077-5