March 17, 2009 at 01:215 styles of decision making in the design. Which to choose?
- Transfer
Translation of the kremien user hub for the website Usability.by
At the dawn of electronic commerce, our company studied how experienced tourists buy hiking boots on the Internet. We studied two sites: LL Bean and REI . Both sites offered almost the same model of boots, at the same price and with an almost identical description of the product. However, the vast majority of the buyers studied by us chose to buy shoes on the REI website, and not on LL Bean.
Why? Therefore, in the photographs on the REI website, the soles of the boots were visible, while on LL Bean they showed only the appearance of the upper part of the boot. The sole is an important element of choice for experienced hiking boots buyers. For some hikers, choosing the right outsole is critical. Experienced tourists were more comfortable buying shoes on the site, which informed them about the design of the sole.
We were very interested in the question of how the REI design team knew about the subtleties of providing customers with information on the sole. Our assumption was that they conducted a detailed study, experimenting with different types of product images, to determine which one is most likely to stimulate sales. When we contacted them and talked about our assumptions, they began to laugh ... loudly. Long.
When they stopped laughing, one of the designers told us that they had not done any such research. The source of their ideas was a photographer who used to work in the shoe department of their stores. He saw how often buyers look at the sole when choosing shoes, and therefore, at the level of instincts, he knew how important it was to convey information about its design. If it weren’t for him, the team of designers would never have thought of posting on the site such photographs of boots on which their sole is also visible. (They laughed because in the design process, the team constantly cheated the photographer for his increased attention to the soles. It was this feature of him that turned out to be a key component of the site’s success.)
A photographer from the REI team made design decisions based not on convincing user research, but on his own experience in a shoe store. LL Bean's photographer did not have such experience, so he could not make such a decision. Sales of products on each of the sites were the final indicator of the correctness of the decisions made during the design.
For several years now, we have been studying the work of designers, how they and their project teams make important decisions in the process. The result of our research was the discovery of five design styles that almost every team uses:
1. design at random,
2. design for oneself,
3. Genius design,
4. activity-oriented approach,
5. User-oriented approach.
Styles are ordered in order to increase the number of studies the team uses to make decisions. If at first glance it seems that the style used is a sign of the maturity of the design team, then a more detailed study reveals that for each of the styles there is a situation when it turns out to be the most effective. Some projects do not justify the time and resources required to conduct a detailed study of users, while others would fail without such a study. Knowing when to conduct a detailed study, and when you can do without it, is one of the key characteristics of a good designer.
“This product is so inconvenient to use because no one designed it.” This widespread belief is not entirely true. Each product is good, whether poorly, but designed. In this case, people developing the product did not pay attention to design at the time of creation.
Designing “at random” occurs when a team concentrates on developing and releasing a product, without thinking about what will happen when people start using it. Design decisions made at random are not always bad. There are quite successful examples. But this is more an exception than a rule. (As the saying goes: "once a year and an unloaded gun fires.")
Another simple decision-making style is designing “for yourself”, when design teams develop a product exclusively for themselves. This approach, most common in single-person teams, has a slightly greater chance of success than designing “at random.”
This approach is most effective when the main users of the product are members of the development team. For example, many of the internal systems of bug tracking are designed "for themselves" and are pretty good. They do exactly what the team needs.
If when designing “at random” decisions are often made according to the principle: “we will make it easier to program”, then when designing “for ourselves”, decisions are based on the experience of using the product by team members. The more seriously team members use the product, the higher the quality of design decisions can become.
Teams using Genius design do not look beyond their own experience in finding information for decision making. In the same way as when designing "for themselves", but in Genius design they have reliance on the extensive previous experience of the team members.
The REI photographer used this particular style when deciding to show the soles of shoes in photographs. He recalled his long-standing observations of people shopping, which served as the basis for his decision.
This type of design works well with very experienced team members. If you have already designed five web stores, and for each of the projects, you conducted a preliminary study of users and their behavior scenarios, and then checked that your design meets the expectations of users, then you may be able to design a sixth store wonderfully without such an exhaustive study.
The secret is that you need significant experience from past research in order to base today's decisions on it. The fact that you previously designed such functionality is not considered. (It would be better to call such an approach the “Swim, we know.”
The team that uses activity-oriented design, when planning and conducting research, primarily looks at the behavior of users, their activities. For example, when working on a site where people upload their photos to the public, the team will explore the specifics of uploading, sharing photos, printing them, and other most popular functionality.
This style is used when the team does not have sufficient knowledge about the subject area of the user’s work, and cannot rely on their own experience, as in the case of Genius design. For research, such activity-based techniques as building workflow diagrams and usability testing based on user tasks are often used. Using these fairly simple methods can help you significantly improve your design decisions.
Teams that use user-oriented design are more likely than others to research users, not only interested in their activities. They deeply study the goals and needs of users, the context of use, using the information obtained to make decisions so detailed that they could not be accepted using other methods.
This style is both the most professional and the most expensive. It is simply necessary if the team is focused on creating a product with the highest quality user interface. The methods that are used in this approach include conducting field research and creating characters, which provides a better understanding by the project team of the experience and impressions of users.
For example, a team that uses these techniques when working on a site where people post their photos to the public can find that users often carefully study photos posted by people they don’t know, who are interested in their artistic abilities or photo themes. Such observations can lead to an idea about the usefulness of functionality that would allow users to track information about photographers of interest to them or about photographs taken using a particular type of camera. It would be difficult to get these “non-obvious” ideas using any other style of decision-making, but their elaboration can lead to the appearance of demanded functionality.
Our study showed that the most effective teams possessed all five decision-making methods, choosing the one that would better meet the needs and goals of the project. For example, they could simultaneously conduct detailed research in a user-oriented project, rely on their own experience in a project designed by Genius, and take “at random” some minor design decisions.
Are all these styles important if the teams use all of them at the same time? The results of our study suggest that they are important. The teams that were able to create the best design quality were familiar with all decision-making styles and knew how to quickly switch between them. They knew when they needed all the scrupulousness and accuracy of user-oriented design, and when it was more important for them to make a decision very quickly, knowing that its consequences would be insignificant. The best teams have a rich arsenal of design methods and a good understanding of how and when to use them.
At the dawn of electronic commerce, our company studied how experienced tourists buy hiking boots on the Internet. We studied two sites: LL Bean and REI . Both sites offered almost the same model of boots, at the same price and with an almost identical description of the product. However, the vast majority of the buyers studied by us chose to buy shoes on the REI website, and not on LL Bean.
Why? Therefore, in the photographs on the REI website, the soles of the boots were visible, while on LL Bean they showed only the appearance of the upper part of the boot. The sole is an important element of choice for experienced hiking boots buyers. For some hikers, choosing the right outsole is critical. Experienced tourists were more comfortable buying shoes on the site, which informed them about the design of the sole.
We were very interested in the question of how the REI design team knew about the subtleties of providing customers with information on the sole. Our assumption was that they conducted a detailed study, experimenting with different types of product images, to determine which one is most likely to stimulate sales. When we contacted them and talked about our assumptions, they began to laugh ... loudly. Long.
When they stopped laughing, one of the designers told us that they had not done any such research. The source of their ideas was a photographer who used to work in the shoe department of their stores. He saw how often buyers look at the sole when choosing shoes, and therefore, at the level of instincts, he knew how important it was to convey information about its design. If it weren’t for him, the team of designers would never have thought of posting on the site such photographs of boots on which their sole is also visible. (They laughed because in the design process, the team constantly cheated the photographer for his increased attention to the soles. It was this feature of him that turned out to be a key component of the site’s success.)
Design Decision Styles
A photographer from the REI team made design decisions based not on convincing user research, but on his own experience in a shoe store. LL Bean's photographer did not have such experience, so he could not make such a decision. Sales of products on each of the sites were the final indicator of the correctness of the decisions made during the design.
For several years now, we have been studying the work of designers, how they and their project teams make important decisions in the process. The result of our research was the discovery of five design styles that almost every team uses:
1. design at random,
2. design for oneself,
3. Genius design,
4. activity-oriented approach,
5. User-oriented approach.
Styles are ordered in order to increase the number of studies the team uses to make decisions. If at first glance it seems that the style used is a sign of the maturity of the design team, then a more detailed study reveals that for each of the styles there is a situation when it turns out to be the most effective. Some projects do not justify the time and resources required to conduct a detailed study of users, while others would fail without such a study. Knowing when to conduct a detailed study, and when you can do without it, is one of the key characteristics of a good designer.
Design Style # 1: Design at Random
“This product is so inconvenient to use because no one designed it.” This widespread belief is not entirely true. Each product is good, whether poorly, but designed. In this case, people developing the product did not pay attention to design at the time of creation.
Designing “at random” occurs when a team concentrates on developing and releasing a product, without thinking about what will happen when people start using it. Design decisions made at random are not always bad. There are quite successful examples. But this is more an exception than a rule. (As the saying goes: "once a year and an unloaded gun fires.")
Design Style No. 2: Designing "For Yourself"
Another simple decision-making style is designing “for yourself”, when design teams develop a product exclusively for themselves. This approach, most common in single-person teams, has a slightly greater chance of success than designing “at random.”
This approach is most effective when the main users of the product are members of the development team. For example, many of the internal systems of bug tracking are designed "for themselves" and are pretty good. They do exactly what the team needs.
If when designing “at random” decisions are often made according to the principle: “we will make it easier to program”, then when designing “for ourselves”, decisions are based on the experience of using the product by team members. The more seriously team members use the product, the higher the quality of design decisions can become.
Design Style # 3: Genius Design
Teams using Genius design do not look beyond their own experience in finding information for decision making. In the same way as when designing "for themselves", but in Genius design they have reliance on the extensive previous experience of the team members.
The REI photographer used this particular style when deciding to show the soles of shoes in photographs. He recalled his long-standing observations of people shopping, which served as the basis for his decision.
This type of design works well with very experienced team members. If you have already designed five web stores, and for each of the projects, you conducted a preliminary study of users and their behavior scenarios, and then checked that your design meets the expectations of users, then you may be able to design a sixth store wonderfully without such an exhaustive study.
The secret is that you need significant experience from past research in order to base today's decisions on it. The fact that you previously designed such functionality is not considered. (It would be better to call such an approach the “Swim, we know.”
Design Style # 4: Activity-Oriented Design
The team that uses activity-oriented design, when planning and conducting research, primarily looks at the behavior of users, their activities. For example, when working on a site where people upload their photos to the public, the team will explore the specifics of uploading, sharing photos, printing them, and other most popular functionality.
This style is used when the team does not have sufficient knowledge about the subject area of the user’s work, and cannot rely on their own experience, as in the case of Genius design. For research, such activity-based techniques as building workflow diagrams and usability testing based on user tasks are often used. Using these fairly simple methods can help you significantly improve your design decisions.
Design Style # 5: User-Oriented Design
Teams that use user-oriented design are more likely than others to research users, not only interested in their activities. They deeply study the goals and needs of users, the context of use, using the information obtained to make decisions so detailed that they could not be accepted using other methods.
This style is both the most professional and the most expensive. It is simply necessary if the team is focused on creating a product with the highest quality user interface. The methods that are used in this approach include conducting field research and creating characters, which provides a better understanding by the project team of the experience and impressions of users.
For example, a team that uses these techniques when working on a site where people post their photos to the public can find that users often carefully study photos posted by people they don’t know, who are interested in their artistic abilities or photo themes. Such observations can lead to an idea about the usefulness of functionality that would allow users to track information about photographers of interest to them or about photographs taken using a particular type of camera. It would be difficult to get these “non-obvious” ideas using any other style of decision-making, but their elaboration can lead to the appearance of demanded functionality.
Many styles, good and different
Our study showed that the most effective teams possessed all five decision-making methods, choosing the one that would better meet the needs and goals of the project. For example, they could simultaneously conduct detailed research in a user-oriented project, rely on their own experience in a project designed by Genius, and take “at random” some minor design decisions.
Are all these styles important if the teams use all of them at the same time? The results of our study suggest that they are important. The teams that were able to create the best design quality were familiar with all decision-making styles and knew how to quickly switch between them. They knew when they needed all the scrupulousness and accuracy of user-oriented design, and when it was more important for them to make a decision very quickly, knowing that its consequences would be insignificant. The best teams have a rich arsenal of design methods and a good understanding of how and when to use them.