Design Thinking Digest

Thought Leadership by Design: Portable Inspiration

Friend and colleague Nate Burgos has curated some of the more recent design wisdom that has been erupting in the blogosphere over the past few years. This isn't a book that will teach you how to design but it will remind and inspire you about what it's good for across categories from Authenticity to Value and all that lies in between. Much like the work by Seth Godin I'm considering buy a few boxes of this to give out to friends and family.

A few of the quotes that stick with me.

"It is much easier to be critical than to be correct."  --Benjamin Disraeli

"Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context--a chair in the room, a room in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan."  --Eliel Saarinen

"When I refer to design thinkers, I'm referring to individuals who have mastered the design process and are applying that methodology with the goal of becoming more innovative and better need identifiers and problem solvers."  --David Kelly

Technorati tags: Nate Burgos, Thought Leadership on Design, Disraeli, Saarinen, Kelly, IDEO

ArcReady Reading List

I've been doing a number of user experience focused sessions across the midwest that are targeted at architects and developers (www.arcready.com). I've been recommending some books for this audience that I'll reference here as well.

 

Don't Make Me Think- A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (2nd Edition) is a concise tome about user testing. There are more comprehensive and exhaustive books but this is a great starter book.

 

 

 

 

The Elements of User Experience- User-Centered Design for the Web is a concise book that presents a user experience framework for building effective Web applications. When one looks at today's applications are a mashup of both procedural codes and dynamic languages I think book has new relevance.

 

 

 

Designing Interfaces- Patterns for Effective Interaction Design is the most rigorous of all of these books and it's focus is on understanding what different interface components are best utilized for. It has absolutely nothing to do with WPF or other Microsoft technologies but everything to do with how empowering WPF can be when used smartly.

 

 

 

Designing for Interaction- Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices (VOICES) is a book that gives an overview of the processes and techniques that inform the 'what to make' process of design. Dan's book is a great introduction to the skills that talented designers can bring to a team and also serve to educate you on the types of skills you should look for in designers.

 

Web ReDesign 2.0- Workflow that Works is a book about tasks that one would presume we've all mastered at this point but sadly haven't. In short this book is really about project management and tactics that one can employ is a Web-based or really any project that will focus on User Experience.

RIP Kurt Vonnegut

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

From God Bless You, Mr Rosewater (1965)
by Kurt Vonnegut

Where do I get started with UX?

One of the things I've been asked to do at MS is provide an overview of how a person new to UX might begin to get up to speed.  Over the course of my time in the field, I've found the following books are particularly good as either instruction or reference.

The basics & mindset:

About Face 2.0 by Alan Cooper  – It’s an excellent start to putting oneself into the UCD (User Centric Design) mindset.  The process and tools around persona development are also invaluable.

Learning fundamentals & history:

Designing Interactions by Bill Moggridge  is a pretty amazing book.  It covers the history of interaction design, along with his own design philosophies. Plus, it includes a DVD of interviews with design luminaries.

Designing for Interaction by Dan Staffer is a relatively new book on interaction design.  I’ve just picked it up and am working my way through.  It focuses on great interaction design – essential for any good UX

Gathering requirements, testing and ideation:

Observing the User Experience by Mike Kuniavsky is the best survey of user research / prototyping tools around.  It’s a fantastic resource for testing the prototype designs, using contextual inquiry to help determine the design.

Serious Play by Michael Schrage  is a great book about the importance of prototyping in general.  This is more of a business book - in specific about making prototyping central to driving innovation at your company.  That said, prototyping represents a great opportunity for UX.  Prototyping is particularly important when designing UXs – imagining how the design will feel isn’t enough!

Thinking more broadly:

The power of innovation by Dr. Min Basadur is a book I haven’t read, use his teaching extensively.  It is a really powerful way to get out of your own way when trying to develop new solutions to complex problems.  Garry VanPatter and Elizabeth Pastor (of NextD and Humantific) are also in the same school of thought in their innovation facilitation work.

Systems Thinking by Jamshid Gharajedaghi is one of those breath-takingly smart books.  This is another business book, but great for thinking about the broader context of the User Experience (there are no mono-causal problems, after all).

Shaping Things by Bruce Sterling is a design manifesto.  It's focused on the changing relationship between users and the products they use.

Ongoing education & Online resources:

Design Thinking Digest (of course!) - you're here after all...

AskTog's First Principles - an essential reference of interaction design principles that we should all have committed to memory.

Usability in the News - great round-up of all the latest UX related postings online

NextD – online journal focusing on the what’s next in design

Functioning Form - great design blog

Looks good works well - another great design blog by Bill Scott, Yahoo's AJAX evangelist.

Boxes and Arrows - an information architecture / interaction design focused web magazine

Interaction Design Association – Interaction Designers Association.  Mostly a mailing list, but a great community resource

What have I missed?  What are your favorite books?

Teaming and collaboration reading list

Books I recommend for teaming, collaboration and personal effectiveness.

Getting Things Done, David Allen
Time Management

The Art of Project Management, Scott Berkun
Project Management
Get a free chapter of this book here:

Unstuck, Keith Yamashita & Sandra Spataro
Team Effectiveness

The Wisdom of Teams, Jon Katzenbach and Douglas Smith
Team Effectiveness

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni
Team Effectiveness

Self-Paced Learning on WPF: Best Bets

For the developer:

The most up-to-date book on WPF, XAML and how it relates to the .NET platform. As a bonus, Charles Petzold is a wonderful writer. I haven't read alot of programming books (and I'm still working my way through this one) but it's a remarkable read.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the designer:

A more accessible overview of WPF for the designer. This is a technical book but if you plan on using Blend the background this book will give you will be very helpful.

 

 

 

 

 

Online Resources:

IRhetoric
A blog on WPF by Microsoft Technical Evangelist Karsten Januszewski with some wonderful examples of what WPF is capable of.

Musings of a Windows Vista Technical Evangelist
Tim Sneath's WPF blog where he also links to a more definitive list of blogs on WPF.

The WPF Blog
A blog by Lee Brimelow of Frog Design, he keeps us honest, and excited about what you can do with WPF.

Channel 9
Channel 9 has some wonderful videos that demonstrate what's possible with WPF. The link above will take you content tagged with WPF.

This just scratches the surface of WPF and there are many more resources that all of these sites will take you to.

How to Quickly Learn More About Interaction Design

For those of you that have a desire to quickly learn more about the fundamentals of user experience theory I’d like to suggest the following books.

Now, there are a TON of books on this subject and believe me I’ve probably heard of or read them all. I recommend these because they are accessible and because they are short. All of them can be perused in a few hours or can serve as a blueprint for deeper investigation into subjects.

Interaction Design
Designing for Interaction, by Dan Saffer (If you only get one book on UX get this one)

User Experience Design (Web)
The Elements of User Experience, by Jesse James Garrett (by the guy that coined the term AJAX, nice universal model of the Web design process)

Usability Testing
Don’t Make Me Think, by Steve Krug (a book on down and dirty usability testing that will get you a basic overview)

 

Other Resources
If you have the means Forrester and Gartner are both excellent resources of guidance on User Experience as well. In Forrester look for articles by an analyst named Harley Manning, he covers virtually every topic you could want to know about regarding User Experience. Gartner also has some nice third party content on the importance of the business value of User Experience and the implications of some of the new technology that is being designed to support it.

 

Microsoft Resources
We have re-launched two sites. Check them both out, there’s a lot of information there on design and some of our professional design tools.

www.microsoft.com/expression

www.microsoft.com/design

Finally, be sure to check out www.msdn.com. Do some keyword searchs on Vista guidelines, User Experience, etc. You'll find some great articles on User Experience in general and on how to specifically address it within the Windows platform and tools and standards we've developed for cross-platform and browser experiences.

A Design Book Recommendation

Bill Moggridge recently released his highly anticipated book called Designing Interactions (which along with books like Getting Real, and offerings from Maeda, Saffer and Brown are making it a banner design book year). Moggridge takes us through the history of this young field by engaging with the people that helped shape it. It's amazing to read some of the chapters and realize the leaps of faith that folks still had to take despite reams of research and insight into users and customers.

One highlight of the book is the inclusion of a DVD that contains interviews with  all the people profiled in the book. My personal favorite is the one with Bill VerPlank.  Which can also be seen here. Where you mean to somebody this year? Do you need a last minute gift idea? Buy this book, it will remind you of how far interaction design has come in such a short period of time.

The Laws of Simplicity

If 2006 was the year that the Web 2.0 and social media reached a zenith and viral video and my space changed how we interact with technology I would submit the meme that has really driven all of this can be reduced to one word. Simplicity.

John Maeda, of MIT gives us ten laws that (if one looks carefully) closely align to who has been most successful in matters of innovation and design thinking. John summarizes that laws as:

Reduce

The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction

Organize

Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.

Time

Savings in time feel like simplicty.

Learn

Knowledge makes everything simpler

Differences

Simplicity and complexity need each other.

Context

What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.

Emotional

More emotions are better than less.

Trust

In simplicity we trust.

Failure

Some things can never be made simple.

The One

Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

 

John also left us with three keys:

Away

More always appears like less by simply moving it far, far away.

Open

Openness simplifies complexity.

Power

Use less, gain more.

 

I suspect that many folks might be prone to misinterpret some of Maeda's guidance-such as where he does acknowledge that there is some complexity that is impossible to remove (or it's complexity that shouldn't be removed). He also talks about one of the most important complexities that is onften overlooked, that of time. Something that can make or break the best experiences in both interactive experiences and in service oriented design.

Update, I've notices some recent pushback on the concept of simplicity from folks such as Don Norman (which is eloquently commented on at joelonsoftware.com). For those of us that work with existing services or applications the principles of simplicity sometimes need to be addressed in ways that are different from the current crop of Web 2.0 applications. One prime example, the Office 2007 suite which although still complex embraces many of the principles that Maeda outlines.

Designing for Interaction Review

Dan has written a great primer on interaction design that can serve as a powerful foundation for an introduction into interaction design and ALL the realms that it can influence. You'll be introduced to foundational concepts in interaction design such as Tesler's Law of Complexity and Fitt's Law but Dan also goes much deeper and surfaces issues that will impact the domains that haven't quite embraced design and principlals of interaction.

Dan covers the basic processes that can drive interaction design and lays out the pros and cons of each, from user centered design to task oriented design, system design and genius design. Some of the most powerful topics that Dan covers concern the areas of community and service design and enabling users to find both the seams in interfaces or products that they develop but also understanding the critical theory of flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

If you're interested in a primer on interaction that can frame the processes and techniques I don't think there's a better book on the market that covers this--athough I'm also still fond of the Elements of User Experience as a general cookbook and the more recent Ambient Finability that discusses some of the most current and pertinent challenges in interaction design.