Metamorphosis

Erik Stolterman and I have been thinking about the issue of turning non-designers into designers (that would be you!). We see our students moving through three transitions:

(I) Pre-emergence
(II) Transitional
(III) Designerly Thinking

Characteristic of each of these transitions is a penetration of barriers. Rather than progression along a smooth continuum, students penetrate these (intellectual, practical, psychological and social) barriers in a step-like function.

I’d like to share these barriers with you and get your comments (David Royer and Sindhia Thirumaran contributed to the list as well). Perhaps you have additional barriers to suggest, or ones to eliminate or modify.

Barriers (numerals in parentheses indicate the transitional stage(s) where the barrier occurs)

1. Design definitions. Naïve designers’ conception of HCI/d includes mostly graphic design and interface design; experienced designers also include interaction design, experience design, emotional design, and systems design. (I)
2. Best solution. Naïve designers hold onto the belief that there is a best solution; experienced designers believe there exist many solutions and judged by critical criteria and presented through a design argument or explanation. (I)
3. Technology-centered vs. human-centered. Naïve designers focus on the technology; experienced designers study human behavior, motivation and need. It’s very difficult to “let go” of gadgets and things; there’s an over-fascination with techno-fetishism among naïve designers. (I, II)
4. Me and we. Naïve designers defend their own designs; experienced designers look to their team for inspiration and solutions. (I, II)
5. User research. Naïve designers underplay the role of user research; they know what people want. Tools such as personas are resisted rather than embraced naturally in the design process. Experienced designers do not make assumptions about human desires and motivations; they study it instead. (I, II)
6. IT domination. Naïve designers tend to overemphasize efficiency, effectiveness, scalability; experienced designers include experience and emotion. (II)
7. Idea loyalty. Naïve designers hold onto a single idea; experienced designers engage in systematic exploration of multiple ideas. (II)
8. Algorithm / design paradox. Naïve designers expect to memorize algorithmic solutions to problems; experienced designers learn to deal with ill-structured problems, seemingly paradoxical situations and design thinking. (II, III)
9. Critique culture. Naïve designers worry about school grades; experienced designers welcome critique. (II, III)
10. Notebook. Naïve designers sketch for a particular project; experienced designers sketch continuously, deriving inspiration from all contexts. (II, III)
11. Role. Naïve designers are learning what they do and how to do it; experienced designers begin to defend the position of design in a multi-person development team made up of designers and non-designers. (II, III)
12. Research and philosophy. Naïve designers find solutions in the HCI literature; experienced designers explore philosophical foundations of design as well. (III)
13. Reflective designer. Naïve designers spend little to no time reflecting on how they are designing versus experienced designers who can look at themselves “out of body” as they design. (III)
14. Omnipresence. Naïve designers see design embedded in objects; experienced designers see systems that affect designs and designs that affect systems. (III)
15. External / internal. Naïve designers find external answers to design problems; experienced designers begin to look internally and introspectively for inspiration and resolution. (III)

design abilities

In 1990, Nigel Cross wrote an article called “The nature and nurture of the design ability,” Design Studies, Vol 11, No. 3. He described eight core design abilities of professional designers:

1. to produce novel, unexpected solutions by
2. applying imagination and constructive forethought to practical problems;
3. to use drawings and other modeling media as a means of problem solving. In doing this they need to be able
4. to deal with uncertainty and decision making on the basis of limited information,
5. resolving ill-defined, “wicked” problems by
6. adopting solution-focusing strategies,
7. employing productive / creative thinking and
8. using graphic or spatial modeling media.

Do you see yourself developing along these dimensions? If you rated yourself on a 10 point scale from 1 being total lack of skill to 10 being total and complete proficiency, where would you rate yourself today? How do you plan to get better?

Design is very hard work, and great design is even harder. A design team must embrace the uncertainty of the process. For those teams who are insecure, they have a tendency to go with their first design, and improve on it. But experienced design teams live with the uncertainty of not selecting a design too fast. Don’t be afraid to keep exploring: write more predispositions, continue with your research, draw your insights, and develop many more concepts. Eventually themes and patterns will reveal themselves to you.

Great designs come from many iterations, including sometimes discarding what seemed like a good idea at first. When the design argument is tight, when few holes can be poked into it, then you know you’re onto something.

send in the clowns

On Thursday I framed the introduction of the “seven themes of good design” by talking about big concepts and telling about a personal academic experience:

Think of an extremely smart person you know, a person whom many would describe as brilliant. How would you describe this person’s understanding of their area of expertise, whether it be finance, art history, biology, or any other discipline? Typically, these people understand big concepts: they see their world as a handful of basic themes with lesser concepts being variations on these themes.

Most of us don’t organize the world this way. We  don’t see themes and variations, we only see variations, each one disconnected. Our heads are filled with independent facts and principles. But the very smart person reduces this wide array to a small set that helps him or her quickly grasp new situations.

In the mid-sixties, when I was an undergraduate at the University of Illinois, I took a course in physics. In those days, they didn’t offer “Physics for Poets.” There were only hard-core physics courses, taken mostly by engineering majors. But I wanted to know how the physical world worked, so I signed up. A good student, I attended all of the classes, took thorough notes, read the textbook, and completed all of the assigned exercises at the end of every chapter.

All went well until the first exam. I opened the test booklet and suddenly wondered if I was in the right course. “When did we learn how to solve these problems?” I wondered in bewilderment. I muddled through them, trying to remember the formulae I had memorized. Needless to say, I didn’t do very well in physics and redirected my interests elsewhere.

What happened? If I had had the courage to ask my instructor about the exam questions, the professor probably would have been puzzled by my confusion. We had different views of the subject. For me, physics was a vast collection of different problems, each with its particular formula. If a problem looked like example 3.7 in the text, I felt confident. Or if a problem matched well with formula 3.5.2, then the solution was forthcoming. But if a problem was new and different, I was lost. My professor, however, had no box in his head that contained this problem.

He understood physics in an entirely different way. For him, physics consisted of big ideas and central relationships like Force = mass x acceleration. Problems on the exam were not independent problems but variations on the big ideas. Nothing would have seemed unusual to the professor; each problem was a variation of something well known. But everything seemed unique to me, his naïve student!

…

So these themes — human-centered design, transparency, computer imagination, and so on — are the big ideas that help focus our attention on good design. The techniques that we learn along the way — persona development, goal-directed design — are simply tools for the designer; they facilitate the designer’s job.

But if you just focus on the tools (like focusing on single physics examples or forumlae), you will be memorizing single techniques. Useful, yes, but missing the point. Instead, allow your mind to be reflective and ask yourself what do all of these techniques mean. You can read many HCI books (my office and home are filled with them) and can easily become confused by the suggested techniques — trying to line them all up — looking for consistencies and inconsistencies among them. But the expert designer begins to ask what these techniques mean. Variations (don’t worry about the vagaries among the techniques or variations) lead to themes. Big concepts lead to big insights.

We saw in the Al Pacino film, Looking for Richard, an example of Shakespeare expoiting the strengths of the play with his masterful use of words, poetry, and meter. Pacino helps us understand how Shakespeare exploited the theater medium to evoke a deeper understanding of ourselves — our loves and fears, our hopes and disappointments. Shakespeare’s plays employed “theater imagination,” if you will.

Moreover, we may look within the context of Pacino’s film to understand something else about Shakespeare’s brilliance: the threaded connections of the iambic pentameter of the line, the stanza, the play, and ultimately ones life. In the film, Vanessa Redgrave eloquently spoke of this, illustrating theater imagination and big concept thinking all at once:

Shakespeare’s poetry and his iambics floated and descended through the pentameter of the soul. And it’s the soul, if we like, the spirit of real concrete people going through hell and sometmes moments of great achievement and joy. That is the pentameter you have to concentrate on. And should you find that reality, all the iambics will fall into place.

…

As a small exercise here, we can look at another medium — the song. And to illustrate “song imagination,” I’ve chosen Stephen Sondheim’s Send in the Clowns. In this first YouTube video, we hear Sondheim talk about his design of this song:

In the next clip, we see how he conducts a master class with a singer, coaching her in how the lyrics and music come together in this interpretation:

In this clip we see the original star of “A Little Night Music,” Glynis Johns, singing the song with Len Cariou. You hear the song performed in context:

Perhaps one of the greatest interpretations of the song, is Barbra Streisand. Notice her facial expressions matching so perfectly to the lyrics:

Finally, for a haunting interpretation of this song, listen to Sarah Vaughan’s masterful performance:

What is “song imagination” from the perspective of the designer-composer?
And, in the case of music, what is the role of the performer?
The audience?

And where are the clowns
Quick send in the clowns
Don’t bother, they’re here.

it’s a mystery

I don’t know who’s more excited about the first lecture — the students (mostly first year Master’s students in HCI/design, but also a hand-full of other graduate students and several advanced undergraduates) or me.  It’s strange. Even after teaching a version of this course for over 22 years, I still put a lot of work into preparing for it. The preparation began last spring when David Royer (my graduate assistant) and I analyzed last year’s class to find out what worked and what needed improvement. Then over the summer I began the slow process of review and change. Over the last three weeks, I’ve put a couple hundred hours into preparing the materials, the new communications systems (which I needed to learn myself), and thinking through the examples and specific plans for the first day. I’m exhilarated and exhausted at the same time. Will they even notice?

So, for those of you reading this blog without much context, let me tell you about the course. It’s about HCI design. When I first came to the School of Informatics in 2001, I told the dean that I would be willing to direct the program (now under the very able leadership of Erik Stolterman) if we could emphasize design (vs. cognitive science, usability engineering, or more traditional areas of HCI). I argued that the future of HCI was design, and that if we were to distinguish ourselves as a program, this should be our emphasis. He agreed (not so much philosophically, but he was in desparate need of a leader so it was an easy sell). My first job was to hire a colleague, and I had the good fortune of being introduced to Eli Blevis. Eli and I agreed strongly on how to build the program, and we set out to do it. Much of what’s here today is a result of our collaboration, although Erik Stolterman, Youn Kyung-Lim, and Jeff Bardzell have added very important dimensions to the program. But to return to this course, the emphasis is on design. Here’s the overview document: Course Overview (just for the record, it’s copyrighted material, so please don’t copy it without permission and attribution).

I organize my course around these features:

• Seven themes or big ideas of design. I don’t believe people can or will remember lots of details, but they can remember seven big ideas. These are the pillars of my design philosophy (they’ll be revealed next week). Everything we will do relates to these themes in one way or another.

• Five non-trivial design projects. It’s like learning to swim by jumping into the deep end of the pool. There’s no slow build, or to continue with the analogy, there’s no splashing in the kiddy pool. The first design problem, while not as complex as later problems, is complicated enough and certainly non-trivial. (It’s about constructing an interface for a home thermostat system, from the home- or apartment-owner’s point of view.)

• Working on teams. Design, for the most part, is not a solitary effort. You must learn to work on teams–not teams with “slackers,” but teams with highly energized people with many ideas of how to proceed. How do decisions get made? How do we manage our time? How do we value the diversity of the team? How do we resolve the many trade-offs we face? Etc.

• Leadership. We want the students to see design as a vehicle for doing good work in the world, not just building another tool or application for people with a lot of money to spend. The problems of the world are great in number. Can design be used to solve some of these problems? We want our students to THINK BIG and demonstrate design leadership.

• There are a few more features, but I’ll leave those for later.

What’s difficult about all of this is that there is no algorithm for success. We could teach certain textbook-like procedures, but from my experience, what this produces is mediocre designers. Great designers come from a different place and mostly from within. This requires most people in the class to think, feel, and grow in new ways. For some this will be very difficult. But all of what we do, including the music and movies, are designed to inspire and motivate us.

 How does it all come together? I’m reminded about a scene in the movie, Shakespeare in Love (1998):

Philip Henslowe: Mr. Fennyman, allow me to explain about the theatre business. The natural condition is one of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster.

Hugh Fennyman: So what do we do?

Philip Henslowe: Nothing. Strangely enough, it all turns out well.

Hugh Fennyman: How?

Philip Henslowe: I don’t know. It’s a mystery.