Sinopsis
This is a book about digital design and how
user experience (UX) is changing that field radically. I am a digital designer
and I see the effects of those changes every day.
At one time, almost all digital
designers used methods that depended on ideas coming from the top. These ideas
would then filter down through a process of design, production, then, at the
end, entering the marketplace. Products were presented to consumers as finished
entities. If changes were going to be made, they had to wait until the next
model or version. This design-production model was hardly perfect. It came from
another era when our economic life was still limited to bricks-and-mortar
enterprises that built physical products—often big physical products.
Then, as now, it made sense for an
architect to design a building by creating a blueprint that was as close as
possible to the final product. If architectural blueprints were to have any
meaning, they had to express something close to the physically finished
building. If huge changes were necessary, especially after the start of actual
construction, the architect had failed. Once a building is framed up, basic
alterations become incredibly costly, difficult and time-consuming. Tearing down
the partially completed wing of a house, and rebuilding it from the ground up,
can cost as much as the whole house, adding months to construction
schedules.
Design has always been a part of
consumer products. A few decades ago, as the
technological age began, there were already many mass-produced products like
cars, TVs and washing machines on the market. All of these began on the drawing
board. These larger, physical products were, and still are, designed within a
framework of historical precedent and well-known consumer preferences. If these
goods perform the basic tasks they’re supposed to, then the different design
elements are mostly in the extras, and in variations on well-known themes. We
judge them by a combination of criteria based on fundamentals like longevity,
comfort, and day-to-day performance, and on frills like backseat DVD players and
leather upholstery. When a designer draws up specs for these kinds of products,
he or she is working in a long tradition of experience—that of millions of
previous users and thousands of previous designers.
This from-the-top design method
still works for the really big stuff, like homes, cars and household appliances.
But retail websites, online games and mobile devices are different. We can
design and post a website, attract users, get feedback, revise components, and
even totally redesign the structure and content in hours. When you can get
accurate feedback from users, then analyze and revise in a virtual instant, it
only makes sense to do it. Consumers are (impatiently) waiting for the result.
When a product is a commercial failure, it’s simply in the users’ instruction
that change is needed. That’s the potential of UX: the creation of products and
services aimed directly at the user.
This book looks at UX from various
angles: how it came to be, how it works, who employs its methods, why they do
it, and who it serves. Though digital designers might be its most obvious
audience, I’ve written it in language that should be accessible to all readers,
even those who have only a smattering of digital knowledge. If you can perform
basic digital tasks, such as successfully completing an order from Amazon or
eBay, you should be able to understand most of what’s here. If you’ve ever
created a web page, no matter how basic, that experience will give you the
context to understand what I’ve written in a different way. Even if you don’t
realize it, you’ve acted as a designer yourself. You’ll see that when you get to
sections covering buttons, text and other web page components. A digital
designer deals with those issues every day.
The most obvious audience of my
fellow digital designers will already know about many of the things I describe.
A designer already has experience with wireframes, prototypes and iterations.
However, he or she might not know how their day-to-day work fits into the larger
contexts of art, commerce and history. This book will serve as an introduction
to those relationships. It will also give designers an overview of digital
design in its present-day age of transition. If we step back and view our field
as a whole, we can better see its relationships to the broader world. We are in
a business providing essential services, not just to individual users, but also
to clients whose products are aimed at those users. Digital designers understand
formats, menus and analytics, but not all of us have considered how our design
practices affect our clients’ goals.
Which brings me to another larger
group of readers: the clients who hire us to design their products. UX begins
with users, but marketing begins with businesses. A struggling start-up puts
thousands of hours of work into an online game. Will consumers buy it? A
financial firm wants to increase its customers’ access to its online services.
Will those customers be turned on or turned off by the firm’s new web pages?
Should they target mobile users? How well will the pages display on tablets?
Clients bring these jobs to design firms. This book should serve as a tool for
them to better understand how design works. The better they understand what
designers do, the more pertinent questions they can ask, and the more likely
they are to have a useable context for the answers.
In some ways, digital design grew
up in a vacuum, emerging with the mammoth computers of the postwar era. The cost
of these unwieldy machines limited their client-base to governments,
universities and the world’s biggest corporations. Digital design first entered
the consumer marketplace with the handheld calculators of the early ‘70s.
Parents bought them for their kids, then for themselves. The leading calculator
manufacturer, Texas Instruments, was the first of the newer digital-based
companies to penetrate the public’s consciousness. Digital game makers followed,
and Atari led this pack. This was the digital landscape when the PC and the
early Mac’s first entered the marketplace in the early ‘80s. By that time,
digital technology was embedded in the controls of many consumer products, from
radios to coffee makers, but few buyers noticed. When they thought of “digital,”
they thought of games and squared-off numerical displays.
As I’ll show more fully in Chapter
Two, designers were way ahead of the curve. As consumers learned the first
iteration of a product, designers might already be thinking about the fifth or
sixth. The companies listened to complaints, but their managers were often as
far behind as their users. There was barely even a minimum of pertinent
communication. Users and clients lacked background, and few of them spoke the
language of the digital world. In that context, meaningful exchanges between
designers and clients or designers and consumers, seemed almost impossible.
The emergence of UX is due to many
factors, but one is the pace of life itself. Digital products and services have
shaped our habits, recasting our ideas about speed. Clients and consumers are
moving much faster. They’ve learned to accept, and often even embrace, change at
rate unheard of just a few years ago. Users accept the fact that this will
continue. But they require something in return, something consumers have always
wanted: they need to be heard. When we have something new to show them, a
product or service with the potential to surprise them, or possibly delight
them, they’re willing to look and listen. But they’re asking designers to
listen, too. They’re tired of instructions they can’t read, websites they can’t
navigate, and functions that go haywire. They want us to pay attention, and we
should. After all, ultimately they are the ones footing the bill.
That’s why this book is for users
as well. Any worthwhile communication begins with knowledge. I know something
you need to know, and vice versa, so we find the words and actions necessary to
convey our knowledge to each other. Both sides can do that most effectively when
we already know enough to have context. In this case, designers need to
understand users’ viewpoints, and users will profit by gaining a basic sense of
how design works.
So the main body of readers I’m
writing for are all of you who buy and use the products and services we design.
Some of you are fellow designers, some are our valued clients, but I will feel
as if I’ve truly made my point if most of my readers are the end users of these
products—the ones who bear the expense. I’ve written this in basic language so
we can understand one another. After all, I’m working to serve you. My writing
and your reading are two ends of an exercise in clear, concise communication. As
I strip down the techno-speak, I can see my subject more clearly. As I’ve
written, I’ve tried to view design through your eyes.
Most of us spend large parts of
our days working, playing, and doing business using digital products and
services. Everything from clocks to traffic lights depend on digital technology.
If you have any interest in how the digital world works, and how you can bend it
to your needs more effectively, this book is a good place to start. Here you’ll
see how these products are conceptualized, developed and brought into
production. You will also learn how designers are finally hearing users’
voices.
Digital design is an art, and
digital designers are artists. Now we’re learning that commerce is also an art.
This book is a product of that learning experience. It is also a tool for
reaching out to clients and users. The better we know each other, the better
chance we have of creating products that will bring all of us surprise, delight
and meaning.
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