What if Marvel’s Deadpool could teach you Project Management and UX design? EPISODE I
It sounds crazy but it’s actually true: in the Marvel Universe there is a character that clearly stands out to me and it’s the Merc with the Mouth aka: the DeadPool. The recent buzz around his movie woke up my inner child . Which is why I re-read all his latest adventures. As I was going through a few of these issues, I realized that he was following patterns that I am actually using in product management and user experience design!
Let me tell you that this crazy “healing factor” degenerate is really smart… actually with three voices in his head, he has to be. Enough talking, let’s cut to the point, right in a first pages of Deadpool’s complete collection you can get a nice course in project management and Ux..
Let’s analyze the following scene that starts with a trap for Wolverine. The trap triggers and Wolverine get caught but manages to escape.
Deadpool comes in and realizes that Wolverine made it out! Therefore, he lures him into the second trap he had planned, the trap triggers and hurts Wolverine again.
However he somehow managed to overcome the blow of the trap. Deadpool took into account this new situation and lured Wolverine to the third trap.
And it goes on and on for a couple of pages until Deadpool finally manages to defeat Wolverine… or not (no spoiler here !!)
Let’s now look for that pattern I mentioned few lines ago. We see that, Deadpool starts with a plan, then performs the plan. Wolverine triggers it which brings Deadpool to check it. He then acts according to the situation. And that process will be repeated until the end of the fight.
So let’s prune a little bit the previous paragraph into a list of actions:
- Deadpool plans a badass trap
- Deadpool sets up the badass trap
- Deadpool checks if Wolverine survives the trap
- Deadpool acts accordingly
Repeat
So now we can extract the four key words of that process, which are:
Plan Do Check Act.
Does it ring a bell? Well it should because plan, do, check, act or PDCA is also known as the Deming wheel or Deming cycle, an iterative four-step management method commonly used in business.
In FOR experience design we use that same kind of methodology slightly renamed: Learn, Build & Measure.
It may seem pretty commonsensical but a lot of projects tend to forget that process or certain steps while running them.
As a conclusion for this introduction I’d say that:
Culture and knowledge is where you don’t expect it. So be curious, have fun discovering it.
And kids now you can ask your parents to buy you some more comics because it is not just entertaining it’s teaching you business skills ! (or not… no spoiler here !!)
[More awesome deadpool lectures coming soon :)
Teaser (if marvel don’t shut me down) : EPISODE II, Deadpool adventures will teach us important lessons regarding Responsive, native and crossplateform design til then
Build your own experiences :)
R.I
