Rethinking Design Fundamentals
Rethinking or challenging one’s own fundamental knowledge about something is one of the most difficult tasks I’ve ever exprienced. But, a morally critical necessity for every Designers out there.
Those are some really strong words juxtaposed together. Heres why.
Following a trend is easy, following contemporary design patterns too, however thinking out of the box is not. Often when starting a project or even something as basic as a design challenge, which any design job hunter comes across in an onsite interview there is a need to deliver good design solutions. However if your fundamental knowledge about something is biased or influenced by something then the starting point is biased as well and would not lead you to the best design you can come up with. Lets do a small exercise, and be honest *wink*.
What is the first thing (your mental model) that comes to your mind when I ask you: “How does the scan feature of this commuter card refill system work ?”
If the first thing that comes to your mind is “I’ll pull up my card and touch it on the scan label…or wave across it…” then there are high chances you’re speaking form your existing experience. Isn’t that something the design pioneers like Cooper and IDEO strongly advice against ! It is very common and might seem “hah…not a big deal” but the end result will be something far mediocre than what your awesome design thinking mind can possibly explore and produce. Imagine this to be like eating from dishes that you didn’t wash last night ! You can still eat but would you prefer it ? No.
Assumptions like that hold us back and their tacit acceptance in a designer’s mind is spurious for the design thinking process.
In my conversation with 10 other designers, 8 of them didnt question the way “scan feature” worked. Even I went on with it at a Design Exercise with Deloitte Digital for almost half-an-hour only to stop and rethink the whole assumptions.
My solution was, devoid of context here yet, was to have the scan just identify when someone is nearby and do what its supposed to do, scan. As designers we’ve a lot riding on us and hence I say it is our “moral” responsibility to come of with better design solutions, to liberate our greatest stakeholder, the user, from small mechanic interactions and have natural interactions instead. Heres to all of us….
