Design School -> Hello, Real World
Through this article I explore the dichotomy of the role of the designer in ‘real-world’ Organizations and in Academia, specifically through the lens of an Interaction Designer, working on digital experiences. I build on my previous experience at startups and MNCs, and compare it to the pattern of work in design grad school.
Part I: Designing for the Real World
Organizations, startups, MNCs
Bangalore, March 2018
“We’re redesigning the Mobile Checkout experience. How can we maximise the CTR and CVR [*clickthrough-rate and conversion rate] without affecting session performance? When do we plan to roll it out globally? What are our plans for an A/B test? What steps are the Product, Software, Content and Data teams taking to execute this feature?”, Varun announced as the agenda of the evening meeting. He drew out a chart of deliverables against time with each team mapped onto the y axis.
As the CEO of Headout, he had a flair about him, a clear sense of purpose, and the rare ability to bring together different teams of his growing startup. He reminded you of how Randy Pausch would talk about Captain Kirk — not necessarily the most skilled, but surely the most adaptable and resourceful, and that was what you needed to make a leader.
In a room consisting of 3 software engineers, 2 data analysts, the CEO, the CTO and the VP of Growth, there was a lone designer, at the front of the table, bustling with concepts, prototypes and style guides, awaiting consensus through the course of the meeting. Being a designer in such a challenging environment was not easy, but I can cross my heart to say, it has been the experience I have enjoyed and learned the most from.
There were several questions I found answers to working as a Product Designer at Headout:
How does a designer work in such an interdisciplinary setting?
How does one consider the structure, the problems, the constraints, and more importantly, the goals of the company and its users?
How does one balance the lofty idealism and ambition that designers hope for, with the limitations and structures of a development framework?
Sure, we’re still designing in the world of screens — but there is a gigantic leap from design to manifestation — how does one walk this bridge? (Apart from holding hands with the front-end devs…)
How does a designer read data — what metrics are to be considered while designing for users across the world, across platforms and age groups?
For instance, the Design Handoff process is a vital part of the workflow, where designers use Sketch plugins such as Zeplin to export screens as images that have embedded HTML and CSS properties, which makes the collaboration with front-end developers seamless and productive.
Here’s a snapshot from the workflow for Bing Rewards India, a project I was the designer for during my time at Microsoft IDC. A designer would view this a screen-evidenced user journey, but in fact, it communicated the flow of data and execution to two teams central to execution: Software Engineering and Product Management.
Designers and design teams cannot exist in isolation in large organizations or in growing startups.
In the triad of Design, Product Management and Software Engineering, the adaptability for interdisciplinary work nature is extremely necessitated. The Triad is the crux of a design-and-development driven organization moving things from the concept-board to the real world where users await better products and innovation.
A designer cannot be limited to thinking about users and their needs alone — business goals and developmental constraints become a layer of consideration during ideation and the activity of designing itself. As the designer might not have complete knowledge of the way data can be used to leverage business, or the developmental processes used, a greater sense of co-learning and mutual sharing of work and resources becomes extremely important.
Google’s Design process in defining the visual framework for Material Design elucidates the level of attention given to their large range of users, and the nuances of a system that can be flexible and scalable to accommodate for a family of applications and services across their organization. The design of such systems can never be undertaken in isolation — future expansion and company vision are core to a designer’s daily train of thought.
And to plug the question in:
How do we then view the dichotomy of Designing: in the real world (in organizations, startups, studios), and in academic settings (grad courses, research projects, labs)?
Part II: Designing in the Academic World
Pittsburgh, December 2018
“In this use case, if a patient requires a real human counselor, Phases, an AI counselor, would assist him in the process of collecting information from previous sessions and allowing the doctor to review his/her case files.”, Gautham, Ulu and Cat presented during their final design review for IxD Studio.
Read that line again? There is a level of speculation, a case of What if? A sense of idealism and progression. A design-driven world.
Did we really consider the level of complexity in manifesting the AI’s functions? Did we think about the business principles and revenue model that Phases is based on? Probably not. And maybe we didn’t need to at all.
We were working towards a a project in an Interaction Design Studio, completely focused on the design aspects of a certain product, in a specific context. Our use case was isolated, not necessarily purposed to scale.
Design schools allow us the opportunity of being flexible, open-minded and broader in scope and materialization, and imagine the hypothetical, the speculative and the futuristic.
Take for example, the Internet Phone from a class at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (Isak Frostå, Sebastian Hunkeler, James Zhou, Jens Obel, 2017). Realistically, it might not find much practical application or use in a present context, but it presents an interesting design space, maybe a direction into the future of how our content could be consumed and comments on the current state of services.
The MIT Media Lab proclaims itself as an anti-disciplinary research lab working to reinvent the future of HCI, Health, AI, History, Storytelling and Design amongst others (MIT Media Lab, 2018). Researchers belonging to a wide range of groups such as Tangible Media, Fluid Interfaces and Affective Computing work on experimental projects stretching the limits of current technology to find a path into future application and context.
AlterEgo is a project led by Arnav Kapur that explores the paradigm of controlling device input through silent speech. The question the team asked themselves was: “Could we have a computing platform that’s more internal, that melds human and machine in some ways and that feels like an internal extension of our own cognition?” (Arnav Kapur/ MIT Media Lab, 2018)
Through their concept video, they depicted scenarios in which the product might find its application and helped communicate a story of its usability, wearability and interaction. The story did not necessarily involve: parameters of scalability, levels of production, economic / revenue based impact, business vision or factors that would go in to running a venture.
Unlike a real organization that would consider all these variables, design labs thrive in the context of the specific:
Without the need to calculate for business and development, designing in the academic setting allows to explore and build concepts and artefacts that are meaningful in the worlds they reside in.
This can happen while learning tools, processes and approaches in a risk-free environment, without the pressure of real users and unpredictability.
In the Carnegie Mellon School of Design, the process largely involves the cohort of students collaborating on defining direction, creating solutions and delivering corresponding outcomes. The outcomes are usually ‘design’ artefacts, if we could define it as such, in the form of interactive prototypes, videos or physical products.
The composition of the cohort is very diverse (product, communication, interaction, theatre, science, to name a few…), resulting in a collaboration that builds on a range of skills within the design realm. As all of us intend to morph our existing skills into those applicable in Interaction Design, there is a large overlap in terms of creating designs for the screen and the relevant interactivity using animation softwares and prototyping.
Design education and work in the academic settings prepares students to tackle challenges that exist in the ‘real world’ specific to the realm of design itself — but the complexities, challenges, co-learning and collaboration that a designer requires in organizations is far greater. Developing the skills and the approaches required to be explorative and generative, backed with design rationale, aid the role of the designer in the triad of product development.
Sources:
- Google Design Team, Material
- Internet Phone, Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design, 2017 (Isak Frostå, Sebastian Hunkeler, James Zhou, Jens Obel).
- AlterEgo, Arnav Kapur (Fluid Interfaces Group), MIT Media Lab, 2018
