Templates and Frameworks and Models, Oh My!
I love frameworks as much as any average research analyst-strategic planner-user experience designer-product manager.
This week, we’re working with teams who are new to user-centered design. We, then, especially feel the need to find good, useful frameworks to communicate ideas in a clean, simple way.
BUT.
Beware. Of the creeping tendency of Templateivitis*.
*It might sound like a similar concept, but this is definitely different from “all-websites-are-starting-to-look-the-same-o-phobia”**.)
Template-ivitis is the increasing reliance on frameworks and models that you can Google, then adapt to explain the current projects and pitches you’re working on.
How is Template-ivitis more menacing than web design patterns? Don’t they use the same logic?
That if you use the visual patterns that users are most familiar with, then they’ll more easily navigate information?
NO. Because…
1. A template is not (automatically) a solution.
Just because you were able to fill up blanks and squares on an “official” framework from a book, does not a business model make — nor a User Experience strategy, or a Customer Journey Map.
Templates are helpful, yes — they allow us to scale our logic, our services and our thinking. But, coming from a template user such as myself, we need to protect ourselves from relying wholly on sophisticated MadLibs to decide things for us. #CriticalThinking #ACarelesslyFilledBriefIsWorseThanNoBriefAtAll.
2. A template is a collaboration tool.
Templates work best in the wild. Like a watering hole in the midst of different species of animals.
They’re supposed to bring people together to discuss, modify and experiment with their ideas.
If you actually read the books Business Model Generation or Value Proposition Design or the Design Kit, you’ll see that they are meant to be used as a means for experimentation and conversation — more than a single-use presentation device.
3. Tools are only as good as the people who use them.
A good template should bring out the best in your thinking.
But, if you’re filling it up without doing the legwork — of reviewing real business performance and analytics, desk research, market research, UX research — then it’s just going to be…a filled-up worksheet, not a “business model”, or a real “value proposition”.
I’m very very thankful that sharing frameworks and mental models are a big part of society and the working world these days.
Thankful that there are brilliant people who were able to distill their thinking into clear models, and decided to share and monetize these.
But, the reality is I’ve also seen the templates underused and abused in client, corporate and academic presentations.
So, a word of warning, if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a template presentation, don’t be seduced immediately by your presentor’s filled boxes, and do take the time to absorb what they mean.
*On Web Design patterns: Websites are beginning to look the same because of digital products adapting to mobile-responsive design; style guides (such as Material design) and design patterns (which can actually improve usability). The fact that many websites are beginning to look similar is not necessarily or automatically due to a lack of creativity, but more of the increasing need to adapt to usability practices.
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