Good or bad, our design decisions have consequences
Early in the 1993 blockbuster movie Jurassic Park, on a lunch break during the tour of the almost completed facility, billionaire and park creator John Hammond asks those in attendance for their overall impressions so far on his technological wonder.
Hammond after spending the entire tour lauding the creation of such an amazing project, going so far as constantly repeating “spared no expense” on all new features of the park, is shocked and even insulted when those in attendance are quicker to question and even criticize his process, than heap his praise.
When Hammond asks Ian Malcolm, the brilliant Mathematician, about his thoughts on the park, Ian quickly warns John of the negative and even dire consequences of taking on such an ordeal as re-creating prehistoric life, saying:
“Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” — Ian Malcolm
Those familiar with the movie (and the overwhelmingly better novel) know that the concerns raised by Malcom and others in the group quickly come to fruition, resulting in the failure and ultimate destruction of the park and the island itself.
In the novel, as well as the movie, the park itself is nowhere near completion or ready for the general public when a small group arrives to preview the island. Hammond and his team of scientists were so preoccupied with creating dinosaurs, that the responsibilities of security, safety and infrastructure were given very little thought, if any at all. As the park began to crumble, these somewhat remedial or non-exciting responsibilities ultimately led to the island’s downfall.
I don’t imagine any of us will ever have to deal with the problem of genetically changed dinosaurs, but all of us, myself included, will work on projects where we need to ask that same question raised by Dr. Malcolm: “Should we?”
As UX designers we are responsible for looking at the entire overall user experience of a product. This means that not only do we focus on the individual product experience itself, but all of the experiences that lead up to and follow the use of that product.
We’ve all worked on projects where our attention and efforts have been focused on whether we could add a specific feature. This line of thinking is not wrong — in fact, we should be confident in our abilities as designers and in those of our dev teams that we can not only build it, but build it correctly — however, before we even reach the step of asking “could we?”, we first need to ask ourselves if we even should. When asking “ should we?” we are not intending to hinder or even defeat an idea, but verifying if that idea is the best solution to the problem and why.
A few years ago I was part of a team working on a historical website that allowed users to read and research a collections of rare historical documents. The problem we were tasked with was finding out why interest in the website which had been extremely high during its initial release had waned considerably. The corporation heading the project had spent a substantial amount of time and money on this product including, a large marketing campaign, and had yet to fully see the fruits of their labors.
As our team assessed the situation we were able to hypothesize that the website that had been promised was very different from what was delivered. This was a direct result of the client not taking the time to fully understand or even know what their intended audience wanted to gain from these historical documents.
Our team conducted a number of user interviews, and based on our findings, found out that the intended users had envisioned a website that not only made these documents accessible but most importantly provided a way for them to understand their meanings, answer their questions and make them relevant to their needs. Instead, the website that was delivered was essentially an advanced document reader that provided users a way to read the documents but no clear way to understand or utilize them.
Ultimately, the misstep had not been in creating a website that made these documents accessible to the public; that was inevitable. The real misstep had been in deciding how the documents should be delivered so that they ensured the very best user experience.
When we can verify that an idea is worth exploring and have gone through the proper channels, then the question of “could we” is a simple answer. If the answer is yes, we confidently move forward looking to solve the problem at hand, and if the answer is no, maybe, or ‘I don’t know’, then we’ve not only saved valuable time and resources, but also avoided releasing something that could possibly have a negative effect on the experience we are looking to improve.
Had the scientists in Jurassic Park approached their work with this mentality, it’s possible the dinosaurs may have never escaped and eaten so many people. Then again, we also wouldn’t have one of the most popular novels and movie franchises of the 20th Century. We can, however, as designers, avoid the pitfalls of the fictional Scientists at InGen and remember that just because we could does not mean we should.