Design Details is a podcast hosted by Bryn Jackson & Brian Lovin. The dynamic duo compliment each other in a way that makes the industry talk entertaining. I’m definitely a novice when it comes to podcast, but the quality of their setup and attention to detail is something that you can feel. They don’t try to sell themselves, and they usually say what they want to say. Their opposite ideals make the guest interviews dynamic in many ways. But most importantly they are honest about what they don’t know.
There is no doubt that they are outstanding designers in the professional field of digital product design, and in episode 160 Bryn comments on the topic of user research:
“That’s like one of the tenets of the UX movement by built in research in every step, but I think we’re bad at it though.”
He also agrees with Amber Cartwright about the state of buzz regarding “Design Thinking.”
Why is it that UX and Design Thinking has become this trendy, vague process that people still have a hard time explaining or implementing? Something that now has become indistinguishable when in front of a professional’s title because the follow up question is “Yeah, but does this person really know how to use the process?”
First a bit of history
As designers, we all know the influence of Don Norman who coined the term User Experience, and IDEO’s design thinking the seven stages: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement, and learn.
While in school I was assigned to wireframe a prototype. For some reason I wanted to learn how to sitemap the project, and found a youtube video lecture of Dan Klyn using InDesign to create a sitemap and wireframes. It was incredibly technical, and hard to follow. When I tried to see what kind of designer he was, I quickly found out that he wasn’t one. He is an Information Architect. I’m not sure why, but I wanted to make the sitemap right. The rabbit hole got deeper as I had to learn the visual vocabulary for describing information architecture and interaction design in order to locate and define where certain site information is on the map.
It was beautiful; I was extremely proud of my creation, but when I showed it to my professor, the subject of information architecture was not a part of the degree, and it seemed a simple sketch of a sitemap would have sufficed.
Information Architecture was coined by Richard Saul Wurman who is famous for creating the TED conference, but the field derives its technicality from library science which develops the “knowledge-organization systems.”
We say user research when it comes to design thinking by focusing on the human aspect of exploration and problem solving, but I have to agree with Bryn that I don’t think we are that great at UX. I just couldn’t understand why information architecture (IA) and user experience (UX) design are so far away from each other. IAs were the pioneers of the early web, organizing and labelling complex information systems. If anything, they were specialists in digital information systems that can give designers structure and a system to work with, rather than half assed sketches and calling it a part of design research.
Keep in mind that the title is “The Unexplored Identity of UX Design”. I’m not trying to argue that post-it notes and low fidelity sketches are not important. These tools are extremely effective when used in the right situation. Design thinking and the UX principles are the reasons behind why I changed my degree from graphic design to user experience and interaction design. But I do question the trend in the dichotomy of “facts and feels.”
Designing an experience with loose facts
Even though the field has been maturing, it is still hard to pinpoint the meaning of UX. I also find it interesting when designers are trying to get a seat at a table of businessmen and developers by trying to be both. The flood of articles providing shallow advice on how “design is not art”, and “you should be treating it more like a business strategy” or “why you should learn how to code”. I firmly believe design can and should be a form of art.
Christopher Alexander, an architect and a design theorist, applied ornamental art designs effectively within his structures, advocating that there is a objective reason in creating beauty for places that humans dwell in. A designer’s purpose is not to make something pretty, something people are widely opinionated on, nor is it to convince others that they are important and needed in the digital industry because we can be valuable within the corporate culture. Our craftsmanship, when used in the right place at the right time, can provide utility, beauty, meaning, a story, and a good human experience. And by respecting that information architects can identify boundaries and provide structure, we can explore and define where our skills can be used in the right place and the right time. This can increase the value of our craft, not by pretending to be something that we are not, but to elevate the culture as a whole.
The unexplored meaning of multidisciplinary
I find myself questioning it over and over when I listen to Design Details and industry professionals converse about creating design systems, or the lack of knowledge in what the field of user research actually does.
Where did all the IAs go?
The implementation of a multidisciplinary team can be traced back to IDEO’s method of combining different specialists in certain fields to creatively solve a problem together. Nowadays, the concept is thrown around as a lucrative solution for businesses to reduce time, money, and resources to solve problems using cycles of iteration. But here again the actual meaning is very vague. It spawned realizations for some people that “we are all designers in a way” or “by working in a multidisciplinary team, we all learned to be a designer” which sound very humble at first. But the question is, why would you need a design specialist if everyone can learn to design?
Ian Bogost’s new book Play Anything does an amazing job of defining the fundamental reasons for respect and humility. By this book’s standards, it is important to:
“See things as they really are”
User experience design (UX, UXD, UED or XD) is the process of enhancing user satisfaction by improving the usability, accessibility, and pleasure provided in the interaction between the user and the product.
As the above definition states, UX design is a “process” or a tool for people who make products for people. This means the process can be used by anyone. It could be content strategists, information architects, computer engineers, designers, anthropologists, or CEOs. However, this is one of the reasons for misunderstanding a designer’s role in today’s digital industry. By learning how to use UX design, a person might believe that they themselves are designers. I wonder how that respects the profession of a designer?
Within a team of multidisciplinary specialists there is meaning in identifying an individual’s role as a specialist. Not to “all learn about how to be a designer”, but to respect another person’s ability that is different than our own. To paraphrase Bogost’s book, by prioritizing respectfulness we can learn more about what our teammate can actually do rather than what they can do for me.
A information architect creates the structural design of shared information environments; the art and science of organizing and labelling websites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability.
With the above definition in mind a digital designer can respectfully implement an IAs creation as a foundation in creating their own low or high fidelity product mock-ups. They can incorporate a naming system within a design system, devise a style guide, or create a interactive prototype.
To explore the meaning of a multidisciplinary team: A group of diverse specialists can learn to share a common language by respecting individual roles as what they are. This team is able to use that learned language to discuss one another’s professional opinions using the UX design process.
The digital industry has realized that empathy is important when it comes to designing a digital product. I not only wanted to write about the unnoticed importance of an information architecture, but how I can use respect as I continue my journey as a designer. I am a designer who is learning how to respect and understand different field of experts by pondering the ineffective transition between a designer’s high-fidelity mock to actual production with developers or the lack of facts or structure before a product can be designed.
Hope this writing does not rub people as disrespectful, but if it did, please feel free to tell me why.
