Of late I have noticed a very disturbing trend.  Some designers no longer draw or sketch on paper.

Have we been seduced by the shiny digital world, sure low-res paper prototyping is still popular, but what of sketching.

Not pretty sketching where we aren’t focusing on the heart of the interaction issue, but real sketching where finding the solution is the focus. I’ll discount Inkling sketching as it’s still pen and paper.

We seem to have a collect of designers that just go straight for photoshop, illustrator, Balsamiq or Omnigraffle.  

We used to tell developers not to rush to start coding, to step away from the computer. In fact developers I have seen are doing this, they are sitting down any drawing out the wireframes etc on paper.

Digital is Bad.

Designers, however are rushing headlong to the computer, trembling to open Photoshop and draw some nice neat lines or the like.

Stop it!!

To make matters worse there seems to be a trend to producing the first idea out of our heads as the preliminary digital sketch.

There are a lot of things that I find very disturbing about this:

• Same Environment.

  When you sketch, away form you computer, you free yourself of the trapping of your own design, likes and dislikes and allow yourself to focus on the likes and dislikes of the audience you are designing for. It’s just a change of mental space.

• Too Precious.

  Going digital, no matter how sketchy it looks, still has an air of “time and resources” have been expended on this, it’s precious. All that time used on making it pretty, could have be used sketching another alternative.  We all know that neat and pretty leads to a biasing of a design on critique.

• Too much Fussing.

  We tend to fuss over the precision of our digital work. Sketching is about finding ideas and the journey not the end product.  It’s about finding structure, not fussing over fine details, you can look at those later. Product designs avoid the digital and detail till the end, why don’t we.

• No Accidents or Mistakes.

  Accidents can happen with pen and paper which are not seen digitally, these generate ideas. The free flowing nature of quick design generation on paper will often lead to a misplace line here and there and this will often allow you to abstract out another design direction.

• Immediate Ideas are Lost.

  Sketching is about the immediate and trying out new ideas, drawing up that interaction now before you forget it.  Doing this digitally just takes too long, no matter how good you are.

• First Design is Last Design.

  Too often the first design produced ends up as the last and only design.  With sketching you can iterate over the design, not worrying  about the outcome.

  I know sometimes the boss wants it all done digitally. Well screw them, you are being paid to come up with good designs fast, churning out the same theme of a photoshop design is not designing. Do what you are being paid for, create something new fast, on paper.

• Can’t Draw.

  Okay this shocked me. But I’m from the old school.

  As a designer it’s not a bad idea to at least be able to draw basic shapes and know how to shade. These skills you can practice and master in a few hours.  We all have atrophied pencil drawing skills.  But never let it get to the point that your can’t draw at all.

• Sketches are Messy.

  Still after doing all the right things your sketches are a mess. When you show them to your colleagues and peers they just don’t communicate the intent you want. This is an issue that a lot of people have. They just fall back to the digital world to escape it.

  Yes your initial sketches maybe a mess. That’s okay, lots of younger UX people have this issue. Don’t run away from it.

  Just practice. You could use any of the various series of UI stencils available if you like. But remember these are really just tools to assist you while your skills improve.

• Collaborative Magic is Lost.

  There is a special magic that happens when you sketch ideas in front of a client on paper.

  They will often want to draw too.  Sketching then becomes this collaborative communication tool.  This synergy you get is just priceless.  Somehow that just doesn’t work on a computer or even a tablet.

Paper is Good.

So let’s just STOP pretending to sketch on the computer, tablet, laptop, whatever.  Try going analogue for once.

1. Get some paper, a pencil or drawing pen,
2. Go sit at another desk, table or on the couch, just away from computers,
3. Put on your favourite music,
4. Go draw, sketch away,
5. Let your mind wander, try different ideas, just iterate rapidly taking the best bits from previous ideas.

You have permission to make a mess, if you boss walks in and asks what your doing, tell him you’re designing.

Don’t be precious over the ideas, just let them flow.  If it goes well you may have 10-40 ideas within an hour.

There is a wonderful aspect of “flow” that happens when you design this way.  It’s not something that you can do digitally.  Mainly because digital is just to restricted to the pixel, to perfect, to clean.

So next time you have to start a design I don’t want to see you reach for a mouse or a tablet.

Use pencil and paper, please.

If you work with a client long term or are part of their internal team chances are you will see a number of redesigns of a site.

Over the years I have come to question why we constantly redesign things every few years.  It’s usually a change in directional branding, a  facelift.  As if a website is just a fashion accessory that must be changed as the trend of the season passes by.

Problem is to often I see the same mistakes being made time and time again.   The same old issues reoccur, as the central cause; lack of audience conversation and engagement is ignored.

All the corporate knowledge of one design is often thrown away as the new design comes in.   Resources are wasted as we rebuild and redesign the same old wheel, just this time it will a green with a pink flavour.

Business Fashion Take

Now I can understand why sometimes you need to seriously redesign the visual elements of a site:

• It gives a clear break from the mistakes of the past
• A distinct rebranding or look allows for a change in attitude
• Modernisation of the look and feel to match the latest trends
• Allowing for a reworking of a site to make it more flexible to future changes
• Take advantage of the latest technology
• Allow for integration of secondary service like social media
• Take stock and inventory of the site and review it’s direction

However just consider the audience for a moment.

Audiences Fashion Take

A good deal of the time the audience and users of a site are not on the same page as the business:

• Major changes are a pain, you can’t find anything
• Confusion over changed branding
• Apprehension over use of new technology
• Fear of breaking elements of the site
• Loss of previously saved information

The Alternative – Transforming Design

What we need is an alternative to the endless and costly redesign process.

A redesign should be realigning the site back to the core values of the business and requirements of the audience.    In the old  days of web design this would mean a complete redesign.

We now have “easy to use” template based CMS, use of rapid design frameworks for responsive design with a solid but very flexible multiple platform interface.   This gives us a lot of freedom and the ability to make wide ranging minor changes as we go.

Sure you can still plan and design the concepts for a redesign in one go.

But the key here is to roll them out in stages or as a slow piecemeal redesign of elements of the site.  Any design needs to be adaptable, flexible and agile to the responses.

Combine these minor deisgn changes with A/B and preference testing and you can very easily determine which direction is the better in terms of usability.

This will result in a slow change of a site overtime, they can be fully qualified as soon as they occur.   You can expect that over a year a site will morph from one design to another.

A kind of gradual morphing, transformation.  A transforming design.

The Advantages

There are distinct advantages to using a transforming design process:

• The budget is spread over a greater time period,
• There is a easy acceptance from the users,
• Rapid and responsive to issues as they arise,
• Rebranding can be rolled in slowly and morphed to a new direct as required,
• Sliding integration of older marketing campaigns with new ones.

Something to consider using transforming design, instead of the usually slash and burn redesign.

To often we see focus groups being used as the core evaluation and research tool within a web design project. Why!?

Focus groups are in the main used to evaluate and get recommendations from customers on the proof of concepts or prototypes. They have a strength in gathering people’s judgements, emotions and possible interactive scenarios from the group as a whole.

If you don’t know I have no love for focus groups, I have yet to see them produce any results that have not been tainted or saturated in biases. To the extent that they were just unusable. With the research or evaluation having to be conducted by some other technique later on in the project. Often at an extra expense.

Why use Focus Groups

If focus groups are so great why are we still using them. Well mainly we are still using them due to several business driven factors:

• Cost

  The biggest cost overall factor for all research methods is the cost of the consultant. Hence consider the cost of 1 focus group session verses 15 interviews at 1 hour each, plus transcription and analysis. You can se why they are attractive.

• Ease of implementation

  Compared to ethnographic studies, the easy of gathering a group of customers or stakeholders is a very attractive factor. You have them there all in one room, and even a few hours later you have an outcome. Quick and easy.

• Previously Known Technique

  I have found that often marketing firms will use this method and rebrand it as user research. Mainly because they see it as a trusted and tried technique and maybe they are under the misguided priniciple that market research is vary similar to customer (user) research.

The Issues

The issues all stem from the social interactions of the focus group. People after all for the norm are sociable, this can be a big issue. But it’s not the only issue:

• Qualitative Results

  The information gathered from the focus group will be at best qualitative in nature, while this is good to give a strategic direction for an emotion response. It’s not what we are after overall. We need cold hard evidence more often than not.

• What Customers Say

  To often, as we know, customers will tell you they would do one thing, but when observed they in fact do something completely different. This alteration of the discussed “reality” and the observed reality is extenuated by the group think process.

• Group Think

  People tend to react differently when you get them in a group situation then what they do when you have then alone. Its the usual social dynamics in play, domination, pecking orders, social personality masking and so on. No matter how good a moderator is, they can’t stop the group think process from taking hold, they can only lessen it. Hence people will further suppress ideas, concept or critique in the fear of it’s not exceptable by the group. Focus groups in this way are lot like a jury without evidence.

• Domination

  All it takes is a very dominate personality in a focus group and this will taint the group outcome dramatically. To the point that you are just in fact reporting on the view point of the dominate individuals.

• In Depth Examination

  Yes focus groups can provide some in-depth group examination of issues. However there just isn’t the process to dig deeper into an issue and follow the trail to some of the core issues, as say would be examined in a one on one interview or ethnographic study.

  Yes you can have a good moderator who can reduce these aspects. However overall they are still going to occur, just to a lesser degree. How much of a lesser degree will depend on the experience and skills of the moderator.

The Alternatives

It’s all very good dismissing focus groups out of hand, but what are the alternatives:

• User Testing

  Nothing beats user testing, working with the participants one on one, observing them. Reducing the bias via carefully worded questions on a pre determined scenario that you are evaluating. All the social issues, bias and the like are removed. Remember user testing doesn’t have to be expensive, it can be done in a very cost effectively. It’s just a matter of audience and budgetary scope.

• Interviews

  When you are using a focus group to gather scenario or even user type data, you really would be better off with a series of interviews, even short ones. If you you suspect that your interview will be too short to cover all your bases then consider priming the participants before hand.

• Participatory Design

  This really isn’t that new if you have been following a real customer focused design approach. If you are of the system design school then it maybe a little radical.

  Basically you let the customers design the product for you. Under the guiding hands of the design, development and business teams of course. Why should you be considering that all the good ideas are going to come from your team of designers, and then have them evaluated by the customers. Why not bring a key number of customers along for the journey of the design process. (I’m going to pester you more on this topical later in another post.)

• Collaborative Analysis

  This allows a group of customers, usually one for each persona, the deisgn team, and client to evaluate a design or the like. The process allows for placement of the personas (customer) one at a time in centre stage and have them evaluate the design from their view point. Ultimately the customers will also assist in the design process, contributing to alternatives and the solving of any problems.

  The design team and client are only present in terms of an advisory role on any recommendations that is forth coming.

So maybe you like or even love focus groups; fine that is good.

However next time you go to use them, just stop and think about the altenatives. Is a focus group really going to serve you well.

What do you think are focus groups a waste of time or are they the best thing since sliced bread. You tell me.

Over the years I have been trying to implement UX design tools and techniques into my day-to-day production cycle.   This would be very simple if all my projects where large ones with moderate size teams.   However business reality is that this is not often the case.  The projects I tend to work on, as an independent user experience consultant, can be with a large team for a limited amount of time, to 8-24 weeks as the sole user experience practitioner on a project.

More often it is the case that the projects are just micro projects for small business.  These projects can be anything from 2-3 weeks in length.

The budget on these projects is often very limited.    Often people look at these projects as too small to use any user experience techniques on.  However I have found  you can approach using user experience based tools and techniques two ways for these smaller projects:

1. Do it all anyway, as you would for a larger project, but do it under the radar at your own cost.   Just because you want to remain pure to the “cause”
2. Look at a way to reduce or streamline the user experience design tools and techniques so that they can be used on these smaller projects.

I tend to lean towards the latter.  The idea of working endless hours for an ideal when I could be spending the time with my family and friends is just plain silly.  Besides it devalues our industry and the worth of my fellow user experience designers.

Reviewing Wireframes for Small Projects

Now I’ve learned over the years to question the need for everything in my production cycle, there are no sacred cows here.  No special tools or procedures that must be done  – “because it is the way”, because some industry icon told me so.    Guess it’s my scientific training, the old requirement of having some evidence to support an idea or hypothesis.

With the smaller projects wireframes can be useful I have found, but only in a limited sense.  So maybe we should review if we need them at all.

It’s a similar story – you have completed all your user research to the highest level you can within budgetary constraints.    After all this you end up with basically two lists a “must have” and a “wish list” of information and functional elements for the site’s web design.

At this point we can go ahead and start to explore the concepts and ideas for the design.   What we need is a quick and iterative process to design, test and refine a number of design alternatives very cheaply and quickly.   Remember we have a very limited budget in terms of time and resources.

With this considered what are the pluses and minuses for using wireframes within a small project:

Advantages

1. With simple thumbnail sketches (mini wireframes) using paper and pencil one can very quickly iterate design ideas.
2. By using automated tools and libraries such as Omni Graffle or Balsamiq one can produce final idea wireframes with within minutes and shoot these off to a client for approval.
3. Wireframes can also give a base direction for the design, without the final high-fidelity designs having to be being produced.

Disadvantages

1. Clients often don’t understand wireframes.  They just can’t imagine the design over the top of the fine lines and greyed areas.   It’s like looking at traditional building architectural plans verses a 3D mockup rendering.  Lack of  visualisation skills tend to lead to the requirement for the final high-fidelity  mockups.   It’s at this point with hi-fi that they start to see the design that they understand what it is all about.
2. Wireframes often cause project time creep as too much time is spent making wireframes perfect and documenting all the requirements on them.
3. Smaller projects generally don’t have a major interactive component that is radically difference from the mainstream of existing web sites.
4. The online applications and packages usually used within small business projects are usually open source off the shelf products that can be skinned to meet the client’s visual requirement.   Hence there is little alteration in the interactive component.

Given that we seem to be just wasting our time on reinventing the wheel each time with wireframes, especially for small business projects. In these projects one site can look the same as another at the wireframes level of the design.  One has to consider why keep doing them if they are taking so long to do..

So we should question why keep them at all for smaller projects.

Beyond the idea generation stage discussed above there really isn’t that much use for them.

Even on larger projects we are spending too much time making them perfect, making them into masterpieces, when a few quick pencil sketches is all that is required, be that on a white board or paper.  Documentation is simple – a photograph of the whiteboard or a scan of the piece of paper will suffice.

Alternative Methods – Prototyping

Okay, so if we get rid of wireframes from the process what can we use instead. We still need to represent the base structure or layout with the constrains of the high fidelity design.

This is where I elect to move to rapid prototyping.  I’m not going to detail the process of prototyping here.  But you can use anything for prototyping,  paper, pens , bottle tops. paper clips, post-its, just remember to keep it simple.    The primary goal is to generate and discount ideas  as fast as possible.

Remember your client may not be that familiar with the prototyping process so it’s a good idea to add some detail to your simple prototype before you show it to them.  Flesh them out a little.

If you are using CSS/HTML perchance to prototype, you will have an added advantage.   As the underlying code, even if you are using a framework, can often be reused later on in the development process.  In some ways what we are really doing here is just moving the developmental process forward with a design component.

We can also create a tighter synergy with the design and developmental team as well.  A side effect here is that you tend not to get an overload of crazy design ideas that blow out the developmental budget as the developers can instantly comment of the proposed prototype as well.

One could say that doing the prototypes first is logical as it follows to have the wireframes produced from the outcome of the prototype developmental process.  However that would mean fussing over detailed wireframes. Again in a small project we just don’t have the time.

Simply we move the process from the user research to prototyping to the final high fidelity design.  Eliminating the wireframes.