I recommend that you test your alternate designs by having users use
prototypes of them.
Teams I've worked with have processes for developing radically
different alternatives or approaches to design problems. Then they
have people who are users, or like the real users, try out one of the
alternatives.
Here's how it works: Say your team decides on two design ideas
(testing more than that at at time is actually really hard) that are
really different. Now, find a bunch of users maybe 10 or 12 (but at
least 8). Separate them into two groups. Create task scenarios that
you want users to follow in trying out the prototypes. Everyone does
the same tasks. Now, individually, have each person in one group do
the tasks on prototype A. Then have each person in the other group do
the tasks on prototype B. The whole team observes all the sessions,
watching for where users have more or fewer problems.
My experience is that parts of each design work well and parts of each
design work poorly, but out of this data you get from users, you can
create a hybrid design that should work pretty well. (And which, by
the way, you should have a few more users try out with the same tasks.)
The beauty of this approach is that it frees the designers to use
their creativity and design knowledge, and then you can measure how
effective those creative ideas are by having users use them. It's no
longer a subjective decision among the team members.
Make sense?
Dana
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::
Dana Chisnell
desk: 415.392.0776
mobile: 415.519.1148
dana AT usabilityworks DOT net
www.usabilityworks.net
http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/
On Jan 19, 2009, at 3:13 AM, Jakub Linowski wrote:
http://www.90percentofeverything.com/2009/01/14/why-you-shouldnt-rush-into-a-solution-too-quickly/
Harry posted an interesting post on "90 percent of everything" about
not
rushing to design solutions too quickly. Designers should cover the
design
space with divergent approaches first and identify proper alternatives
before converging on an idea. I think I've heard others say as well
the same
about iterative design, and the ability of successful designs only
to evolve
if the pool of ideas is rich and diverse. The idea is not exactly
revolutionary but stirs a basic design question.
The question which I am wondering about then is how do we know how
many
alternatives are enough? How do we know we have enough sketches,
alternatives or concepts before we begin choosing a satisfising
solution.
Harry also pointed me to wiki entry on wicked problems
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem, where it says that it's
not
possible to measure the design space. "Wicked problems do not have an
enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set of potential
solutions, nor
is there a well-described set of permissible operations that may be
incorporated into the plan." So what are we left with here?
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