Hi Ali, Hope I'm not stepping in too late here. I've made something of a career of being "the designer on the development team". Although I once was "the developer on the design team" which might even have been a bit stranger. Here are some approaches that have worked for me:
- Volunteer to write the spec, of whatever it is being built. Do a great job. Lead the discussions. Incorporate wireframe sketches. The engineers may drift from what you sketched, but at least they have a starting point to consider. With time, you will become the person whom everyone looks to for initial specifications and design artifacts, sometimes even for technical internals code. This is because (warning generalization follows) Engineers love specification documents, but don't usually like to write them. - Become handy around the shop. You'll want to volunteer to help test code, to visit with customers, to create prototypes, to help with technical recruiting - to do whatever you can to make your engineering team successful. Another generalization: Engineers respect people who work hard to make the team a success. You want the respect of your team. When your team respects you, you will be listened to. - Be very patient. I try to "plant the seed" of an idea early, then help it grow quietly. I know the time is right when I hear engineers and business people saying it's time to do this thing, as if it was a new idea they just thought of. This is a wonderful moment, because you can smile and say "that's a great idea, let's do this" and all of a sudden you have allies in a strategic design project. I'm working on one of these now. It took more than a year to sprout. - Bear with me here a minute. There's a financial trading term I think is called a "negative indicator". A funny application of this is there are some people who always pick stocks just before they fall (oh wait, that's all of us). Time Magazine covers are a negative indicator - by the time a company shows up there, it's at the peak. Sports Illustrated covers another. Madden football game covers also - the player on the cover will underwhelm the next season. I've heard of traders who kept an eye on negative indicator (people) as a sort of reality-check on market direction. Ok now back to our story. There will likely be one very senior engineer on your development team who is a negative indicator for design. You know, the "let's just add another checkbox" type. This guy (I haven't met the female version yet, although maybe she's out there) will be a very skillful coder with deep knowledge of your system and the respect of all of the engineers on the team. This is the hard part: you want to partner with this guy. You want to work with him as closely as you can. He will understand the system very deeply. You will understand design patterns and be able to make his system more usable and attractive. Together you will create far better applications than either of you could do on your own. - Create paper prototypes. Engineers immediately understand these. Bring your paper, colored pens, and scissors to prototype working sessions and everybody will be cutting out shapes like crazy to try different things. You can advance the design a great deal in an hour of collaborative work with a crude prototype. I hope these suggestions are helpful, have fun, Michael Micheletti On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 4:38 AM, ali naqvi <a...@amroha.dk> wrote: > Interesting comments from all of you. Thank you. > I have had a few conversations with the department managers, other > co-workers and even prepared a powerpoint presentation for my first > kickoff, (many of the attendants are engineers) wherein I will stress > the importance of user Centered Design (OOBE, IX,UX, Usability etc) > > I have noticed that they all think that usability is enough... I'll > change their views.... :) > > > . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . > Posted from the new ixda.org > http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37605 > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
