I think the key here is to step back to the highest level first before getting mired in specifics.
Presumably whatever it is you are designing is designed for some purpose, and to meet either business goals or user goals. The business goals tend to be much better defined at companies, or one should hope so. As far as user goals, that's something that falls within our purview, and something that you can tease out, define, and agree on through research and conversation. And yeah, this is a process that involves some negotiation, and something you need to be flexible and build consensus around. Once you have those general goals, you can take it down to a specific level, i.e. maximizing conversion, reducing user abandonment, stickiness, engagement, what have you. By doing this you ally yourself with the business and marketing functions of your organization, which gives you more power to fight the purely engineering approach. These goals are also testable, and if your solution is indeed better, you can actually gather data to prove it down the road. The next step is to start advocating for your solutions by saying things like: well, we want to give emphasis to X because it will help us reach goal Y, and this is how we'll do that within this specific design. The arguments become less religious, and it is no longer about (excuse the vulgarity) a pissing contest, but about trying to find the best solution that meets a shared goal. -eva On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 9:49 PM, Russell Wilson <russ.wil...@gmail.com> wrote: > So what are the criteria? That's what I'm after. (and don't say "it > depends") :-) > > It's easy to say "everyone's opinion counts", "there's more than one good > solution", "we should all work together", etc. > And we do just that... But when it comes to deciding on a particular > solution and moving forward, "someone" or some panel has > to make a decision (depending on where your thinking is between a single > vision/conceptual integrity versus design by committee). > > Assuming there are multiple solutions that are equally "good", how do you > decide on one? What are some examples of > criteria used? In some cases we have tested multiple designs and had > inconclusive results (1+ designs tested equally well). ________________________________________________________________ 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
