On Jan 27, 2009, at 11:22 PM, Jim Leftwich wrote:
I'm in extremely strong disagreement with Jarod in a number of things he states.
I'm assuming you're talking about me (JarEd). There's another JarOd on this list, who often has interesting things to say, but he hasn't participated in this thread. I apologize if my assumption is incorrect.
I disagree with his statement that one does not know where a RED design will end until after it's finished. This is flatly untrue. It's a matter of experience. One has to have confidence of where a design (which can indeed be both grasped in the mind and in extensive blueprints) will be when implemented and realized. This is simply a fact that's been borne out in many designs by many designers.
You can think of this as a two-by-two matrix. On the horizontal, you have "Is not experienced" and "Is experienced". On there vertical you have "Thinks is experienced" and "Doesn't think is experienced".
I believe you're focusing on the quadrant that is both "Is experienced" and "thinks is experienced." People in this quadrant will likely do an excellent job. Similarly, the people in "Is not experienced" and "Doesn't think is experienced" will likely resort to other means, such as activity-focused or user-focused research, to get the information they need to make decisions.
It's the other two quadrants that produce issues. Those that fall into "Is experienced" and "Doesn't think is experienced" will underperform and spend resources on research that don't deliver new insights. Those that fall into "Thinks is experienced" and "Is not experienced" will blindly produce designs that are unlikely to succeed.
It is this latter quadrant that I think has the most risk. In this case, you won't know which column you're in ("Is experienced" vs. "Is not experienced") until you've had a way to validate the design. You may "think" you know, but that's a completely different axis.
That was my original point. It is just rhetoric, but it's important rhetoric as we try to broaden the field to that beyond just a few folks who "get it" and make it into something that is scalable to the demands that society seems to warrant it. That's where my interest in this comes from.
He says he will never have to resort to RED. I'm at a bit of a loss to respond to Jarod, as I'm not actually familiar with his body of work. I would have to see Jarod's designs and understand the outcomes, the scale and expense of effort that went into them, and the domains that these took place in before commenting on his approach to design and development.
What I actually said was:
I like the name Genius Design because it means I'll never resort to it.
As Robert pointed out, I'm not a designer (though I do dabble in it occasionally, often with poor results, thus increasing my respect for those who are). I'm a researcher focused on design management (among other things) and this denotation of decision styles (which is what I refer to Genius/RED versus other type) is important, as it helps teams understand when they do and don't need additional research to inform their design.
You can learn more about the work I've been doing from this recent article that describes the different design decision styles: http://is.gd/hywO
Hope that helps you understand where I was coming from. JarEd Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: jsp...@uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com ________________________________________________________________ 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
