I don't think how I and my partners design is anything at all like whatever the design that's been done (as you characterize broadly) "in technology design for the past 30 years."
I doubt that all of those teams, including the unsuccessful ones you mentioned, approached things from very diverse and experienced backgrounds, with expertise in designing a wide range of development factors successfully. I also doubt that those efforts have involved teams producing pixel-perfect and behavioral-rule-perfect specification blueprints, as we've done. I don't think the approach and level of design and interactional architecture I'm describing is found in the typical way technology design has been practiced across all products, software, and systems. I believe that the RED I'm describing is most often practiced by consultants, and as you'd stated earlier, small teams. I believe what you're alluding to is actually a lack of adequate architectural design. The typical effort has been a cobbled-together mash of engineering with a big of marketing icing smeared over the top. Almost nothing could be further from the RED practice I'm describing. RED is much closer to how building architecture has been traditionally approached. We design it, produce the blueprints, and the engineers build it. Often it is very collaborative with engineers. And it's not as though there's no research. It's just that the research is conducted very quickly, and also involves extensively pulling from any already-known body of knowledge at the client or in the organization. Your claim of it will work well when... and it will fail when... can just as easily be applied to any type of methodology and any generic/symbolic designer. What I believe, from what I've experienced first hand and what I've observed, is that experienced and broad-based RED practitioners and small teams are capable, designer-for-designer/team-for-tem, of producing more and superior products, in more conditions, in tighter timeframes, for less cost, than any other method. But that assumes that the designers are both broadly talented and extensively experienced. The only way to determine whether or not this is true is to examine the outcomes and the associated efforts that went into them. That's why I contend that when all is said and done, it comes down to examples of actual work, as in the design, implementation, and results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37626 ________________________________________________________________ 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
