Bridging the Intangible - Tangible gap

Often when asked what one does as a designer, the answer seems to be that designers understand user requirements and convert it into design. I have myself replied the same all these years. The counter argument I get is that many other disciplines do the same, so why the need for a designer. Thinking about this led me to a more indepth thought about what designers do (or are supposed to do).

I think the main task of a designer is to understand human emotions, feelings and thought (all intangibles) and convert them into a design output (tangible). This is what the designer is uniquely trained to do.

Many other disciplines are trained to understand data, organize and interpret into information, and then construct a solution. However, the uniqueness of the designer lies in going beyond mere information, understand the human intangibles behind that and then construct a tangible design that caters to those intangibles.

A design that engages the user, arouses curiosity, increases ease, and many a times provides a novel experience is what the designer's goal should be. That, I feel, is the purpose of the designer.

You want your product to succeed? Tell the user what it is, clearly.

Successful products have many notable attributes. One, however, is most significant - the ability to clearly say to the user what it is.

A productivity tool needs to be recognizable as one. A social networking site has to say that it is so. A forum has to look like a forum.

Ambiguity is the first step towards failure. A product that doesn't speak for itself and say what it is, will confuse users about its purpose and end up being neglected.

Most product owners seem to want too much and yet play safe. Mostly unclear as to what they really want to provide to their users, and under pressure to face up to competition and not be left behind, they end up creating multiple objectives without a central focus. The result is a salad of ideas, each with independent objectives, none of which add to the objective of the whole.

Focusing on a central idea and saying what it is, seems risky - it seems easier to bet on a bag of ideas and hope that some of them will work out rather than having to put your money on one. Ambiguity seems to be a guise for lack of confidence. The end result is a mediocre product and the probable path to eventual failure.

It must be realized by all product owners, that product development is a risky business. Here taking risk is the only way to be safe, and playing safe the riskiest and the surest path to failure.

(Photo Credit: Tall Chris, Flickr)

Successful Products have Life - an Energy Theory

Do successful products have "life" ?

I know this might sound crazy but let's explore the possibilities.

Life can be defined by an "energy" that enables an object to have the unique capacity to act on its surroundings, react to it, connect to-and-between other objects around it and facilitate and enable that environment, besides of course the ability to grow and reproduce. Some attribute this life-energy to a higher spirit, others to a God, many others to ambivalence and still others to nothing.

Successful products do all of the above, either in a positive or a negative sense.

Starting with the guys who germinate the product idea, to the ones who incubate it, to its eventual audience/users and its environment - all of them contribute to this "life" in the product. It is all these people and the environment who bring into it this energy.

Bringing this energy into a product is not easy. Each contributor needs to channelize a lot of their own energy into the product before it can spring into life. That is why only a handful of products succeed.

Why Products Fail?

Too many people get into building a product without this energy, concentrating on putting the superficial building blocks (features) together, without focusing on the energy within. The result is similar to an anatomical construction of the human body without life in it. Inevitably, an energy-less construction and then a post-construction effort to blow life into the product doesn't do much to bring it to life.

The Success Formula (Duh !!)

Investors will tell you that they don't just evaluate a product, they evaluate the people behind it, before they invest in it. And, they do so very rightly. Right from ideation to construction, release and beyond, the people behind and then around the product conjure together their cumulative energies to bring it to life. You need the idea generators and germinators to bring in their vision and passion, the constructors to work out the details, the magical "conductor-like" product manager to orchestrate this incubation and bring it to release. Finally, you need the audience/users to bless the new-born into acknowledgment, existence and growth. Once grown, the mature product will use the energy of its environment to spawn and encourage other ideas and products to grow from it and reproduce beyond.

Does this theory that successful products have life, matter?

This construct brings out the importance of the vision, passion and persistent energy required to bring a product to life and make it successful.

Life, as always, is a metaphor. It can also be the truth.

Look around and you will see successful products around that live successfully. The tech industry is abound with examples like Google, Amazon, eBay and now Twitter which have sprung to life and are successful.

(Photo Credit: pleasantpointinn, Flickr)

Crowdsourcing with CAUTION !!

A lot is being said about "crowdsourcing" almost everyday, and more and more entrepreneurs are jumping onto the crowdsourcing bandwagon. There is however, need for caution.

Just as the banking and financial services industry in the US jumped on the sub-prime lending bandwagon leading to the crisis we face in the world economy today, any "fad" needs to be taken up with caution. This moment of economic crisis should teach us not to evaluate options based on short-term gain, but do a careful evaluation of its long-term implications before taking it up.

I have been evaluating crowdsourcing with respect to the design of software products, which is my area of work, and I would welcome suggestions and more thoughts on this.

Design broadly consists of four major phases:

1. An initial understanding phase, where a designer employs various tools at her disposal to understand the needs of users of the product and society in general,

2. A second divergent ideation phase, where ideas are generated,

3. A third convergent phase where the final solution is chosen, and

4. A final implementation phase.

One can package this in many different ways, but the essential activities in design will typically conform to these four phases.

It is the second phase of ideation, that typically holds the potential of being crowdsourced. If you are creating a product or service and need ideas, it does make sense to crowdsource. The ideation phase is afterall a divergent phase and you need to explore. You can hire a consultant and pay money to do this exploration or use the crowd for free to do the same - either way you will need to explore ideas. There is just one small glitch - you will end up getting a lot of ideas that are grounded in different contexts and not in the context your business might be oriented towards. This will happen, because the crowd will typically not have done the first phase of understanding your users. You will therefore need to sieve through the ideas and take those that fit your context, when you move to the next converging phase of arriving at a solution.

Therefore, in the third phase of converging towards a solution, you will need expert advice. A deluge of ideas from the crowd can be overwhelming, if you don't know how to sieve through them and you might end up losing your way, and even going away on a tangent that is detrimental to your business model. Therefore, for the third phase of arriving at a solution, you will need an expert designer to bring all the ideas together and connect the dots, using tools and experience at her disposal. Crowdsourcing will provide you with "opinion", but you will need "informed opinion" to make decisions.

Similarly, in the first phase of understanding user needs and studying it in the context of society and the business, you will need an expert who can use the necessary tools at his disposal to capture these needs with the right amount of empathy and understanding, both of which take years to imbibe.

Again, in the final implementation phase, you will need an expert to plan and implement this design - it is a fine balancing act of all the constraints at hand, and comes only with training and experience.

Crowdsourcing enthusiasts, whom I have read so far, seem to be so gung-ho about cost savings in the short-term, that they seem to have ignored all these aspects in their espousal, and this can be dangerous. Traditionally, not having done enough home-work upfront has meant doing multiples of that work down the line - cost savings upfront is a myth that results in more expensive rework later with much pain and hardship as well.

As I see more and more entrepreneurs and enterprises jumping onto the crowdsourcing bandwagon to get design done, I am concerned. I worry that this mad rush will leave most entrepreneurs with burnt fingers and products with lost opportunities that can affect society adversely in the long run. Creating and supporting the creation of good products is not an obligation, but it is necessary for the well-being of each and every one of us. We don't need an economic recession to tell us, that we were wrong - we just need to be positively careful about the choices we make.

Since the fundamentals of product design, apply to all other forms of design - organizational and social - I am of the opinion that the application of crowdsourcing needs to be done with a lot of thought.


(Photo Credit: Christopher Augapfel, Flickr)

Designing products for the Entrepreneur...

As part of a series of lectures, yesterday I got one of the start-up CEOs my design team works with, Anand Raj, to come and talk to us about an entrepreneur's needs for design. What he said was insightful in more ways than one:

Insight 1: Getting the "Connect" right
Anand's main insight was that, unless the designer is able to "connect" with the entrepreneur, they may not be able to move ahead with the actual design activity. This connect, Anand feels can be established by one-on-one conversation, or showcasing work that help visualize the entrepreneur's thoughts or the ability to guide the entrepreneur in moving ahead with design. There could be other ways as well. However, the "connect" itself is a soft-skill and comes probably with a keen curiosity, active listening and the ability to contribute at an instant in the context of a discussion.

Insight 2: Fighting the "Ego"
Most often, the designer and the entrepreneur have their own egos and a conflict can arise naturally. How these people fight their own egos out, determine if they can work as a team. It is important for the entrepreneur to understand and appreciate that the designer is the subject-matter expert and therefore opinions of the designer are of utmost importance. On the other hand, the designer needs to understand that s/he is the "facilitator" of a design, and not the "creator". The designer's task is to guide the entrepreneur and facilitate the design process.

Insight 3: Building "Trust"
If the "connect" happens and the "egos" are kept out, and the designer and entrepreneur are able to guide, challenge and take each other's ideas forward, "trust" will follow.

Insight 4: The influence of personality, power distance and hierarchy
Anand gives an example of how he was meeting with a famous CEO without knowing who he was and the candid conversation he had, while his response changed when he came to know who that person was. The designer and the entrepreneur need to both understand these dynamics and ensure that the team works well irrespective of such influences.

Anand went on to use these insights to elaborate how without the understanding of these insights and the ability to connect and build trust, the relationship might become difficult. Without mutual trust, even though the designer might work very hard on the design and come up with a great design, the entrepreneur might not be able to appreciate the work done. Soon the team dynamics may get into an ego-brawl leading to conflict of interests.

Design is a difficult activity. The acceptance criteria for a design cannot be made objective completely. In such a scenario, it is important to understand that doing design for an entrepreneur is not just about going away to a corner and attempting to get it done - it is as much about thought leadership, the conversations and guidance, the progress and the ability to work with the entrepreneur as a team.

Unlike designing products for today, and therefore knowing what society's needs are in the current context, the entrepreneur is most probably trying to create products for tomorrow and therefore project his ideas based on a vision for the future. This is a challenging task and the designer will need to bring to the table thought leadership, expertise and tools and enable that future vision.