The wrong trend in design

Everywhere you look these days, experts are urging designers to get it wrong! Early design iteration has always been a good practice in software, but with collaborative tools improving, and processes decentralizing, the idea is spreading to the Web and beyond.

Rapid prototyping has caught on in fields beyond software and Web publishing. Not long ago, Detroit car manufacturers insisted on high-fidelity clay models to prototype early versions of new car designs.  Today everyone from automakers to zookeepers uses low-fidelity methods to generate and evaluate multiple prototypes quickly.

Getting the design wrong is promoted most by current entrepreneurial thinking.  When you try several ideas quickly, you have a better chance of success overall.  It's a great trend because in design, the constant temptation is to polish the first solid concept, rather than generate fresh ideas until something great results.  Designers must iterate to get past the first burst of predictable ideas, and stretch their brains around creative solutions.  For example, inventor James Dyson built over five thousand prototypes before finalizing his market-changing vacuum cleaner design.

Finally, designers are beginning to embrace failure. Failing to succeed was a theme at SXSW 2008. In July, the counterintuitive Failcamp celebrated design disasters.

Despite inspirational messages, I've seen less of this trend in usability.  It's still the practice of incremental perfectionism. As such, usability risks being left behind our launch-and-learn era of quick failure.

Comments

[Catriona]

Joshua,
Thanks for the link to inspireUX! That quote is one of my recent favorites. I agree that on far too many occasions, designers hold onto their ideas and don't easily accept that there may be better alternatives. One of the best techniques I've personally tried to get around this is having the entire team participate in a generative design activity at the beginning of a project, so that within a very short time period (~10 minutes) a team can generate hundreds of ideas to spur creativity. That way, the team can pursue multiple ideas at the beginning instead of getting caught up in constant iteration of a single idea. It's still easier said than done, but promoting early failure should become part of every design team's culture.

Best,
Catriona
www.inspireux.com

[James Breeze]

Oh yes, Joshua!

Someone once said Fail early, fail often... Early means UX people should iterate wireframes over and over again!

It is very important to communicate this to partners and clients clearly at the start of a project. It can take a while for them to understand that your wireframes are not going to be perfect straight up, in fact, they may change completely! This is particularly true of rich applications - the possibilities of interface design are infinite!

At the early stages of the project the wireframes lead to innovation, they trigger ideas and requirements that were not previously considered. This is particularly for new products.

Iterated wireframes also allow each member of the project team to 'show' us their perspective. You know, many minds are better than one (UX) person!