collaboration

Image by Justin Gravante.
 
Dear Engineering,

No one says it aloud, but let it ring true, we are nothing without you. Designers and engineers are truly the heart and soul of the user experience. Let’s bring the best of each other out through communication, collaboration and embracing our common goals.

Love,
Design

We are nothing without each other.

Design and development have a relationship that is truly unique: one that is a force to be reckoned with if put into motion via collaboration, listening, and humility. The duo can create 'practical magic' by transmuting what is imagined into the realm of the possible. It may be that there are jacks of all trades, but in larger companies especially, often we find that designers and engineers are specialists in their field. These individual specialties are more powerful, more creative, and more capable together than divided. A user experience may be imagined, a comp may be beautifully crafted, but it is nothing more than a set of pixels on a screen until it is developed. We often hear the benefits of prototyping early: a design schema put into a prototype early on allows for teams to catch user errors and potential technical solution inefficiencies early on. An interactive design of any kind without a prototype is like flying blind. Prototypes allow teams to fail fast, early and facilitate room for early iteration.

Getting creative with technology is the best thing one can do!

Engineers help us designers find boundaries to work within. These boundaries are essential to the creation of design. A blue sky vision is in most cases not grounded in a reality that can touch the hands and lives of users. It also is much harder to create without limitations. Just like physical materials have properties which an artist can manipulate and experiment, so to in the world of virtual creation do technical properties allow designers to experiment within a ruleset. Sometimes the most creative ideas come out of technical limitations. An art teacher of mine once said: 'find out what the material does best and help it do to that.' By studying and understanding technical boundaries at hand, designers can start sculpting solutions that are imaginative and real. It's about successfully finding the edges of those boundaries early on that can often make or break a given design.

When working together, designers and engineers are faster than working alone. I am privileged enough to have the opportunity to work side-by-side an amazing engineering team and this allows for faster, more productive iterations. We are able to find on-the-spot solutions because we both have our sleeves rolled up, and are at the same table. Cross-functional teams are powerful because they bring together all different viewpoints rather than fragmenting them and forcing communication to happen much later in the game.

Performance, reliability, joy of use, and usability are four components that together make up a great user experience. Both engineers and designers have the ability to affect each one of these. An app that is beautiful yet slow is not a great experience. So too, a reliable app without a great UI lacks the human factors which comprise a satisfying experience.

Together we are more empowered to do something better: We are closest to the product because we are in the day to day, creating and building the product. Let's face it, if a product is not designed and built it does not ship. Don't ever forget this when you are working on a project. It can be easy to do so especially in large companies where business analysis and general management are forces of nature. But feel empowered in knowing that you have huge influence over the product at hand because you are knee deep in the creation of it, you are on the front line. Never loose a sense of ownership, purpose or control.

"Find your common cause and get fucking passionate about it." - J. Gravante

Purpose unites teams and inspiration drives teammates. Its essential to maintain momentum together. Projects are fluid, so is inspiration. Don't hold back! Share with your team: every inspiration a single person has when working on a project has the potential to inspire a team or even just one other individual. This leads to maintaining the momentum necessary to effectively move the team forward.

Be inclusive! Don't throw requests over a wall and expect good results. In fact, expect poor results - no one likes to feel like there are fingers pointed or walls are drawn. We are all in this together. Don't assume a designer doesn't care. Don't assume an engineer doesn't care. Designers can be flexible, we value the work that engineers do and understand what sweat and tears can go into developing a great solution: nothing is 'just magic.' Real people create real solutions through both design and development.

Share ownership with your teammates. Nothing is black or white. Every team-member has the potential to individually contribute, so don't de-value the power of co-creating. Feel empowered to speak up, especially when you don't agree or understand a design or technical idea. Sometimes the best results come out of the disagreements we have because they point out different ways of seeing the same problem and, in turn, allow us to expand how we think as well as to be more creative collectively. The more questions asked, the more thoughtful decisions are made!

Expand the definition of what you do.

Powerful teams respect dynamic roles. This means that I may not always have the same role on a team. I may have to wear many hats during the evolution of the project so I, in effect, expand and contract to fill in the holes of the team. Be flexible enough to provide room for your teammates to do their job best, be humble enough to ask for help when you need it, and be fearless in taking on new challenges. As you grow the team grows. Designs and engineers are both researchers and problem solvers. As some have compared the creativity that scientists and artists both have, I believe this dynamic to be the same between engineers and designers. We are more alike than one may first observe and with a common goal we can work as a great unit.

Play a role in every aspect of the process. Don't settle at being the bottom of the funnel. Your component may be a peice of the larger puzzle, but it is the overlap, those fuzzy areas where the true glue happens. Don't over-reach, but at the same time know that people will in most cases be thankful for your input. A holistic approach to design and development means a better product in the end. Not everyone is going to be a bridge to the extended team, but for those that are capable realize the importance of reaching out and getting involved in the greater effort.

Own it together! Unique talents comprise a team. Individuality is essential to gaining perspective. So celebrate individual talents, successes and opinions. A team is only as good as the sum of its parts. So let the individuals shine within the group and be vocal about these differences.

In conclusion: designers love engineers because together we can build, grow, iterate, evolve, make things, and get shit done that no one else can!
 
I have given a talk accompanying this information 3 times now. Please check out the slideshare! http://www.slideshare.net/henkenbean/a-ux-love-letter-to-engineering

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Image + collaboration by: Justin Gravante
Inspiration: CIM Mobile Engineering and UX teams

...and it's called "Behavioral Systems Service Experience Design Innovation"... or something.

There has been a lot of talk recently about questioning the scope of experience design within business: In Adam Conner's article for Mad Pow, he states: "I believe Experience Design should be defined as a specific approach to design that treats the product as secondary and determined purely based on the ability to contribute to the creation of a desired experience." I tend to agree with this statement about the expansion of UX from the screen or product to the holistic experience and I also think it gets at the heart of the conversation on Design Thinking and other related innovation discussions.

In Sarah Malin's response to Bruce Nussbaum's Article "Design Thinking: a failed experiment" she writes, "Focusing on isolated elements of design thinking neglects a “systems” understanding of the whole skill set – ignoring the increasing need for systems thinking that can take in global reality in its entirety and embrace complexity." I think its astute to speak of "systems thinking" as this gets both at the heart of what business stakeholders, product managers, and designers all are trained to do: to make decisions based on holistic and complex data and systems. I'd rather take the discussion of what to call our field out of this article and focus on defining what I see the environment to be.
 

"I am a problems guy, you're the solutions gal."

That's a phrase I heard from a colleague of mine in terms of the relationship between his role as product manager and my role as designer. We are more alike in what we are attempting to do than many people think. In fact, our fields are beginning to overlap in real ways that are creating tension as well as sparking the above mentioned conversations. Market research which can pinpoint potential areas for business growth is not unlike ethnographic studies that User Experience professionals do to pinpoint sucesses, failures, and identify areas for innovation. In large companies product managers may conceive the initial product idea, but in the end we (user experience practitioners) are the ones at the front lines of the interface between that product or service and the consumer.  How can we make informed decisions about that interface without being part of the team that conceives, strategizes, and maps out the plan for not only what that product is but when and how the consumer will interact with it? It's like asking someone to make really pretty wrapping paper.
 

I want to be both a problem identifier and a solutions gal.

I want to help identify the experience gaps! Without having background into why decisions were made and previous history on the strategy and technology we can't help fill in the necessary holes in the experience, nor can we make informed decisions on the design. The problem here is a perceived lack of trust. By saying we want to be involved in the lifecycle of the product and service development phase, Product Managers and Business Stakeholders may not see the need any may even feel offended. They are trained specifically in market research, finance, complex decision making, yet we are trained in people and the creative thinking that will add value to those phases of that project and better inform both the design phase and the final outcome. We don't only want to present to business, we want to work together. And not just at then end phase, but from the formulation for the strategy phase. Why? Because design and business both want the same thing: a great product that our customers will love.
 

Asking lot's of questions leads to questioning.

I tend to ask a lot of questions, questions directed towards product managers, engineers, and other user experience colleagues. It is from these questions that I get the best ideas for designs, not from requirements documents or internal reviews. It is also from these questions that I believe I communicate most effectively, because by having a clearer picture of the larger system I can make more creative solutions from knowing the parameters before me. Then by then mapping the design back to the answers I get, the larger team sees the value of the questions when at first they may not have. This may seem commonsense, but I have been asked "Why do you need to know that? How is that related to design?" and told that I should not, "try to boil the ocean" by thinking to broadly.
 

Let's not boil the ocean...maybe just make it lukewarm!

As a forward: just as I wrapped up this article a man in the coffee shop where I am sitting handed me a postcard with a large ear on it. You can call it coincidence, chance, I call it synchronicity. OH: the multitude of ideas for future posts abound.
 

"There's room for endless listening"

My dance teacher said this one day, one of the many insightful things he has said in the context of improvisational dance. I often find these nuggets of wisdom apply to my life as a whole. I am relatively sure that is the intent of his lessons. But that is another topic in itself.
 

There may be no I in team, but let there be ear!

Working intuitively as an improvisational dance group to create a performance in the moment is not much different than creating any project with a team. You must be flexible and open to the inevitable change that occurs on the "hot seat" or "stage." You must be willing to let go of control and at the same time maintain personal strength. The only way to do this is to listen: wholly and completely to those around you. When I am dancing, this means sensing the quality and emotion behind other dancer's gestures, posture, and breath, noticing the tangental projection of their movement and learning when to initiate and when to follow.

In the context of team-based projects: In order to move the project forward, there must be a deep sense of listening to the members of the group so that things are not communicated poorly, tasks are not misunderstood, but most of all so the group can perform not as individuals, but as a team, especially when there are things to get done and deadlines to be met. The mentality of "get 'er done" can have the ability to fragment a group without the ability of the group or the group leaders to focus on cohesion. Just as with dance, a good team-member knows when to lead and when to listen - in this way we all have the potential to be leaders as good leadership is about bringing people with you, which has nothing to do with the ego.
 

Listen up ego...

In order to make the necessary room for listening, the ego must be shrunk and kept in check for it takes up the same room where listening occurs. If the ego were a cloud that surrounded each person, by centering and shrinking this cloud, we could make room for additional listening. It may take great energy to maintain a small ego while at the same time have the strength necessary to listen deeply. But it's a fight worth fighting.

The phrase my teacher said has many levels: the term 'endless' says that this action of listening is one that can always be deepened. It also says that there are different levels or degrees of listening. The skill of listening is not static, but based on a dynamic spectrum. This is both comforting and terrifying. By shrinking my ego I leave myself exposed to the elements, I leave myself ready for people to listen to me the real me and I worry they may not like what they hear. At the same time, I feel comforted by the idea that there will always be endless room for listening, which means to me that I will never become bored; there will always be new levels of meaning to understand and no end point in growth.

Now if only there was a pin to deflate this ego, to get on the fast track, or maybe I'll just take the long road, and hopefully hear many things along the way!