Prototyping for IT: thinking of a designer, metaphors among algorithms
First published on usability.by
I am involved in prototyping IT products and I want to share the secrets of my kitchen - write a few articles about how the implementation of the prototyping phase can transform your development process or even your IT business as a whole.
In my first article I want to talk about things that may not be noticed or underestimated by the heads of development departments, design departments, business analysts, help to find lost opportunities and suggest some moves, invite you to look at the design philosophy. The need for prototyping most often grows from the need to make visual and more transparent the phase of gathering information and writing technical specifications (TK, specifications, vision) [1], but I want to talk about less obvious things.
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I will contrast the prototype and the TZ in order to show in contrast the individual properties and qualities of the prototype and everything that it can acquire. Show the positive side effects of using prototypes that reveal themselves before using prototypes in usability testing.
“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Thinking properties determine the properties of the products created by this thinking. Let us compare the thinking of the analyst who creates the TK with the thinking of the designer [2], who creates the prototype. Methodologists and design theorists Loveson (Lawson) and Peng (Peng), conducting research and experiments to highlight the specifics of design activities (as opposed to analytical or humanitarian), found that the following points are peculiar to the designer’s thinking:
Let's stop at the last moment. The content of a good TK is similar to a set of algorithms, the prototype consists of primary model ideas.
The introduction of the prototyping phase into the development process introduces (and the ability to exchange) into another communication field in the communication field of the project — the metaphorist pattern, Peng. Explaining in such a language for so many (including your customers) is more natural and more productive than in the language of formalized descriptions or instructions.
But most importantly, the messages “written” in this language are everywhere.
These messages inspire designers, fuel their creative energy, stimulate communication and reduce stressful background. I like the formulation of design theorist Sidorenko: “objects are a form of knowledge about how certain requirements are met and how certain tasks are solved. [...] Invention often advances theory, the sphere of creativity and execution, as a rule, advances the sphere of understanding - technology leads to science, and not vice versa. Designers have the ability to simultaneously “read” and “write” in material culture: they understand what the subject is saying and can create new objects that embody new messages. ”
Consider the use of prototypes when you use words to describe a project: satisfaction, a series of solutions, the result in any case, a quick response to a request, the ability and courage to change the interpretation of a problem, an intuitive model idea. Prototypes can become the basis for using messages in the language of metaphors, help project participants to read and borrow them in the outside world - the Network, related disciplines, from reputable "authors", anywhere.
In the next article - we collect a forum of opinions around the prototype and competitive prototyping.
1 - here I use as synonyms
2 - I summarize in this role many positions, in the names of which there is UI, UX, IxD
Bryan Lawson - How Designers Think, The Design Process Demystified, 4th edition, 2005, ISBN – 13: 978-0-7506-6077-8, ISBN – 10: 0-7506-6077-5
Prototyping for IT
I am involved in prototyping IT products and I want to share the secrets of my kitchen - write a few articles about how the implementation of the prototyping phase can transform your development process or even your IT business as a whole.
In my first article I want to talk about things that may not be noticed or underestimated by the heads of development departments, design departments, business analysts, help to find lost opportunities and suggest some moves, invite you to look at the design philosophy. The need for prototyping most often grows from the need to make visual and more transparent the phase of gathering information and writing technical specifications (TK, specifications, vision) [1], but I want to talk about less obvious things.
')
I will contrast the prototype and the TZ in order to show in contrast the individual properties and qualities of the prototype and everything that it can acquire. Show the positive side effects of using prototypes that reveal themselves before using prototypes in usability testing.
Designer's thinking, metaphors among algorithms
“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it.”
Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
Thinking properties determine the properties of the products created by this thinking. Let us compare the thinking of the analyst who creates the TK with the thinking of the designer [2], who creates the prototype. Methodologists and design theorists Loveson (Lawson) and Peng (Peng), conducting research and experiments to highlight the specifics of design activities (as opposed to analytical or humanitarian), found that the following points are peculiar to the designer’s thinking:
- Analysts have resorted to a systematic research strategy in order to find a rule , while designers tend to work out a series of solutions and, by sifting out many of them, to find appropriate ones; it is rather a process of satisfaction , rather than optimization , it is an attempt to create a number of satisfactory solutions, and not one optimal one .
- Analysts choose a strategy centered around a problem , designers choose a solution , because Problems faced by the designer are often poorly formulated and poorly structured, these are problems for which solutions often do not have all the necessary information or even hope for its appearance, therefore, a strategy aimed at producing a result is more productive.
- The designer is counting on the quickest possible finding of a satisfactory solution, and not on a lengthy analysis of the problem.
- It is common for a designer to change a problem in order to find a solution, a design is constructive, he does not study things as they are, he deals with things as they should be, creating models is more important than the process of understanding them.
- The designer is looking for a capacious metaphor , an analyst - generalizing rules, formulas, algorithms .
Let's stop at the last moment. The content of a good TK is similar to a set of algorithms, the prototype consists of primary model ideas.
The introduction of the prototyping phase into the development process introduces (and the ability to exchange) into another communication field in the communication field of the project — the metaphorist pattern, Peng. Explaining in such a language for so many (including your customers) is more natural and more productive than in the language of formalized descriptions or instructions.
But most importantly, the messages “written” in this language are everywhere.
These messages inspire designers, fuel their creative energy, stimulate communication and reduce stressful background. I like the formulation of design theorist Sidorenko: “objects are a form of knowledge about how certain requirements are met and how certain tasks are solved. [...] Invention often advances theory, the sphere of creativity and execution, as a rule, advances the sphere of understanding - technology leads to science, and not vice versa. Designers have the ability to simultaneously “read” and “write” in material culture: they understand what the subject is saying and can create new objects that embody new messages. ”
Consider the use of prototypes when you use words to describe a project: satisfaction, a series of solutions, the result in any case, a quick response to a request, the ability and courage to change the interpretation of a problem, an intuitive model idea. Prototypes can become the basis for using messages in the language of metaphors, help project participants to read and borrow them in the outside world - the Network, related disciplines, from reputable "authors", anywhere.
In the next article - we collect a forum of opinions around the prototype and competitive prototyping.
Notes:
1 - here I use as synonyms
2 - I summarize in this role many positions, in the names of which there is UI, UX, IxD
Related Literature:
Bryan Lawson - How Designers Think, The Design Process Demystified, 4th edition, 2005, ISBN – 13: 978-0-7506-6077-8, ISBN – 10: 0-7506-6077-5
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/55982/
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