People-Driven Design

Google recently launched some social functionality over the weekend.  Chris Brogan has this to say about it:

"Google slipped a social network into Reader last night while I was sleeping. It’s simple, and unobtrusive, and gently prompts me to add more info, if I want. It’s about sharing your news- for now. But there it is. There’s Google’s simple, easy, I’m -destined-to-use-it social network right there.

Facebook, I hear bells tolling."

Has Google really launched a "people-driven" experience?  Most of us would agree that the best experiences are designed with people in mind. But the fact is that it's still really easy to forget about the end user or person that you are ultimately trying to serve. Here's a few ways we can go wrong even with the best of intentions.

1. Usability Driven
Many of the popular 2.0 Web services have usability issues.  Jacob Nielsen asserts that the space is in danger if becoming "glossy, but useless".   But there are a few facts we need to come to terms with here.  Applications such as Facebook, YouTube and others all have usability issues, but are highly desirable to the people who use them.  Putting usability first, in theory will create a superior experience—but in reality it's only one factor of the total experience.  You can have the most usable tool on the planet which seldom gets used if no-one wants to pick it up, play with it and talk about it to others.

2. Creative Driven
"Creative people" have a weakness. Sometimes we care to much about what our peers think and so if we see the industry awarding bright and shiny stuff that looks great but serves no real purpose, we'll be tempted to produce bright and shiny stuff that serves no real purpose--except maybe to win an award.

3. Technology-driven
Advances in technology let us do lots of things and the fact is that many experiences are designed putting technology first. Why didn't Vista work out as Microsoft would have liked? I've never installed my copy because I've heard from others that the upgrade experience didn't go smoothly for them.  This phenomena is called word of mouth.  If technology doesn't fulfill its promise of enriching our lives then that's not a people-driven experience.




People-Driven
People-driven design starts with real people in mind.  What they do, how they think, what their pain points are, why they like and dislike things and how they'll use what you create for them.  The main purpose of personas is to help large groups of people from diverse backgrounds such as IT or Marketing empathize with the people they are designing for.  Even if the folks at 37 Signals believe that "personas lead to a false sense of understanding at the deepest, most critical levels." they still design with people in mind—people who are a lot like they are.  People driven designs don't end at the drawing board—they factor in feedback through the lifecycle of the design process, which nowadays is infinite.

Most of the successful designs that we use and love are people-driven more than anything else.  Steve Jobs, wanted to create something of beauty and utility for a person—that person just happened to be himself.  So back to Google, if what they did over the weekend is "people driven"—then it has a chance.  Guess we'll find out.

Comments

[Daniel]

Good point. That's why I see digital firms pushing persona creation to the forefront. Anyone (well, maybe not anyone) can design a good interface, but everyone (again, maybe not anyone) can put some time and money into figuring out who actually uses your product, service--anything.

Persona creation will be big business, which is good news for us anthropology folks!

[Cam Beck]

I like the point you are making here. Keeping the user at the center of the design process is to make sure you account for things like usability and desirability.

All else being equal, I can think of no instance where enhancing the usability of an interface actually made a product less desirable.

[Nathan Rice]

Thank you for this. One of the biggest struggles we face in ecommerce development is managing expectations around this internally. I have seen this no matter the company. Some put a premium on usability, some creativity, some technology and yet at the end of the day it is all just about the person using it. Does the experience work for the person. I went into story this weekend - Creative Kids - talk about designing for the audience! They had a large door for the parents and a small door for the kids (set the stage right away); then upon entry the consumer is emersed in things to touch, feel and experience - kids could play with trains, make their own bird food, then there was a suprise visit from Santa. Imagine if every website could design for the audience like this store designs for its!

[Sean Scott]

David,

Great write-up.

I'd even suggest using use case scenario (an artifact of people driven design) when communicating with the client and potential vendors initially.

I've gotten great feedback from both client and vendors when they are able to read what we expect a user to do and interact with.

Thanks,

[Corvida]

Doesn't sound people driven to me...

[betaBonnie]

Is it unrealistic to assume all four drivers can be accomplished?

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[Doug Meacham]

Outstanding! You should go ahead and add this to your Greatest Hits list.

[Kaleem]

You've described Human-Centered or User-Centered Design (UCD), not a new idea, but still an important one.

The key is to remember that it's an iterative process and to have an open mind to incorporate that feedback as early in the design process and as often as possible.

Some might argue that what you've posted here are truisms. Maybe so, but what should be obvious isn't necessarily so. We spend our days looking at and solving problems, and it's easy for designers to get caught up in the minutiae and lose sight of the people we design for.

Whether you call it People-Driven Design, UCD, or any of the other names we know it as, given the wide array of broken experiences out there, clearly we need to continue talking about it. We still have a long way to go.

@Nathan Rice: Managing expectations is always a challenge. We need to keep in mind that there is no magic bullet, just like there is no overnight success. It's a lot of hard work, deep thought and application of skill and experience until, one day, the light goes on and you see the value. It's a different way of thinking.

[DA]

Cam, I hear what you are saying. There's no such thing as too much usability. However, put usability first at all costs and you can miss opportunities. If the creators of Your Tube or Facebook waited until they had a perfectly usable experience, someone would have beat them to the punch.

That said, usability is key and few do it well. but it's not everything.

"Some might argue that what you've posted here are truisms. Maybe so, but what should be obvious isn't necessarily so."

Kaleem, you've pretty much nailed it. I'm not saying anything new (I usually don't). I'm just stressing that it's easy to go off the path. That's because it is. If it weren't, every product, service and experience would be stellar.

[Cam Beck]

David - In my experience usability is rarely the quality attribute that drives or holds back an assignment. That's what deadlines are for.

While usable experiences can and should be built into the design process (because no user likes a site they can't use), whatever is ready by the time the deadline rolls around is pretty much what goes live (unless it doesn't work at all, which, if we've done our job up until that point, is not likely to happen.

Still, something must be said for continuous improvement. There's nothing wrong with tweaking a design in minor ways after it has gone live. YouTube, Facebook, and Amazon all do this.

[Chris Brogan...]

Boy, I keep coming back to that meme that's going around about Jason Calacanis being right about Web 3.0. In a nutshell (and I'll probably wreck it), Jason said that Web 3.0 was when people used all these nifty tools and services and enhanced distribution to create even newer, more amazing stuff. In some ways, that's mashups. In other ways, that's collaborative works, from Flickr to Mahalo.

I think what you're covering here is in that same realm. I think that the more collaboration and friendsourcing is built into something, the more the next level of the web is attained. Or the net, or whatever the cool kids are calling it.

[Seni Thomas]

Good stuff. There is a trend in design called human centered design and it really encapsulates what your talking about. Essentially it grew out the over stylized ultra-modern period to bring design back to its roots and start with people. I've talked about this concept numerous times on my blog, especially its convergence with advertising, which I called human centered communication.

More fleshed out thoughts here on the launch of Fred Water, which is a perfect example of what your talking about.

http://senithomas.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/2007-human-centered-communication-award-fred-water/