What Drives Us?
While contemplating how far south a recent project has gone (even before it begins development), my mind caught hold of a question...What are we driven by?
Really, what truly drives the work of interaction designers? What are we after? The answer to that question is complex and multifaceted, so I wont attempt to pen a complete exposition on the subject. however I do have a few thoughts I'd like to submit.
User Needs
First and foremost, the user needs must come into play before a single sketch is drawn or a line of code is written. If what we are building is not useful, relevant, usable, and/or enjoyable, then stop the project be fore it starts. In order to ensure this, User and task must be deeply understood.
Business Objectives
User needs and business objectives should ideally have allot of overlap. Why? Because businesses exist to meet customers needs/wants. By allowing ourselves to be fluent in our clients' or employers' business objectives we get a better feel for what we are trying to accomplish and place ourselves in a unique position to advise when projects start to compromise those objectives.
Creative Direction
For marketing/advertising orienting projects. The creative direction can often give us a solid trajectory from which we can ensure that there is balance of cool and usable/useful.
Technical Parameters
I used to call this one, "Technical constraints" but that just sounds so negative. We need to remember that the concepts and models we create will need to be implemented and that often times the parameters in which the technology will do what we want it to do may not allow for some other elements.
By taking direction from these four aspects, We are more likely to help create a successful experience.
posted by matthewjdoty @ 6/11/2007 04:29:00 PM
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