The missing element The missing element is simple: tension. The tension can be subtle, as it would be if the next line of the story was: …and behind the garden was a freshly dug grave. Or the tension might be more obvious, as it would be if the next line of the story was: …and amidst the tomato plants lay a bloody hatchet, half buried in the mud. Now, two things are clear. First, I’ll never make my living as a Hollywood screenwriter. And second, tension is needed to compel a reader’s interest. With the introduction of tension, the story really starts. Up until then, we just had a collection of facts. There was no compelling narrative. Note that I could have arranged those facts in any order, without making a significant difference to your interest.

We use design to sustain, heal, and empower our communities, as well as to seek liberation from exploitative and oppressive systems..d-undefined, .lh-undefined { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) !important; }1Thomas SinnWe center the voices of those who are directly impacted by the outcomes of the design process..d-undefined, .lh-undefined { background-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.2) !important; }1Thao NguyenWe prioritize design’s impact on the community over the intentions of the designer.We view change as emergent from an accountable, accessible, and collaborative process, rather than as a point at the end of a process.We see the role of the designer as a facilitator rather than an expert.We believe that everyone is an expert based on their own lived experience, and that we all have unique and brilliant contributions to bring to a design process.We share design knowledge and tools with our communities.We work towards sustainable, community-led and controlled outcomes.We work towards non-exploitative solutions that reconnect us to the earth and to each other.Before seeking new design solutions, we look for what is already working at the community level. We honor and uplift traditional, indigenous, and local knowledge and practices.19

Some researchers have addressed these flaws in persona choice by contributing more theoretically-informed persona. For example, GenderMag is similar to the cognitive walkthrough like the one above, but with four customizable persona that cover a broad spectrum of facets of software use11 Burnett, M., Stumpf, S., Macbeth, J., Makri, S., Beckwith, L., Kwan, I., Peters, A., Jernigan, W. (2016). GenderMag: A method for evaluating software's gender inclusiveness. Interacting with Computers. :A user’s motivations for using the software.A user’s information processing style (top-down, which is more comprehensive before acting, and bottom-up, which is more selective.)A user’s computer self-efficacy (their belief that they can succeed at computer tasks).A user’s stance toward risk-taking in software use.A user’s strategy for learning new technology.

The goal of most usability tests is to discover aspects of a design that cause someone to fail at some task. We call these failures breakdowns, the idea being that someone can be following the correct sequence of steps to complete a task, but then fail to get past a crucial step. Once you’ve found the breakdowns that occur in your design, you can go back and redesign your interface to prevent breakdowns, running more usability tests after redesign to see if those breakdowns still occur. Usability tests allow the designer to observe these breakdowns in person, helping them to make highly informed interpretations of what caused them, informing redesign.

The Google search page actually accepts many other implicit inputs too. There are a variety of personalization settings, such as search history, search preferences, and even sensor input (such as your location) that it also accepts as input. The user interface doesn’t provide explicit controls for providing this input, but it is user input nonetheless. These implicit inputs contain issues of justice. For example, what harms may come by Google tracking your location when you search? For many, no harm, but what about people do not secure their accounts, and might be stalked by a violent ex, or someone in witness protection?

As you can see, prototyping isn’t strictly about learning to make things, but also learning how to decide what prototype to make and what that prototype would teach you. These are judgements that are highly contextual because they depend on the time and resources you have and the tolerance for risk you have in whatever organization you’re in.

Pretesting a survey is an essential step in the questionnaire design process to evaluate how people respond to the overall questionnaire and specific questions, especially when questions are being introduced for the first time.

A UX competitive analysis should be done prior to starting work on a new project. Since competitors can emerge at any time or may increase (or improve) their offerings, the competitive research should be iterative and continue as long as you are working on that project.

One way to avoid this harm, while still sharing harsh feedback, is to follow a simple rule: if you’re going to say something sharply negative, say something genuinely positive first, and perhaps something genuinely positive after as well. Some people call this the “hamburger” rule, other people call it a “shit sandwich.” Whatever you want to call it, finding something positive to say about something you don’t like forces you to consider the possibility that there is something actually good about the idea, even though all you might notice is what isn’t working.

Externalize often. The more you express those ideas—in words, in sketches, in prototypes, in demos—the more visible those flaws will be to you and other people. There’s a reason that Leonardo da Vinci kept a notebook in which he sketched and wrote every idea he had: it allowed him to see those ideas, share those ideas, critique those ideas, and improve those ideas. Had he kept them all in his head, his limited capacity to see and reason about those ideas would have greatly limited his productivity.

First, I just argued, people are inherently creative, at least within the bounds of their experience, so you can just ask them for ideas. For example, if I asked you, as a student, to imagine improvements or alternatives to lectures, with some time to reflect, you could probably tell me all kinds of alternatives that might be worth exploring.

Once you have defined goals, personas, and scenarios, the final challenge is to try to explain the problem you’re solving to other people. If you can’t do this, you can’t convince them you have a real problem to solve, you can’t convince other people to help you solve it, and you certainly can’t convince a boss or an investor that you should spend time on solving it. Therefore, you’ll want to take all of the knowledge you have and try to write a simple argument that articulates the problem.

By now, you should be recognizing that problems are in no way simple. Because everyone’s problems are personal and have different causes and consequences, there is no such thing as the “average user”77 Trufelman, A. (2016). On average. 99% Invisible. . Every single solution will meet some people’s needs while failing to meet others. And moreover, solutions will meet needs in different degrees, meaning that every solution will require some customization to accommodate the diversity of needs inherent to any problem. The person you’re designing for is not like you and really not like anyone else. The best you can do is come up with a spectrum of needs to design against, and then decide who you’re going to optimize for.

In modern design education (found primarily in schools of design and art) we see another form of design process that some have called “designerly ways of knowing55 Cross, N. (1982). Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies. . Here, the idea is that trained designers arrive at knowledge through synthesis—forming coherent systems of ideas from disparate parts—whereas other kinds of thinking involve analysis—taking a coherent system and deconstructing it, as scientists do with nature. Synthesis is similar to divergent thinking in that they both focus on new possibilities; analysis and convergent thinking are similar in that they both reduce possibilities.

In a way, all of these skills are fundamentally about empathy55 Wright, P., & McCarthy, J. (2008). Empathy and experience in HCI. ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing (CHI). , because they all require a designer to see problems and solutions from other people’s perspectives, whether these people are users, other designers, or people in other roles, such as marketers, engineers, project managers, etc.