Information Bricolage

Within the last 24 hours I’ve been presented with several articles from friends and from regularly visited blogs that have to do with design methodologies or processes. I wanted to take a few minutes to discuss a few of my thoughts and observations.

Lets start by reviewing the information that came across my desk recently:

I was reading swissmiss and saw that she linked to some process graphics from Ingredient. see below:

As swissmiss says:

Not sure if it is necessarily very clear, but it sure looks impressive.

Recently, I’ve been collecting diagrams and descriptions of how designers describe their processes, so her example was one more example to add to the collection.

Shortly after I read this, I got a message from a colleague about Microsoft’s use of ppt as a prototyping tool:

http://www.guuui.com/posting.php?id=2105

Microsoft Design prototyping with PowerPoint

Talk by Manuel Clement about prototyping with PowerPoint 2007 (video)

… of course, you can’t watch the Manuel Clement video without installing SilverLight. Sigh. On my PC, I couldn’t hear the audio.

Useful to know what the 800lb gorilla is up to.
At first, I was going to recommend watching this video, but really you’re just going to come away depressed. If you’ve met Jon West, you already know that wireframe prototypes can be made in PowerPoint. If you work at MAYA, you already know that fast iterations are the way to good design. And if you’ve seen *anybody* from MAYA present, you’ll feel bad for Microsoft if this guy is one of the people they let speak in public. Booooorrrriinnggg.

The first 5:00 is a movie that was a concept for Windows Vista, done soon after XP shipped. (Kinda Boring) At around 5:00, Manuel starts to show how MS prototypes in PowerPoint. At 8:50 he talks about why to make click-through prototypes in this way. Useful review for us. At 9:30 - what about pen and paper? he talks about Visio, Flash, PhotoShop. Ok. I gave up at 22:00. We should make our own damn movie. If this is the state of the art, we’re all doomed.

Slightly interesting, but nothing really new here. I personally create click-through prototypes with everything from pen-and-paper, html, fireworks, flash, or omnigraffle pro depending on situation, time, constraints, concept, design, and goal.

I then started the next day by reading from several sources about a presentation at SXSW by Michael Lopp, a senior engineering manager at Apple. He took a stab at explaining why Apple nails design on the head every time while other companies struggle and fail to keep up. Businessweek reports:

Interesting presentation at SXSW from Michael Lopp, senior engineering manager at Apple, who tried to assess how Apple “gets” design when so many other companies try and fail. After describing Apple’s process of delivering consumers with a succession of presents (“really good ideas wrapped up in other really good ideas” — in other words, great software in fabulous hardware in beautiful packaging), he asked the question many have asked in their time: “How the f*ck do you do that?” (South by Southwest is at ease with its panelists speaking earthily.) Then he went into a few details:

Pixel Perfect Mockups

This, Lopp admitted, causes a huge amount of work and takes an enormous amount of time. But, he added, “it removes all ambiguity.” That might add time up front, but it removes the need to correct mistakes later on.

10 to 3 to 1

Apple designers come up with 10 entirely different mock ups of any new feature. Not, Lopp said, “seven in order to make three look good”, which seems to be a fairly standard practice elsewhere. They’ll take ten, and give themselves room to design without restriction. Later they whittle that number to three, spend more months on those three and then finally end up with one strong decision.

Paired Design Meetings

This was really interesting. Every week, the teams have two meetings. One in which to brainstorm, to forget about constraints and think freely. As Lopp put it: to “go crazy”. Then they also hold a production meeting, an entirely separate but equally regular meeting which is the other’s antithesis. Here, the designers and engineers are required to nail everything down, to work out how this crazy idea might actually work. This process and organization continues throughout the development of any app, though of course the balance shifts as the app progresses. But keeping an option for creative thought even at a late stage is really smart.

Pony Meeting

This refers to a story Lopp told earlier in the session, in which he described the process of a senior manager outlining what they wanted from any new application: “I want WYSIWYG… I want it to support major browsers… I want it to reflect the spirit of the company.” Or, as Lopp put it: “I want a pony!” He added: “Who doesn’t? A pony is gorgeous!” The problem, he said, is that these people are describing what they think they want. And even if they’re misguided, they, as the ones signing the checks, really cannot be ignored.

The solution, he described, is to take the best ideas from the paired design meetings and present those to leadership, who might just decide that some of those ideas are, in fact, their longed-for ponies. In this way, the ponies morph into deliverables. And the C-suite, who are quite reasonable in wanting to know what designers are up to, and absolutely entitled to want to have a say in what’s going on, are involved and included. And that helps to ensure that there are no nasty mistakes down the line.

Okay, the “10 to 3 to 1,” “Paired Design Meetings,” and “Pony Meetings” were nothing new, but I was immediately struck by the diametrically opposed strategies employed by Microsoft and Apple. I’m not trying to add to the whole Microsoft vs. Apple nonsense, but it just so happens I was presented with this information at the same time.

Microsoft’s employment of powerpoint as a prototyping tool all but necessitates that the prototypes are conceptual and lacking pixel perfection. On the other hand, Apple is at the other end of the spectrum (admittedly, a bit of a time-sink) by producing pixel-perfect mockups for competing examples. As I said before, I float between these two spectrums depending on the project, but its interesting that there is such a drastic difference in approaches by these two design power-houses.