Actor “A” prepares for the part of being a homeless person in a movie. As part of the preparation for his role, he decides he’s going to live homeless for a week—finding food wherever he can, sleeping on sidewalks, passing cold nights with strangers—in order to develop a better understanding of his role and feel empathy for his character. Eventually word of this gets around to actor “B”. Not being impressed by the extent to which actor “A” will go to know to his character, actor “B” remarks, “I have a better idea. Why doesn’t he try acting?”

Actor “B” was obviously a very confident (maybe even arrogant) actor who had confidence in the ability to fulfill his role when needed. Acting is a craft that like anything, requires skill, experience and raw talent to succeed.

In the same way, a talented and seasoned designer has honed their skills from years of experience. They have a natural ability to create things that are functional, useful and aesthetically pleasing. They have an innate ability to connect all the moving parts and create something that not only meets the business’ goals, but pleasantly surprises and delights the user or customer. They know that good design is less about art than craft and like a good carpenter, pride themselves on making something that is both functional and beautiful at the same time. They are confident not out of contempt, but because they have already solved thousands of similar design problems before.

A couple of recent writings on the Web reminded me of the story about the two actors. The first one is about a major online brand who has crowd sourced their usability testing. Like many other big sites such as Google and Yahoo!, this company has decided to test their new tools to willing users in a separate sub-section of the website before rolling them out.

The second one is about another online favorite that has taken user input to a whole new level–they let their users design the interface–which reminds me of the famous Henry Ford quote, “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would’ve asked for a faster horse.” The process involves giving their test participants a sort of magnetic board where they put the pieces (some pre-created, others blank allowing the participants to create their own) together as they see fit.

The first product team appears to be so concerned users might reject their new design and go somewhere else, they’ve put the new features in a special location where it has no possibility of “contaminating the waters”. They or their executive staff are insecure and lack the confidence needed to make the right decision. The actors are nervous about their role and not sure how they will be perceived by the public. They move on stage with trepidation and fear of failure.

The second website appears so uncertain about creating the right user experience, they let the users create it for them. In this case, research and usability testing may have become a crutch or replacement for creativity, imagination and confidence. The actor is on stage asking the audience what they’d like to see. He’s playing the role of Cyrano de Bergerac and asking if the audience would like to see him play the part bravely or more sensitively.

While both product teams may be just placating a very skeptical and jittery executive team, in both examples there seems to be a lack of conviction in their craft. Design has taken the back seat to fear and politics (none of which, according to Henry Ford’s quote, supports innovation very well).

Which brings us to the question, why not just try designing?

Surveys, interviews, competitive analysis, ethnography, usability testing, heuristics…these are all very important design tools and shouldn’t be discredited. Ignore them at your own peril! Even the best designers must use these tools to get their brain wrapped around the problem at hand. But at some point, an experienced designer needs to sit down and apply their craft using all their knowledge, experience and talent.

Take Apple for example. This is a company that has the upmost confidence and conviction in their design. Does Apple let their customers design their products? Not a chance. Do they ever launch a product or service with trepidation? No, they call an event and announce it to the world. There are no betas, no soft launches, no disclaimers, no focus groups and this is part of their success both in-house and with their externally projected brand. Apple and Jobs, are absolutely fearless when it comes to design.

Some people say that the days of the star designer are over and this is true to the extent that the design process is now more collaborative than ever. I’m not suggesting we go back to the days where arrogant and conceited super-stars stomped out of the room when their designs weren’t taken seriously. This is unacceptable behavior. Rather, we need to recognize that good design is often lead by individuals who have mastered their craft and because of this, are able to present their design with confidence and conviction. Like actor “B’s” advice to actor “A”, maybe we should just try designing.

Could design thinking really be a management paradigm shift or is it just a bunch of hype? Could it have an impact on businesses and help to solve the world’s most wicked problems? The following is a roundup on design thinking’s tools, methodology and why you should care.

At first, design thinking comes off as being an odd marriage between two very unlikely parties. “As one MBA joked, in his world the language of design is a sound only dogs can hear,” writes brand guru Marty Neumeier.

Design thinking is an innovation process that uses the designer’s sensibility to find unmet needs and opportunities in order to create new solutions that matter to people. Thomas Lockwood, president of the Design Management Institute (DMI), explains that the object is to “involve consumers, designers, and businesspeople in an integrative process, which can be applied to product, service, or even business design. It is a tool to imagine future states and to bring products, services, and experiences, to market.”

In short, design thinking is a methodology to enable innovation. It does this by:

• Supporting the build-up of ideas and outside-the-box thinking
• Taking risks at early stages
• Eliminating fear of failure
• Deeply understanding the customer and their goals, behaviors and attitudes
• Testing ideas early on to gain immediate feedback
• Challenging a product or service’s usability, feasibility and perceived value

While business typically focuses on metrics and analytics, the focus of design thinking is primarily on human-centered goals and invention. Roger Martin in his book, The Design of Business, writes that in the future the most successful businesses “will balance analytical mastery and intuitive originality in a dynamic interplay.” He continues to boldly predict that an “unwavering focus on the creative design of systems, will eventually extend to the wider world. From these firms will emerge the breakthroughs that move the world forward.”

As implied, design and design thinking aren’t just about posters and toasters. Design can be applied to solve the most wicked problems. According to Jennifer Riel, associate director of the Desautels Centre, you know you have a wicked problem if:

• The causes of the problem are not just complex but deeply ambiguous; you can’t tell why things are happening the way they are and what causes them to do so.
• The problem doesn’t fit neatly into any category you’ve encountered before; it looks and feels entirely unique, so the problem-solving approaches you’ve used in the past don’t seem to apply.
• Each attempt at devising a solution changes the understanding of the problem; merely attempting to come to a solution changes the problem and how you think about it.
• There is no clear stopping rule; it is difficult to tell when the problem is “solved” and what that solution may look like when you reach it.
• In order to solve a wicked problem, you must get at the nature of the problem itself, and the way to get at the nature of the problem is through design thinking.

The first tool of the design thinker is observation. What people say is important and this is why so many companies depend on focus groups and surveys. However, the design thinker knows that what people say isn’t as important as what they do:

“An ethnographer attempting to understand how youngsters in China think about their handheld phones would watch them use their phones before even asking a single question. And when appropriate to ask, the question would likely be of the form: ‘I saw you punch one button repeatedly; you looked frustrated. Then you flipped the phone closed and opened it again. Why were you doing that? What were you thinking? How did it make you feel?’ That’s a very different approach from asking, ‘What are the top five things that matter to you about your handheld phone?’”

That question—Martin argues—is for the design thinker.

The second tool is imagination. Design thinkers hone their skills of imagination to pose questions and open up areas unseen before. As Tim Brown writes, “They can imagine the world from multiple perspectives – those of colleagues, clients, end users, and customers (current and prospective). By taking a ‘people first’ approach, design thinkers can imagine solutions that are inherently desirable and meet explicit or latent needs. Great design thinkers observe the world in minute detail. They notice things that others do not and use their insights to inspire innovation.”

Imagination is best fostered when it’s able to work without fear of rejection or failure. The design thinker is able to imagine future possibilities and communicate them. Imagination might be inspired by the challenge of having to work within limitations, by making the complicated, simple or by simply wanting to make a better experience for the end-user. Imagination is the bridge between knowledge and concept.

Configuration, the third tool, starts with a prototype. A prototype can be as simple or complex as needed and is tested early and often in order to get immediate customer feedback before the more expensive production stages of development. It also allows for any big course corrections early in the process when the stakes aren’t high. A prototype can be anything from a hand-drawn wireframe to a fully operating model. “Often the goal is to fail quickly and frequently so that learning can occur.” According to Lockwood, failing in the early stages of a project is a stated objective at Pixar Animation Studios where it “leads to better work done more quickly.”

The design thinking process varies widely with different nomenclatures and number of phases, but more or less includes the following:

• Define – Decide what issues you are trying to resolve and for who
• Research – Find other examples of attempts to solve the same problem and get to know your end-users
• Imagine – Identify the needs, behaviors and attitudes of your end-users and generate ideas to serve them
• Prototype – Configure, expand and refine ideas via multiple iterations and feedback from end-users
• Choose – Review the objective and select the ideas that resonate the most with the end-user
• Implement – Assign tasks, build and deliver
• Learn – Gather feedback and measure success

Mixed into this methodology at all stages is the iterative development cycle: design, test, modify, repeat. “Test early and often” is the mantra of the design thinker.

Design thinkers are not necessarily confined to people who wear black turtlenecks, thin glasses and who were graphic designers in their past life. Design thinkers have a variety of backgrounds including sociology, anthropology, journalism, technology and business. Brown explains that “many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right development and experiences can unlock.” Brown lists the characteristics of a design thinker as:

• Empathy – They can put themselves in other’s shoes and are focused on end-user goals rather than business, technology or aesthetic ones.
• Integrative thinking – “They not only rely on analytical processes (those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient – and sometimes contradictory – aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.”
• Optimism – They are convinced there’s a solution to be found for every problem.
• Experimentalism – Design thinkers pose questions to find new directions and open up unseen areas.
• Collaboration – Design thinking is a collaborative effort that brings people together with a wide range of disciplines, skills and knowledge. Marketers, psychologists, industrial designers, anthropologists and engineers all might be recruited to work alongside each other.

Partly as a result of this integration, design has come a long way in beating back the perception of being the corporate beauty station. In the past it was mostly used by companies to create beautiful annual reports, flashy brochure websites and marketing materials that would standout at trade shows. While creating aesthetically attractive materials has its value, design is much more than the way something looks. Neumeier explains that up until now design has never “been used for its potential to create rule-bending innovation across the board.”

At first glance, the idea of combining design thinking with business strategies doesn’t bode well. Chuck Jones, vice president for global consumer design at Whirlpool says ”Design thinkers are like quantum physicists, able to consider a world in which anything—like traveling at the speed of light—is theoretically possible. But a majority of people, including the Six Sigma advocates in most corporations, think more like Newtonian physicists—focused on measurement along three well-defined dimensions.”

Many design leaders such as Neumeier are also warning businesses that in the 21st century, it’s all too easy to become a commodity. The old way of doing things is crumbling apart—ownership of factories, access to capital, distribution chokeholds, customer ignorance…It gives the phrase “innovate and die” new meaning.

At the same time, design thinking doesn’t claim to be the be-all and end-all for business. Design leaders who before were skeptical about design thinking surviving in a Six Sigma environment are now finding there’s value in bridging the two skill sets. According to Sara Beckman, faculty director at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, companies that are able to bridge both design thinking and Sigma Six approaches will be the most likely to survive: “Design thinking offers tools for exploring new markets and opportunities [and] Six Sigma skills can be applied to improve existing products. Companies that adhere strictly to one or the other risk failure.”

What you need to know about design thinking:

• It’s a methodology to enable innovation
• It’s a collaborative effort that brings people together with a wide range of disciplines
• Focused on human goals
• Based on observation and testing
• Not a replacement for business analytics
• Has the ability to solve “wicked” problems
• Reduces risk
• Doesn’t require a traditional design background (although it helps)

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Links to articles on the subject:
Fast Company: Design Thinking… What is That? by Mark Dziersk

Design Observer: What is Design Thinking Anyway? Roger Martin

Harvard Business Publishing: Why Design Thinking Won’t Save You by Peter Merholz

Design Thinking Blog Thoughts by Tim Brown

New York Times: Welcoming the New, Improving the Old by Sara Beckman

BusinessWeek: How to Nurture Future Leaders by Venessa Wong

Business Week: How Business is Adopting Design Thinking by Venessa Wong

Business Week: Design Thinking Can Be Learned Interview with IDEO cofounder, David Kelley

Wall Street Journal: Inspired Design is Essential—and All Too Rare by Gary Hamel

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Recent books on the subject:
The Design of Business—Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage, by Roger Martin

Design Thinking—Integrating Innovation, Customer Experience, and Brand Value, Edited by Thomas Lockwood

Change by Design—How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, by Tim Brown

A Fine Line—How Design Strategies Are Shaping the Future of Business, by Hartmut Esslinger

The Ten Faces of Innovation—IDEO’s Strategies for Beating the Devil’s Advocate & Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization, by Tom Kelley

The Designful Company—How to Build a Culture of Nonstop Innovation, by Marty Neumeier

Do You Matter?—How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company, by Robert Brunner and Stewart Emery

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Other:
Design Management Institute (DMI)

Stanford’s D.School

IDEO

List of the world’s best design programs for integration of design thinking and business

Frustration runs both ways: designers are disappointed when the client doesn’t value the discovery phase. Client’s attitudes of just “seeing what sticks” or “build it and they will come” can seem naive and reckless to designers.

On the other hand, clients may interpret a discovery phase as “busy work”, a “nice-to-have”, “paralysis analysis” or even worse—a means for the designer to squeeze a few more dollars out of their budget! There might also be a feeling that designers are “artists” and their place isn’t in the conference room helping to strategize the best way to build their product or service. Whatever the reason or bias may be, there’s often confusion around what added value, if any, the discovery phase brings to a project.

Think of the discovery phase as laying the foundation for everything that follows: features, page flows, screen details, branding, copy, coding, launch dates, user traffic and ultimately, business success. Designers like to call this phase of product development “discovery” because what they’re doing is finding out what really matters. Most importantly they’re confirming that what matters to the client is in-line with what matters to the client’s users and customers. Through a discovery process designers are able to rule-out certain directions that show potential for failure and help increase chances for building a successful product. A professional designer isn’t just interested in creating something that looks good, but also something that functions well and that resonates with users and customers.

Some fears clients may have are that a discovery phase will take too long, cost too much and will only produce “opinions”. The attitude might be that any discovery phase should be done on the designer’s own watch and that it’s really for their benefit anyway.

While it’s true that a designer will need to spend some time getting up-to-speed with the client’s business, this is not their biggest challenge. More time will be spent understanding what the users’ needs, behaviors and attitudes are. You might be asking, “Can’t Marketing just provide that information?” Marketing can usually provide demographics, brand assets, copy and sometimes even survey results relevant to the project. However, Marketing may not have answers to specific questions around what kind of experience users are looking for. Also, what customers say is not the same as what they do. A discovery process may also include observing users in their own environment to gain more insight into what the user is thinking. Lastly, Marketing is often good at providing qualitative measurements, but not quantitative measurements such as how the user or customer “feels” about a particular feature.

Clients who wish to see product building initiated immediately may be aggravated by any extra time and money spent doing research. However, in the long run doing your homework could save a lot of time, money and maybe even the company’s life. Not only could it save a company from launching a product that nobody cares about, but it could also save a company from wasting resources in the more expensive coding phase of product development where the burn rate goes up. Another thing to keep in mind is that a discovery phase can easily be customized to match your budget and schedule. In this case, a little bit goes a long way and is exponentially better than doing no discovery at all.

The goal of the discovery phase obviously isn’t to share with the client information they already have (although it might help to confirm it). Typical deliverables include a competitive audit, personas, user scenarios, a project plan and a design brief.

A competitive audit is a deliverable that provides the client with information on what the competition or near competition is doing, what users are already accustomed to, and any areas for differentiation. It’s putting a magnifying glass to the competition and might even go so far as conducting usability testing of their products and services in order to find out what their customers like/dislike about them. Competitive audits are typically delivered with three sections with the first including a summary of the findings and recommendations; the second being a summary of each competitor’s site plus screenshots; and a third being a comparison chart which acts as a tally sheet for who has what. The idea is to not only identify what the competition has, but what they don’t have.

Beyond documentation, the discovery phase also is a time to create some great tools to aid the design process going forward. User experience designers find it helpful to use personas, or fictitious characters that personify user scenarios, to unify the product development team around a central vision and give a voice to the user. Personas are only half-made up—that is, they’re based on audience demographics and research. A product or service might have multiple personas each representing a different category of user. Nevertheless, there’s always 1-2 primary personas. Personas help the product team focus on who really matters versus trying to satisfy everyone. The persona’s demographics, needs, behaviors and attitudes are laid out on a single sheet of paper and taped to the wall for quick reference. It’s not uncommon for team members to challenge each other by asking what a particular persona would do in a given situation.

Lastly, a discovery process gives the designer time to gather technical specifications, prioritize and rate features, create schedules and summarize everything in a design brief—all which is important for demonstrating there’s a process, rallying the troops and making sure the design or build doesn’t go sideways.

Of course, there may be times when a discovery phase needs to be augmented with usability testing or another form of direct observation such as a day-in-the-life study. A new product or service always warrants a thorough discovery phase. If anything, it’s used to reduce the risk of designing and building something that nobody cares about. A discovery phase is also appropriate for re-designs, as the competition has mostly likely changed as well as the attitudes of users. What better time to make sure you understand your users and make any changes than when re-designing your product.

In summary the discovery phase helps to:

• Reduce risk
• Unify the product team under a central vision
• Provide context for the product team
• Advocate users’ needs, behaviors and attitudes
• Know the competition at a granular level
• Justify decisions
• Discover something the user or customer didn’t know they needed/wanted

The problem with re-skins is that they are usually a means of covering up more serious problems with the product or service. Sometimes it’s even a last resort: “We don’t know what to do. Why don’t we re-skin it and make it look better?”. Many executives may see a re-skin as a quick way to improve a poorly perceived user experience. It’s not always in the client’s best interest for a designer to accept a project they know is only a band-aid covering more serious design issues. At the very least, a professional should be up-front with the client and let her know what real issues may lie under the hood.

I don’t want to demean the importance of having a good visual design for a product or service. According to the book, Universal Principles of Design, aesthetic designs:

“…look easier to use and have a higher probability of being used, whether or not they actually are easier to use. More usable but less-aesthetic designs may suffer a lack of acceptance that renders issues of usability moot. These perceptions bias subsequent interactions and are resistant to change. For example, in a study of how people use computers, researchers found that early impressions influenced long-term attitudes about their quality and use. A similar phenomenon is well documented with regard to human attractiveness—first impressions of people influence attitude formation and measurably affect how people are perceived and treated.”

But visual design is much more than just a nice paint job. Not only does good visual design help create the illusion of ease-of-use, it also helps promote a positive emotional response and connection to the brand. Marketers know this well and will take every opportunity to try and produce a good feeling in the hearts and minds of their customers. We are sentient (from Latin – sentient: feeling) beings that for good or for bad, make decisions based on our emotions. However, good visual design is only part of what makes a great user experience much like a car’s exterior is only part of what makes a car delightful to own. Not only is functionality important (whether or not it actually works), but so are factors of usability and perceived value. Without a usable interface or a product or service that means something to the user, there’s no point in good visual design—it’s nothing more than cosmetics.

So, the first question a designer should ask a client requesting a re-skin is “Why?” (this is no time to be shy). Another should be, “What do you expect to gain from a re-skin?” The idea isn’t to ridicule the client, just to dig deeper and possibly bring to light more severe problems such as poor navigation, page flow, features, nomenclature, copy, etc. Sometimes the stakeholders have little experience with product design and simply don’t know what makes a good user experience. This particularly occurs with business-focused and technology-focused teams where there is no user advocate.

So, when does a re-skin make the most sense? Obviously, a re-skin is a good idea if a company is changing its brand identity. But even then, a re-skin isn’t just about making it look good and making it easy to use with big buttons and spacious layouts. A designer must ask “For what kind of user am I designing this for?” “What kind of emotional response am aiming for?” Even the visual design of an application like a word processor or email client will elicit some kind of emotion from the user.

Another good time to consider a re-skin is when there are big changes to content and functionality. Why not launch this year’s model with a slightly new look too? Not only is it an opportunity to improve the look and feel and perceived usability, it will also help highlight the new content and features, and if done successfully, boost the chances of eliciting positive feedback from users and customers.

In conclusion, a request from a client for a re-skin should send up a red flag telling you to dig deeper and examine other hidden issues. Not only will this give more importance to your work, it could save your client a lot of time and money in the long run.

Cagan argues that startups work terribly inefficiently in spite of limited funding and time. Not only does this inefficiency cost money and time, it may also cause many startups to never reach it to market!!! According to Cagan, this is why many startups fail. They ”simply don’t have the funding to go to two years before they gain traction in the marketplace. So they hire engineers, take their best shot, and see what happens. Ready, fire, aim.”

Here’s the complete scenario as he describes it:

Someone with an idea get some seed funding, and the first thing he does is hire some engineers to start building something. The founder will have definite ideas on what she wants, and she’ll typically act as product manager and often product designer, and the engineering team will then go from there. The companies are typically operating in “stealth mode” so there’s little customer interaction. It takes much longer than originally thought for the engineering team to build something, because the requirements and the design are being figured out on-the-fly.

After six months or so, engineers have things in sort of an alpha or beta state, and that’s when they first show the product around. This first viewing rarely goes well, and the team starts scrambling. The run rate is high because there’s now an engineering team building this thing as fast as they can, so the money is running out and the product isn’t yet there. Maybe the company gets additional funding and a chance to get the product right, but often it doesn’t. Many startups try to get more time by outsourcing engineering to a low-cost offshore firm, but they’re still left with the same process and the same problems.

So as Cagan states, engineers are typically brought into a project at an early stage and they’re running around like chickens with their heads cut off trying to code and test new ideas at the same time. Sometimes weeks of coding are thrown out the window as the company “feels” itself through the unfolding product. For small startups it’s like pouring a house’s foundation and at the same time, deciding where the walls go.

But Marty Cagan isn’t some cranky product manager trying to wreak havoc on the startup community. He continues to describe what a more efficient process might look like:

Here’s a very different approach to new product creation, one that costs dramatically less and is much more likely to yield the results you want: the founder hires a product manager, an interaction designer, and a prototyper. Sometimes the designer can also serve as prototyper, and sometimes the founder can serve as a product manager, but one way or another, you have these three functions lined up—product management, interaction design, and prototyping—and the team starts a process of very rapid product discovery.

Cagan emphasizes that the focus is on product discovery via a high-fidelity prototype that mimics the desired user experience. But this isn’t enough—you must validate the product design with real users that fit your target audience. Without testing real users, you’re still in the dark when it comes to understanding how your users may respond to your product or service.

What then continues is a refinement process that includes several versions of the prototype in order to get closer to a winning product. The end result is that you have:

(a) identified a product that you have validated with the target market, (b) a very rich prototype that serves as a living spec for the engineering team to build from, and (c) a much greater understanding of what you’re getting into, and what you’ll need to do to succeed.

The engineers are then brought on and they’re able to build something based on a clear vision of the product and a stable spec. Not only does this make the engineers’ job much easier, but the company has reduced the risk of shipping a flop and has also saved a lot of time and money on development. The startup is building a successful product “on purpose”.

Cagan finishes his argument by asking:

So why don’t all startup teams do this? Because we’re such an engineering-driven industry that we just naturally start there. But any startup has to realize everything starts with the right product, so the first order of business is to figure out what that is before burning through $500K or more in seed funding.

…Definitely something to think about for your next startup.

With censorship and a recent refusal of a Google Voice app, the App Store hasn’t been without its controversies. It seems that Apple has been wrestling with the demands of developers and bloggers on one hand and the maintenance of their highly valued brand and business strategy on the other.

To try and address some of the issues on censorship of content, Apple has set up mandatory application ratings that work together with the iPhone’s restriction settings (Settings > General > Restrictions). They also have an unofficial approval process that includes the following:

• Applications must not duplicate the functions of the iPhone (such as another SMS interface or a home icon that looks too similar to a native app)

• Applications must not be of “limited utility”

• Applications must comply with some iPhone UI standards (e.g. don’t play with the phone’s vibration function)

• Applications must not be obscene or offensive (in other words, no profanity or pornographic content)

• Applications must not violate copyright infringement (i.e. repurposing someone else’s data)

The rejections of certain apps have caused the blogoshere to foam at the mouth and with the latest Google Voice rejection, some have even sworn to put down their iPhones until Apple changes its ways. While we would all like to see something as large as the App Store be as democratic as possible, Apple has no intention of letting go of the reins for a few rebel developers and for anyone following the Google-Apple marriage—the honeymoon is over. Unfortunately, in this case, Apple and AT&T’s business goals had to take precedent over their users’.

You won’t find a shortage of advice when it comes to App Store improvements. For the most part, it revolves around legitimate business concerns that effect developers and small businesses and can be summarized as follows:

1. “I have put countless hours and money into building an app for which Apple gives no guarantee if or when it will be published to the App Store.”

2. “The App Store is a massive black hole where I throw in my app, never to be found again.”

Issue #1 would be a concern for any entrepreneur. While most apps are approved in two weeks, building a product with no guarantee of entry into the only place where it can be sold, is risky business. This is even more critical for multi-person companies whose entire business depend on the success of their app. It also makes it extremely difficult for any PR planning. Not having a set launch date can hurt any much needed marketing efforts.

Apple provides developers an email for questions for their “App Review Team”, but with over 100,000 developers I’m skeptical that developers are receiving the feedback they need. Some developers are reverting to workarounds where they submit a prototype of their app with a launch date set far into the future. By doing this, they’re able to get a review of their app before spending more time and money on it. Nevertheless, they still end up waiting 2 weeks or more for feedback, putting a lull in their product schedule.

What’s needed is a better way for developers to get feedback on their apps before submitting it for approval. At the very least, Apple should have an FAQ blog to keep developers up-to-date with evolving standards. Clearer communication and more honesty on the part of Apple would help both parties save time and money.

The App Store as a big black hole seems to be the biggest problem facing developers, users, and Apple right now. Actually, it’s a black hole with a layer. The layer is the unbalanced promotion of gamer apps.

One blogger complained:

“Apple does not feature enough non-games in other categories in their “What’s Hot” and “New and Noteworthy” front page sections to incentivize other applications other than dollar games. A quick look in iTunes or in the App Store on an iPhone or iPod Touch will leave users the impression that Apple is all about games and not much else. We have run into this feeling from our customers who say their bosses are reluctant to let them buy software for their iPhones because they view them as toys. We’ve made the bet that the App Store is a better option than BlackBerry or Palm’s offerings but Apple needs to do more to demonstrate to professionals that it is for real.”

At last glance, the App Store home page promoted the following number of gamer apps:

• 7 of 8 apps under “New and Noteworthy”

• 8 of 10 for “Top Paid Apps”

• 6 of 10 for “Top Free Apps”

• 6 of 8 for “What’s Hot”

Everyone knows games are by far the most popular apps anywhere but unless you’re a gamer, promoting them so heavily on the home page isn’t useful and creates the perception that the App Store is mostly about games. The solution might be to create a separate “Game Store” (and possibly other stores for big categories such as books) that levels the playing field and provides more space for others to promote their apps at the home page level.

Another issue is the pricing structure. Charles Wolf of Needham & Company noted in his analysis of Apple’s July earnings report, “In some respects, the App Store has taken its place alongside YouTube, where poor taste is the defining metric. More ominously, it has led to a deterioration of the entire pricing structure for iPhone applications. The risk is that developers who hope to build quality applications that have a long shelf life may be discouraged from doing so because prospective development costs exceed the revenues they expect to earn on the applications. In short, this race to the bottom has the potential to degrade the overall equality of the applications sold at the App Store.”

Ge Wang of Smule Ocarina fame commented that he would “like to see a top app list that counted revenue instead of straight downloads, something he said would encourage more premium applications.” In short, there needs to be some way in which quality apps can rise to the surface and be discovered despite the possibility of having a more expensive price tag. Apple is in danger of becoming a receptacle for bad apps that cheapen the Apple brand and cover up more valuable applications like Wang’s Ocarina. Wang’s suggestion is a good one and could be taken a step further by creating a “quality” list based on not only revenue but also on user ratings.

Some other suggestions for the App Store include:

• Adding a Genius sidebar to the user’s Library Applications screen

• Making the App Store more similar to the Amazon.com experience with top reviewers, “Listmania!”, save to wish list/bookmark and a personalized homepage based on search results and purchase history

• Stop the proliferation of “Lite” versions by allowing apps to run for a specified amount of time

• Allow sellers to integrate an App Store module for purchasing apps on their own web site so developers and companies can offer their customers a more customized experience and better promote their other products.

• Replace “Staff Favorites” on the App Store homepage with something more meaningful like “Killer Apps” or “Genius Just For You”

• Give users the ability to filter search results

• Provide developers a better method for demoing their apps from the App Store. For example many developers like to publish video of how their app works which usually results in dark, out-of-focus YouTube videos. Apple could come up with a method for easily creating animated demos, giving developers an opportunity to show user flows and specific screen details in a coherent and unified way.

The Internet began to take off several years earlier with the introduction of Mosaic, the first Web browser with mass appeal. In 1994, the same founders formed a new company and released Netscape Navigator. Only a year later, Microsoft launched the first version of Internet Explorer and soon everyone was moving to the Web.

Flash forward to this century:

• January 2007, Apple announces the iPhone

• In June of the same year at WWDC 2007, Apple announces it will support third-party “web applications”

• In October, an open letter from Steve Jobs announces a software development kit (SDK) will be available to third-party developers

• November 2007, Google unveils the Android platform

• July 2008, Apple’s App Store officially opens with downloads topping 1.5 billion in first year
• April 2009, Blackberry App World launched

• June 2009, Apple vice president Phil Schiller announces there are 50,000 applications available in the App Store

• June 2009, Palm launches the Pre

• July 2009, Motorola, Huawei, Archos, Lenovo and HTC have already built or have confirmed plans to release a phone with Google’s Android platform

• July 2009, non-tech companies Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Burger King , Coca-Cola, Nike, Adidas, Lacoste, D&G, Dior, BMW, Ferrari, Whole Foods, Kraft, and AAA all have iPhone applications

What’s going on? For some business owners, this might send shivers down their back. Is this for real? You bet it is, and you won’t want to be the last to know for the same reason you didn’t want to be the last to know about the Internet. Movement to mobile will be fast and as always, it’s the first to cross the finish line that counts, not the second.

Just as quickly as we turned into a culture with a computer in every home, we’re turning into a culture with one in every pocket. Not only are people walking around with little computers attached to their bodies, they are connected to them in a myriad of ways via online social networking, maps, news, games, video, music and chat.

This July at the VentureBeat’s MobileBeat conference, the BBC reported that the big prediction is that the mobile applications market will be as big as the Internet in 2020. It’s no surprise that they are also predicting the market will grow to 100,000 apps by the end of 2009. Ilja Laurs, CEO of GetJar commented, “The full blossom will come in ten years and mobile apps will become as popular as websites are today with consumers.”

Here are some reasons why you’ll want a mobile app for your business sooner rather than later:

If you’re not on the web already, then you’re dead. The same will hold true for mobile.

Just as it’s a requirement for most businesses to have a web presence, it will soon be one to have a mobile presence. For many businesses having no web presence would be death and holds true to the saying “out of site, out of mind” when it comes to staying connected with your customers. Not providing online content to your customers is a dead-end for them and with the price of advertising, no business can afford to throw away customer-generated interest. Mobile is no exception. It’s another extension to your customers. It’s 1999 all over again and you’re going to need a good mobile presence.

Mobile apps are an extension of your company’s brand

It’s no accident that brick and mortar companies like Taco Bell, Lacoste and Whole Foods have mobile apps. Mobile apps are another “touchpoint” for their brand where they can interact with their audience. Marty Neumeier in his book Zag writes, “Traditional advertising is in a death spiral”…”But the root causes for the death spiral are twofold: 1) People don’t like one-way conversations, and 2) People don’t trust advertising.”

So how do you extend your brand and not use advertising? One idea is to build a utility that your customers find useful…like a mobile app.

Sherwin-Williams designed ColorSnap for the iPhone to help their customers match colors they like with Sherwin-Williams paint color. Pizza Hut launched their iPhone app that lets their customers order their favorite pepperoni pizza in seconds. Pizza Hut promotes their app with words like “easy”, “fast” and “fun”. In short, they’re making it easy for their customers, and promoting their brand in a way that doesn’t come off as being intrusive or forceful. Best of all, their icon gets to live on the customer’s mobile device helping to establish a connection between Pizza Hut and their customers.

You will want to be connected to your customers wherever they go

Companies have found a multitude of ways to stay connected with their customers via TV, billboards, print ads, sponsorships, etc. Unfortunately for them, these mediums take on a static relationship with their customers when compared with mobile. Unless you have a logo tattooed to your body (I hope not), no medium goes everywhere your customer goes like a branded mobile application does.

Users don’t like to use their mobile web browser

Before Apple opened its App Store there was a lot of media coverage around increasing statistics showing the popularity of mobile internet usage.

That was then and this is now.

While having a web site optimized for mobile browsers is a good idea, it’s no longer a sufficient means of connecting with your mobile customers. Why? Because the experience doesn’t fit the medium. It’s slow and cumbersome and was originally designed for a PC experience, not your phone. For mobile users, speed is everything. Using a phone’s web browser is akin to using a knife instead of a Cuisenart to chop vegetables. One is automatic, one is not.

To use a browser on a mobile device the user opens it to a blank screen, types a long URL with their thumbs, zooms-in to be able to read the content and laboriously navigates via several zooms, pinches, swipes and taps. Basically, it’s a lot of work. Even optimized sites still require the user to type a URL and experience what is typically, a very generic, long and linear interface. In both scenarios, there’s also the frustration of waiting for long pages and big images to load. Why not make it easy for the customer to get the information they need within a few seconds?

When I want to read the New York Times I don’t go to their web site (which on my iPhone is little bit like reading a newspaper with a magnifying glass), I use my NYT app. When I want to track packages, I use an app for that. When I want to know what the weather is going to be like tomorrow, I use an app for that… The point is the mobile web browser is a tool of last resort. It’s a manual experience versus the “automatic” experience of apps.
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Of course moving your brand and/or company to the web 15 years ago wasn’t easy, and neither will moving it to mobile now. The good news is that some of the most successful apps are light in content and need only a few screens. Apps are typically widget-like and don’t require outsourcing half of India to get the job done.

The bad news is that there are now several platforms to design and build for, and each one uses their own programming style, visual language and screen dimensions (for more about this topic and why “one size doesn’t fit all”, please view my previous blog post: 31 Flavors – Designing for iPhone, Android and Blackberry Platforms). While the iPhone seems to be leading the pack in regard to app usage, you cannot ignore Blackberry’s user base or the number of “Android phones” in the works.

The miniature size of apps compared to desktop applications and web sites has its advantage. A disadvantage is that users quickly lose interest. That’s why it’s important to continue to keep users and customers engaged via dynamic content, updates and new apps.

Another point to keep in mind is that despite an app’s limited number of screens, the time and cost it takes to launch a successful app isn’t cheap and takes several weeks. There are still, only a handful of good mobile app designers and developers out there. The ones that do exist are still learning on the job because the technology is still new and platform updates are frequent. In addition, the development might require two engineers if any animation outside of the SDK is used. An app, while deceptively small in size, can be extremely feature rich and challenge both designers and technologists to maintain a user experience that is efficient and at the same time, meaningful for the customer.
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If you’re shopping for an app team to help you, this is what you should look for:

Multidisciplinary team

While some single-person development teams have been successful building and launching their own apps, with over 50,000 apps in Apple’s App Store alone, the gold rush is over and it’s not recommended that you try to hire one person to do everything. It takes several people to launch a successful app including, in most cases, an interactive designer, a visual designer, an engineer and a project manager.

An understanding of the medium

Designing for the iPhone or Android platform is not the same as designing a web site. The designers should have intimate knowledge of the device or platform with a thorough understanding of its native elements and best practices. User interfaces should be designed to be intuitive and follow platform standards that the device’s users are accustomed to. For example, iPhone apps don’t use drop-downs. A good iPhone app designer will be able to provide an immediate solution for such a problem.

Documentation

Make sure the team has an iterative design process that includes documentation of user flows and screen details (i.e. wireframes). Paper is cheap. Make sure the team has worked out most of the design problems on paper before any coding begins. Apple’s UI Evangelist, Eric Hope recommends that at least ½ of an iPhone project’s time be spent on design.

Lastly, keep in mind that mobile apps are still a new medium, mobile platform updates are frequent and the rules of the game and its players are constantly changing.

In the latest controversy over the suppression of results from a study by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about the dangers of talking on a cell phone while driving, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd comments, “Americans are so addicted to techno-surfing that they’ve gotten hubristic about how many machines they can juggle simultaneously.” She explains how a colleague of hers recently filed a story from his laptop while driving on the highway.

According to the study taken years ago, there are estimates that drivers talking on their cell phones caused 955 fatalities and 240,000 accidents in 2002. As cell phone adoption increases, we can only expect to see those numbers increase. And this isn’t just about talking without a headset. According to another article, “The researchers had rightly proposed a warning to state governors about the initial finding that laws mandating the use of hands-free devices did not solve the problem. The conversation is the distraction.”

Technology, of course, is just a tool and like any tool it can be used for better or for worse. There’s no need for a discourse on the marvels of technology. We’re all keenly reminded each time we make a trip to the doctor, fly accross the country, or have a video chat with a friend on the other side of the globe. Technology generally, makes our lives easier and less of a burden. But we seem to be entering new territory with the likes of social networking applications and our continuous feedback systems. How much is too much? What’s our threshold?

Our weakness is not so much the use of technology, but our human predisposition to addiction. We are “desire-lings” as a friend of mine likes to say. Dowd concludes her article by writing, “ Auto companies are busy creating new crack hits for our self-destructive cravings. Ford is developing a system that would let drivers use phones and music players and surf the Internet with voice commands and audible responses. Sounds like a computerized death machine. But, as our dealers know, we’ll never disconnect.”

I’m sorry to say I’m battling my own addiction with “Ego” (no, not that one), an iPhone app that lets you monitor your web site’s analytics, Mint account, RSS subscribers and Twitter followers all in one “let’s-make it-simple” screen. Here are some of the endorsements from their website:

“If you manage a web site and are a statistic junkie, this app will be a fantastic investment.”

“Ego is crack cocaine for the average statistics junkie.”

Since when did apps become synonymous with crack cocaine? I have to admit, it’s extremely addictive to sneak in a glance every now and then…maybe just twice a day…ok, several times a day. The mind chatter usually goes something like “I wonder how many visitors I’ve had today” or “Hmmm, my Twitter followers count is lower than yesterday. Could it be me my posts?”

Many of my colleagues–long-time tech veterans–are amazed by the popularity of Twitter. It’s just a fad, right? I mean, who cares what you just ate for lunch. Apparently, a lot of people. There’s even a Twitterholic site that lists the top 100 users with the most followers. As of July 2009, Britney Spears has 2,519,275 followers and her last tweet was: “HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT!!!!! XOXO”. Go figure.

The social pressure from joining social networks like Twitter, Facebook and MySpace can be overwhelming. All of a sudden you find yourself taking on a virtual life that must be tended to OR ELSE. It’s like having another you in some parallel universe. God forbid you forget to feed it, bathe it and take care of its every need.

Despair.com has a diagram it uses on one of its t-shirts that shines some light on our obsessive online social habits. It’s no surprise that unhealthy mental states such as narcissism, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD or ADD) and stalking are terms used to sarcastically describe Twitter, MySpace, Facebook and TweetStalk–yes, TweetStalk! I cringe at the thought of my 7 year old daughter entering the social networks realm.

And, of course, there’s more. I’m not an authority on the habits of teenagers these days, but clearly texting is still something they do often. Do they really do “sexting”?

I have a neighbor who tells me he answers text message while driving his Harley-Davidson on the freeway! Apparently he answers using a quick-text picker that inserts a pre-populated response. Still, I think, “Can’t he just answer them later?”…”when he’s not driving on the freeway with one hand at 70 mph?”

And if phone calls, email, voicemail, tweets and text messages are not enough to make you swerve into a ditch, with the release of iPhone 3.0 there are now iPhone instant messenger apps that will let you receive all your collective chat accounts via “push notifications” or alerts to your phone. Imagine, always being “available” to your chatting friends.

How many more information feeds will we use via our phones, at our desk, in the car, at home? What about while we’re sleeping?

The Zeo Sleep Monitor will monitor your sleep behavior for you. According to their web site, the Zeo “works seamlessly with your personal computer to offer you another window into the world of your sleep.” Great, another addiction for my weak reptilian brain.

As we already know, technology seems to be wonderful for lighting up the pleasure centers in our brains. Unlike our primitive ancestors, we can get a fix anytime, anywhere. Music, video, comedy, games, sexual arousel…

Marc Andressen, entrepreneur and multi-millionaire best known as founder of Netscape Communications Corporation, is launching a $300 million venture capital fund and apparently, has strong preferences for backing companies whose products “make your brain secrete dopamine”.

Josh Quittner reports in his TIME blog post: “The neurotransmitter is kind of a drug of anticipation—we secrete it when thinking about food and sex. A few months ago, I was talking to Andreessen and he told me, half jokingly, that “I’m only investing in dopamine companies.” He’d been spending some time looking into it and determined that other things stimulate its production as well. Blackberries and iPhones for instance. You know how, when you’re at a dinner table and some nitz pulls out his iPhone and starts checking his email? And how you and everyone else reflexively reaches for theirs? That, my friends, is a dopamine response, and if you pay attention, you’ll start noticing all kinds of things that spur it.”

Ugh. Stop! We’re not a bunch of caged rhesus monkeys waiting for a pellet to drop!

So, where do we go from here? Will we recognize our fragility as sentient beings with soft, malleable minds? Will we recognize the long-term effects of our technological advances? Form AA groups for recovering technophiles?

Actually, technology isn’t the problem, it’s us. Are we a mature enough species to wield responsibly, tech’s awesome power and use it for the benefit of ourselves and other beings? Will we employ skillful means or will technology be our next crack cocaine? Our next DUI? Technology was supposed to make our lives easier and ease the burden of being human. Will we have the good sense to know when to leave it parked in the garage?  The rats won’t tell.

So, maybe you’re asking: how do you design for three different mobile platforms without losing your marbles?

Before starting on each project, I did my homework to see what other designers and developers have done in the space. For Android and Blackberry, this study was not only a nice-to-have, it was a requirement. While Apple has a reasonably good human interface guidelines to shepherd designers and developers through putting together a consistent and intuitive interface for iPhone users, the other two leave a lot to be desired.

Google, ironically, preaches the value of using consistent UI components without ever really sharing what those components might be to any great extent. They have an in-depth tutorial on how to create icons but don’t mention much on what the other standard UI components should look like. This leads designers to go off on their own and create what they think is right for the Android UI versus Google suggesting what the best practices are. This could easily be solved by providing a comprehensive style guide.

What’s the purpose of doing this? The purpose is to understand the personality, interaction and visual language of a platform so that the designer is able to design an interface that users already visually and interactively understand. The users understand and intuit this language based on previous experiences with the platform’s native apps and/or other downloaded apps. This is why an iPhone app should look and feel like an iPhone app and an Android app should look and feel like one of its own. Differentiation is important where there’s competition, but without any consistent use of native UI elements, the user is at a loss with the interface and has to learn something new costing them time, effort and frustration.

Some companies take the easy route. They simply take any graphics and user flows they created for one platform (typically the iPhone) and adapt it to the new one. Because of Android’s lack of support (and perhaps because of the developer’s lack of interest), we see a lot of this being applied to its apps. This is not only bad for Android’s effort to provide a consistently intuitive user experience but it’s also, in some cases, bad for the app itself which doesn’t utilize native elements and behaviors that ultimately, could create a better user experience particular to that platform.

So here’s the answer to the burning question:

Can you Android-ize an already existing iPhone app? Does one size fit all?

No, not without confusing the user with elements they’re unfamiliar with and possibly missing out on better ways to present a feature using the platform’s native standards.

In regard to user interaction design, there are some big differentiators between the three platforms. Here are some of the big ones:

Android and Blackberry platforms have menus

They both have hard keys on their physical devices that make it possible to bring up a menu and navigate to other options or shortcuts, the iPhone doesn’t. This helps in some circumstances, to hide what would normally be considered clutter. It allows designers to conceal additional features and functionality for when the user is ready to use them. It may make the user experience actually easier by requiring less taps or clicks.

They both have hard keys on their physical devices that make it possible to bring up a menu and navigate to other options or shortcuts, the iPhone doesn’t. This helps in some circumstances, to hide what would normally be considered clutter. It allows designers to conceal additional features and functionality for when the user is ready to use them. It may make the user experience actually easier by requiring less taps or clicks.

Android and Blackberry platforms have a back key

Same as above. This makes it easy to remove controls that would otherwise be necessary to go back.

Blackberry screens come in several different sizes

In my opinion, this is why Blackberry’s App World has a long, long way to go and may ultimately, fizzle out. Designing and developing an app that works on five different screen sizes is a headache. It requires a great deal of production and time from designers and developers and leads to too many compromises. In order to save time and money, the app’s design is required to be generic enough to work with all the various device models. To understand this better, check out Pandora’s Blackberry page.

Blackberry uses a trackball on most of its devices

This is yet another hindrance to Blackberry’s success in the app market. While trackballs work fine for scrolling through a list such as your email’s inbox, it’s cumbersome when it comes to navigating through the tabs of an app, especially if there are two sets, one at the top and one at the bottom. Unless there’s something I don’t know (Blackberry users?), a user must select all the screen’s components (tabs, buttons, fields, hyperlinks) on the way to navigating from one end of the screen to the other. There’s no way to fly from, lets say, the top-left tab to the bottom-right tab like you can do with a mouse or even better, your finger. Everything snaps to a grid and the trackball cursor must follow it. Needless to say, this is extremely cumbersome and requires that screens have few selectable components.

Pop-ups in Android are completely customizable

One nice work-around with Android is that pop-ups are completely customizable. This means in some cases you can use a pop-up interface rather than having to take the user to a new screen. Where would this be helpful? Any kind of detail screen where the user taps an element on the screen to learn more. The pop-up can be customized to have its own background, scrollbar, icons, etc. (caveat: Android pop-ups are not meant to be used like this, so it’s a bit of a hack from what I understand).

iPhone apps don’t use standard web browser form components

What, no radio buttons? No drop-downs? Nope. While web pages displayed on the iPhone do have these options, iPhone app interfaces don’t. Instead, they have switches, slot machine-like pickers and sliding knobs. This is a good thing—they thought about the new touchscreen technology and adapted the UI components to fit it. From a design point of view, this means that you will have to think of how to set up form components differently.

Needless to say, there are also many visual differences between these three platforms. Once you figure it out, Android actually has a pretty nice graphical user interface. Again, there biggest problem is not giving designers and developers enough guidance (i.e., this is what a progress bar looks like, this is what a standard OS button looks like, this is what a pop-up looks like, etc.). In return, their collection of apps appears somewhat clunky and doesn’t have the same cohesiveness that the iPhone’s apps do. This might not be such a big deal except for Android users never know what to expect and the constant use of iPhone-like components in Android apps (such as the ubiquitous shiny buttons) makes Android appear cheap. Android has some exceptional functionality, why not do the same with the UI standards? All it would require on their part, I believe, is a well-written user interface guide.

So, again, how do you design for three different mobile platforms without losing your marbles?

One at a time. Each version of the app will have the same list of key use cases but will require a fresh perspective when it comes down to user interaction and screen layouts. In some cases, like the Blackberry, you can’t squeeze a square peg in a round hole. You have to take it for what it is: a conventional mobile phone UI. Each platform has its own unique challenges and that’s half the fun of being a designer or developer.

Lastly, I’d like to speak directly to Apple, Google, Blackberry and Palm on behalf of all those who seek a better understanding of these interfaces and wish to design and develop a coherent user experience for these platforms. Just as you have given developers the tools to code your apps, you should give designer’s the tools to design your apps. Offer up layered Photoshop, Fireworks and Illustrator files of all your UI components just as this kind person has done for the iPhone and these people and these people. Why make it hard for everybody to put together an accurate representation of your interface? Give us the visual language so that we can, as designers, design useful and intuitive apps that contain the visual standards your users are already accustomed to. To Google’s credit, they do provide templates for creating menu icons, but offer little more for the designer. It would go a long way to not only provide an SDK but also a “software design kit”.

“In the next update please add a like button, a birthday notifier, be able to see groups, see all friends when you try to find them, view friends of friends, and  be able to use flair and bumper stickers. Please add!!”

And for the Skype iPhone app, a user wrote:

“Add feature that allows app to beep that i have a vmail or text without opening the app. Stability issues. Cannot maintain more than 1 number per contact”…”Could improve on features such as predicting call quality based on wifi strength.”

This new affinity for interaction design is partly due to the amount of time we spend with some sort of internet-reaching device. People who only a few years ago used a desktop computer to browse the Web and check email, all of a sudden are “power users” checking their bank accounts or typing in a new blog post from their mobile phone. These folks invest a lot of time and sometimes money (think, expensive phone data plans), and good user experiences matter to them. To understand their passion for good experiences, all you need to do is read the “Petition Against the ‘New Facebook’” regarding the recent re-design of the Facebook site. You don’t want to mess with these people.

Another reason is that in some cases, what was once a complicated task for users is now quite natural. For example, people at first struggled with the concept of an online shopping cart. As design “patterns” like these permeated our online lives, we adapted and now, anticipate them. We also expect them to work well, be easy to use and not frustrate us.

So, if everyone is now an interaction designer, what’s the benefit in hiring one?

In the world of design, an interaction designer typically is in charge of creating user flows and screen details or “wireframes”. They sometimes do this using common design patterns and if they’re lucky, a well-written PRD (product requirements document) that outlines user scenarios and functionality based on research and business goals. Ultimately, the interaction designer is able to test his or her work using personas, prototypes and usability testing.

So, exactly what value does an interaction designer add to product development? I Can’t an engineer just as easily do the job? Isn’t interaction design just common sense at this point?

At a low-value level, an interaction designer is simply documenting the user experience for developers and visual designers to use as a road map. At a higher level, an interaction designer is one of the most well-rounded members on the team, with the ability to consider all influential elements and mold them into a meaningful experience that meets both business and user goals.

What separates an interaction designer from the rest of the pack (including developers/engineers) is their accumulated knowledge in the several areas that influence a design, such as technology limitations, brand requirements, search engine optimization, copy writing, online marketing needs, visual design trends, design patterns, etc. The interaction designer most likely has a few specialties and has dabbled in many areas. For example, he or she may also be a good graphic designer, have programming experience or has written copy.

Unlike other parties within an organization, the interaction designer is also an advocate for the user. By implementing such tools as personas, prototypes and usability testing, the interaction designer has the user first in mind. While other departments may be concentrated on business goals, features or brand elements, the interaction designer is thinking about the user or customer in combination with the rest. Why is this important? Ultimately, every business wants their users or customers to love what they do, right? The only way to get to this point is by focusing on the needs, behaviors and attitudes of your customers or users.

Other benefits to focusing on users include reducing the chance of failure by testing usability issues before you build or launch a product. A focus on user goals can also help create products, services or features that users and customers didn’t even know they needed or wanted.

It has also been my experience that while developers are invaluable assets in brainstorming for features, when it comes to building out the user experience, they are not always sensitive to or able to visualize all the potential road blocks a user may face. The idea is to find all the potential issues before you begin coding (while it’s still convenient to make changes). The interaction designer’s job is to cover every inch of ground and do their best to make sure nothing is forgotten. This is also why good documentation is important—another skill in the interaction designer’s collection.

Without good documentation, there is little direction and people are held less accountable. This particularly applies when development is outsourced. Good design and documentation save a lot of time, money and headaches by outlining all the user scenarios, flows, technical specs and wireframes in a clear, well-written document. The idea is that all the designing is taken care of before any development begins. “Designing as we go” is not a strategy for success.

In summary, good interaction designers are valued for the following reasons:
• They are well-rounded and have knowledge in several areas affecting the overall design. They often have more than one specialty.
• They understand customer/user goals. They are an advocate for the user.
• They have great attention to detail.
• They are excellent at creating documents that clearly outline the user experience in detail.
• They help visualize abstract concepts and create a guide for other designers and developers to follow.