Charu’s Notes Series: Sketching User Experience (Part 1)

I started this series with the objective to share with you my understanding of some of the seminal books on UX Design. The book I am starting with is ‘Sketching User Experience’ by Bill Buxton. So here goes:

For nearly half of the book, the author makes the case for ‘Why sketching is important’. In doing so, he shares many insights which at first seem irrelevant to the topic of the book but are too important to be ignored for this series. The following article includes points from the book as well as my own personal understanding and notes.

Content is Content but Context is King

When designing for any product or service or digital device, don’t consider it as an isolated being but as a social being. Any product or service is used within a context — by someone, with a purpose of achieving something, under certain conditions. This product or device may need to communicate with other products or devices too.

An example of a successful designing for context is the iPod. The first iPod was not the first digital music player but it was the most successful one. Of course it was a very well designed product, additionally it had a well-designed eco-system to support it and keep it relevant i.e iTunes. While most businesses of that time were selling their main offering for cheap and making profits of follow up purchases (e.g. Xerox selling printers for cheap to make money off expensive toners later), Apple decided to sell tracks for $0.99. The iPod earphones too were iconic, so much so that, even if you couldn’t see the iPod in someone’s pocket you could tell they were using it thanks to the white earphones.

Appropriate representation may solve a problem

The solutions to some problems become apparent when the problem is well represented. In fact, good representation may eliminate the need to solve a problem. For example, the introduction of zero and decimal point (i.e. a method of representing numbers) eliminated many problems associated with Roman Numerals. I would go as far as to say mathematics is full of examples where ‘signs’ i.e. visual representations make it easier for us to perform mathematical functions. I feel this makes a strong case for visual representation being used as a tool for ideation, problem-solving and even as a solution itself.

Design Responsibly

Technology in itself is neither good nor bad, but we can’t say that technology is neutral. Because when technology is introduced into society, it always has an impact — be it good or bad. That’s why, as a part of considering the context of your design, do consider the impact it can have when it is introduced into society too.

One recent example that comes to mind is of the electric scooter sharing service introduced by start-ups such as Bird on beaches in California. At first glance, the electric scooter seems like a great idea to cover the ‘last-mile’ transit, which cannot be serviced by usual public transport. The scooters don’t have to be left in their docks, instead it they are connected with a mobile app which is used to find, unlock, pay and lock the scooter. Like I said, it truly is a great idea. But unfortunately, it was not thought through. Improper scooter usage by some of the rowdy riders caused a lot of discomfort (even injuries) to pedestrians using sidewalks. Too many scooters on the beaches actually became litter and were treated as such. These and many more problems caused town municipalities to impound, ban and issue legal actions against these scooter-sharing companies.

The designer’s intent was definitely a good one, but unfortunately users didn’t utilize the service responsibly. But the onus of ensuring that the design cannot be misused falls on the designer.

The N+1 product and Innovation

Bill Buxton calls every product which is an improvement on a previous product as an ‘n+1’ product. For example, iPhones 6, 6s, 7 etc. are all n+1 products of the original iPhone. He goes on to explain that companies are unable to make long-term profits based only on n+1 products. That is why completely new product lines are essential. For example, the iPod, iPhone, Apple watch etc. are all new product lines for Apple which was originally a computer manufacturer.

In the development of these new product lines, sketching, mock-ups and other fail-fast methods are even more important because there is no previous reference to fall back on. Because very simply in the words of Aristotle :

The things we have to learn before we do them, we learn by doing them.

Two common industry myths

1. We know what we want at the start of the project.
2. We know enough to start building it.

We need to be open to change, especially at the beginning of the development process when it is cheapest to make changes and the changes made at the beginning are the most effective.

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The following part of this series will talk about — What is a sketch?

This article was re-written after I realized I had been unable to communicated well the first time around. Any ways we are open to ‘failing fast’ right? ;)

Let me know your thoughts on this article. If you find it useful, please don’t forget to leave claps.