Design Vision: Parts 9-12

by February 27, 2006

The Design Vision conversation continues this week on Jim Leftwich's site. Here's a glimpse of what's to come during this week's discussion.

Communicating a Vision

"How would I summarize the importance of design vision communication deliverables? He or she who owns the drawings, owns the vision. I’ve discovered that in many projects, and perhaps most importantly in large 200+ person government projects, that these are among the only overview documents showing the big picture in significant or meaningful detail."-Jim Leftwich


"Too often, a designer presents a prototype or mock-up without any context or reference to the problem driving the situation. And without such context, the discussion invariably devolves into a swarm of opinions, conjectures, and personal preferences. As a corollary to Jim’s final point: he who can define the problem, declares the solution." -Bob Baxley


"Regardless of whether you communicate a design vision with top-down or bottom-up design artifacts, the important thing is start the conversation off right. If your client is a product manager, a refined mockup might work best. If you’re working for the VP of engineering, architectural diagrams may be better.

Too often, it seems that designers choose to make their full process visible right away instead of starting things off in a language their clients already understand. "-Luke Wroblewski


"Luke, I’m quite surprised that you start the process with mock-ups. Getting back to the power of communication, in my experience, you need to get some stakeholder involvement and buy-in a little earlier in the conceptual process." -Dirk Knemeyer


Tune in to Orbitstar Interactica all this week for the full conversation.