Design Sessions Interview

by July 6, 2007

Design Sessions, the online community for design students, recently asked me to respond to a few questions in an inline interview for their newsletter. A few snippets:

“Unfortunately, we lack an effective way to evaluate designs of this significance. So instead, critics focus on what they know best: aesthetics. Until we develop a better way of judging interaction designs that manage things like global economies or communities, we’ll continue to define success with visual design awards, which is unfortunate because only a portion of my time is spent making things pretty - most of it is spent making experiences that are useful, usable, and more desirable.”

“I also maintain this type of cycle when working with my product teams by spending time taking in research, opinions, ideas, and feedback, and then disseminating information through designs, presentations, visualizations and more. Carlos Santana might have described this process best when he said: music is water; the audience is a bed of flowers so I have to become the best fire hose I can.”

“… I don’t think this spells the end for generalists. In fact, designers that can understand technology opportunities and limitations at a high level, as well as business considerations are increasingly valuable because they can help focus product teams around user experience goals. That requires a cross-disciplinary approach that specialization alone doesn’t provide”

You can check out the full interview on Design Sessions site. Many thanks to Anjula for the great questions and chance to respond.