design, cities, physical & social interaction, play

Leapfroglog design, cities, physical & social interaction, play

Process & Deliverables (a Euro IA Theme)

In Articles on 6 October 2006 tagged , , , , , with 2 comments

So sooner or later, any designer working in the professional arena doing client work will start thinking about process. What are the actual steps you go through to get to a successful outcome? Are those steps always the same? (Most design gurus would like you to think as much.) Is there one true IA process? Some attempts were made during the summit to answer these questions, most notably during the process panel lead by my colleague Peter Boersma. This got a bit stuck in discussions on how the panellists’ companies developed and managed their process and not so much into the practicalities of their respective processes. A shame.

The second day of the summit was kicked off with a wireframes panel. Wireframes are maybe the most produced deliverable by many an IA. Deliverables are a natural fit to process, which usually consists of a description of activities, roles and artefacts.

Both RUP and Agile were frequently-used terms with a memorable observation by one of the people present that during their lifetime companies seam to fluctuate between big scary processes and loose small workflows. It’s clear that any design shop adopting RUP will need to slim it down and add a much-needed user centred design component. Agile sounds cool and exciting but really only is fit for a certain type of client (a fearless one).

On the deliverables side, it struck me again how poorly we as designers are equipped to model our intended architectures in such a way that clients get it and developers can pick it up and build it. Who will fill this void?

This is the third post on themes spotted during the Euro IA Summit 2006. The first post was on strategy, the second on social search. Other posts will be on involving the client and accessibility. My first post-summit post can be found here.

Related posts:

  1. Involving the Client (a Euro IA Theme)
  2. Strategy (a Euro IA Theme)
  3. Social Search (a Euro IA Theme)


2 Comments

[...] On the way back I created a mind-map of all the big themes I picked up on during the weekend and intend to delve into the main ones over the course of this week in a series of mini-posts. The first one will be on strategy; the follow-ups will cover social search, process & deliverables, involving the client and accessibility. [...]

Posted by Euro IA Summit 2006 themes (Leapfroglog) on 6 October 2006 @ 3pm

[...] As an IA community we’ve spent an awful amount of time educating our clients about the worth of our work. In a lot of instances we were aiming at making the client be more like us. At the summit, it was interesting to see a number of speakers stress the importance speaking the language of your client and involving them in your daily work. Some examples: Olly Wright’s talk on strategy included such lessons as understanding your client has a boss and finding out what he or she wants, speaking $$$ €€€, the fundamental language of business and making your assumptions explicit. Jared Folkman pointed out we should stop talking about users and start using the word client (certainly when working on retail websites). Doing so, we’ve already started using some of our client’s language. I mentioned agile design and development earlier and do think that one of its points that stick out for me is the focus on face-to-face meetings with the whole team (including a client). Finally, Warren Hutchinson’s presentation workshop on how to run workshops was insanely useful for learning new techniques to loosen up and get real results in client meetings. [...]

Posted by Involving the client (a Euro IA theme) (Leapfroglog) on 12 October 2006 @ 11am

← →

About

Kars is an independent interaction and game designer. His main professional interests are cities, physical & social interactions and play. He is also a teacher and an organizer of events. He lives and works in Utrecht, the Netherlands.

Recently

Et Cetera


← Back to Home

© Leapfroglog. Powered by WordPress using the DePo Skinny Theme.