[Sigia-l] Research then prototype OR prototype then gatheruserfeedback

[Jared M. Spool]

At 05:34 AM 12/20/2005, Listera wrote:
>What may be missing, as is the case in most such discussions, is the 
>opportunity cost: what else could McMasters-Carr have done with 
>design/research/prototyping/etc that they might not have considered?

There's another aspect of this that is rarely discussed is the design 
maturity of the team. Our research into how teams produce good design 
suggest that more mature teams are far more capable of bringing new 
insights into the start of a design process than less mature teams. Less 
mature teams rely more on iteration to guide insight (falling into 
Stewart's trap of focusing the team on what's wrong with what they've 
created) than those teams that have more design maturity under their belt.

Design maturity, in our definition, is a combination of skills, experience, 
knowledge, collaboration skills, and cultural integration. Teams with more 
maturity can approach problems with a wider sense of scope, asking 
questions like, "What are we *really* trying to accomplish here?" Teams 
with less maturity tend to be very reactive, rarely capable of going 
beyond, "How can we improve on what we've done?"

So, another question to ask is, had they done more 
design/research/prototyping/etc, were they in a place to actually 
understand what they were seeing and how to integrate that into their 
design process?


Jared M. Spool, Founding Principal, User Interface Engineering
4 Lookout Lane, Unit 4d, Middleton, MA 01949
978 777-9123   jspool at uie.com  http://www.uie.com
Blog: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks