[Sigia-l] From Research to IA

[Marc Rettig]

Marc Rettig:
> a series of workshops, tours of the data, role plays, posters, highlights
> videos, co-design sessions, critiques... various immersive experiences for
> the team and stakeholders.

Ziya:
> Man, that's a lot of activity!

Yup. Well, it's never all that stuff for one project. But that stuff is all
in the bag of tricks. The general principle is, it's not the actual
deliverables that matter so much as the degree to which each person on the
team internalizes a realistic sense of what it's like to be the people who
will use the site or product or whatever. Direct experience helps, as you
pointed out. Having things like overarching, project-specific design
guidelines that came out of research... that helps too. 

Ziya:
>There's often an inverse relationship between the actual designers being
>*fed* these (above) things and the quality of the end-product. If the
>designers do not have *direct* experience with "the people, activities, and
>world for which they are designing" results will eventually show it.

Yup again. There's no substitute for direct experience. The possibility of
giving everyone such experience varies with each project. We try, oh we try.
But there's a "but".... 

Which is, direct experience in the form of a few trips to the
field/office/home/mall or wherever isn't the same as internalizing a good
synthesis of a entire field study. Ideally it's both: Everybody gets that
exciting "ah-ha" that invariably comes from leaving the office and going out
into the world of use; and the people who do the full body of research do a
good job of making tools for the team that help them apply the results of
synthesis. 
 
Marc:
> Most of these artifacts build up in parallel, and are constructed by many
> different collaborating members of the team.

Ziya:
>And hopefully will not end up in the 'design by committee' hell hole.

Amen. Facilitation skills and design leadership -- two undervalued,
under-taught qualities!

............
Marc Rettig
marc at fitassociates.com