Synersign Project Blog

Why are there so many poorly designed products?

frewon9 — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 00:39:20 +0000

There are 2 answers to this question: you already supplied 1 of them. Many designers do not (fully) use the product they are designing. Sometimes this is due to laziness on the designer’s part; much more frequently company culture and the product management/engineering organizations are to blame. Why? Many B2B applications are difficult, if not impossible, to use in an isolated manner. A single designer who sets up a project in a project management application may be able to input tasks, but they are not truly “using” the product and experiencing the use cases they are designing for unless it has real projects and real team members interacting with it. For any product that relies on customer data (and nowadays, that’s almost everything: personal financial applications, social, local, analytics, healthcare), you can’t really recognize what is difficult or unclear unless you are looking at your, relevant, personal data. Sample data is a poor substitute (though better than nothing!) Answer #2 is that, in many organizations, designers are brought into the process too late. Instead of being included in early discussions where business goals and constraints are identified, designers are often thrown a fully-written spec and told to “make this pretty”. This is basically impossible: all the visual design in the world can’t save features and workflows that shouldn’t have been spec’d in the first place. This is actually the reason why I personally made the career shift from interaction design to product management — I needed to be able to identify the problems/opportunities/constraints from the beginning stages. As for how to solve this problem, here are some of the things that are needed: * Product management needs to involve design early in the process * Product management needs to explicitly define problems, business goals, and constraints * Executive management needs to buy-in to the idea that designers aren’t just there for ‘making it pretty’ (i.e. schedules need to support designers taking part in early meetings) * Executive management needs to lead, top-down, a company cultural expectation that “everyone uses the product, no exceptions.” * Design, product management, and engineering need to collaborate to provide internal tools that support use of the product (e.g. sample data, test accounts, training)

Filed under: I.J. (Information Mix)

When Should I Decline Client Work?

frewon9 — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 05:05:37 +0000

When Should I Decline Client Work?

by David Sherwin

The failure most of us frequently face in the business of design? The failure to recognize that a client project is something you should decline. Here are common situations where working designers fail to decline an opportunity that may be a poor fit.

The client thinks you want the work they’re offering, no matter what.

This is the beauty of establishing strong client relationships from your first contact—if you connect during those initial dialogues, there will be a strong reservoir of trust that will fuel your first projects. They like talking with you, and expect that working with you will be the same. They genuinely care about your shared success. They just don’t realize that what they’re throwing your way is not the best fit. Right client, wrong project. And we’re afraid to say no, for fear they won’t come back.

Your long-term client knows you need work badly.

The studio has been quiet, except for your primary client’s big project. This client, when they’re in the studio or communicating with you, is aware that the studio needs business. You might have even asked them directly for more business. And in return, they bring you a project that can keep the cashflow running, but is a poor fit for your short- and long-term goals. So, you take it.

The client doesn’t know that you lack competency in an area… and you don’t tell them.

Designers don’t like to admit weakness in a specific area, especially if they are hungry to keep work rolling in from a client. Example: You design their identity system. They’re offering you some motion graphics work to animate it for a video. You’ve never used AfterEffects or Flash. Now may not be the time to crack the manual and dive in. There’s too high a risk of failure. This holds even more true for facilitating development work. Are you really going to learn enough HTML 5 in three days to do front-end development for that hybrid mobile app? Disaster comes in many flavors, and this is one you don’t want to inflict on any client. Bring in the appropriate specialists. Mark up their time. Get it right.

The client doesn’t want to work with anyone else.

This is similar to the previous situation, except the client knows you don’t have the expertise they seek—and they still want to give you the work. They are willing to trust you with something they know you may not fulfill effectively, either out of trust or desired convenience. This is dangerous. Making an error on a project in a known area of weakness is still an error.

The client wants you to do work that’s part of their job responsibilities.

Designers are frequently hired to fulfill tasks that are outside their client’s job description. But sometimes design projects come along that are part of a client’s everyday work responsibilities, and you often don’t recognize that you’re doing their job until you’ve signed the contract and started the project. The risk with these kinds of projects is that you usually don’t get to follow your standard agency process and have to work through the same politics as your client to gain approval on the work. This can be a burn on your time and resources, making a prospective project an unprofitable venture.

The client desires your bid to establish agency selection criteria.

“If you say no, there are plenty of other agencies yearning to tackle this project.” This threat is always half true. If a client threatens to take the work to another agency, they’re taking this tack because they want something from you: your participation, your investment, your attention. Either that, or they just need a third estimate to see who is the best fit.

You really do need the money.

Yes, you need to pay rent. Yes, this work is not beneath you. Yes, the work will hopefully lead to better things. You have staff you need to keep busy. It’ll be over quick and then you’ll be on to better things. Projects stroll through the studio that are purely money-makers and never appear your portfolio. (Does the Regional Design Annual accept PowerPoint templates as a category?) But if word spreads that you are really good at the very projects you don’t want to specialize in, you risk being offered those projects over and over again. The old adage reads: “Be careful what you’re good at.” Can you afford to promote yourself as an expert in one area and end up spending your time working in another?

You will be continually thrown opportunities you don’t really need or have the depth of knowledge to fulfill well. You need to be prepared to walk away gracefully as part of any ongoing negotiation. So you’ve recognized that you should be declining a prospective project. How do you do it?

You need to show humility. Declining work is a form of power that you hold over your shared client/designer relationship. You should not let the client feel like you are declining the work because of ego.
You need to do it early enough in the new business process. Once you’ve moved too far down the sales cycle, such as the point where you’ve already generated a proposal, it can be unprofessional to say “No” to an extended offer on your part.
You need to leave the door open for the possibility of “No.” You should be honest that a project may not be a 100% perfect fit for your studio in early discussions, until you’ve gathered the necessary background information.
You need to encourage future opportunities. “The trick is to turn down work, but have the client remember you as a positive person/agency that they want to work with in the future,” says project manager Fiona Robertson Remley. “No” should never be the last thing a client remembers about their interaction with you.

Declining an opportunity is not a sign of weakness. It’s a continuation of an ongoing relationship. Use your refusal as a chance to describe what kind of work is a better fit, and be willing to make a reference to someone in your network who can fulfill their needs and return the referral in the future. Such a dialogue would sound something like this, delivered via a phone call or in a face-to-face meeting:

“I’m sorry, but it looks like the project we’ve discussing won’t be a good fit for us at this time. Let me refer you to another designer (or two) that would be able to help you out with it. And we should put something on the calendar for coffee in a month, as it was really great talking with you this week about our shared passion about Web analytics.”

There is a subtle art to delivering these words, especially in the midst of any critical negotiation with a long-term client. Be sincere, and remember: this is not the last project opportunity you will receive, if your conversation goes well.

Read more: DesignBiz: When Should I Decline Client Work? — Imprint-The Online Community for Graphic Designers
For great design products, visit our online store: MyDesignShop.com

Filed under: Designs

Design Blog and Site

frewon9 — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 01:02:03 +0000

graphic design blogs. determining the authority of a website, but don’t read too much into the PR, as all contain useful articles, with some blogs having an authority all on their own.

PR 7 blogs

Design Observer: writings about design & culture

Smashing Magazine – a weblog dedicated to web-developers and designers

Core77 / design magazine + resource /

PR 6 blogs

Authentic Boredom – by graphic designer, Cameron Moll

Coudal Partners: a forum for creativity and experimentation

CR Blog – News and views on visual communications from the writers of Creative Review

Dexigner – popular design portal featuring the latest design news

Hicksdesign – Journal of a small creative agency based in Witney, Oxfordshire, UK, authored by Jon Hicks

I Love Typography, devoted to fonts, typefaces and all things typographical.

Mark Boulton: Design Thinking. Web Delivery. By a designer based in Cardiff, UK.

Quipsologies – Corralling the most relevant and creative on- and off-line bits that pertain to the design community.

Russell Davies – incredibly diverse UK-based blog on topics associated with design

Speak Up > Design Dialog

Subtraction 7.0 – NYTimes.com’s Design Director, Khoi Vinh, blogs about design and other relevant info.

swissmiss – tina roth eisenberg | swiss designer gone nyc

Typographica. A Journal of Typography.

Veer: The Skinny – provides visual elements for use in professional creative work

Veerle’s blog 2.0 – Webdesign – XHTML CSS | Graphic Design

You the Designer – Graphic Design Blog

PR 5 blogs

Logo Design Love: a website dedicated to all things logo.

Ace Jet 170 – Found type, print and stuff

AisleOne – Design, typography and everything else.

Anamorphosis. learn design create

Be A Design Group – a blog for graphic designers, created in March of 2004 by Adrian Hanft and Bennett Holzworth.

Chris Glass, The Last 10 Days. A creative fella’s journal from Ohio.

Creative Curio – Learn, discuss and explore the realm of graphic design.

Design Notes published by Michael Surtees who tries to see life filtered through design as opposed to placing design on a pedestal

Designers who Blog – features blogs discussing graphic design, web design, illustration, marketing, photography, branding, writing and advertising

Design Adaptations | Charity Ondriezek

Design is Kinky – a proudly Australian blog on design

Design Sojourn | Strategic Industrial Design Blog

DesignM.ag — Articles and Resources for Web Designers

Design View: Articles, Essays and Opinions by Andy Rutledge

Fuel Your Creativity – Find your spark

Grain Edit – covers contemporary graphic design / illustration, as well as design from the from the golden era of advertising (1950s–1970s).

Graphic Define Magazine – focuses on the business of running a graphic, interactive, or web design studio.

ideasonideas, a blog that invites dialogue on issues relevant to communication designers and brand strategists

Inspiration Bit – Get inspired and learn from the latest technology, art and design buzz on the Web.

ISO50 – The Visual Work of Scott Hansen

Jasongraphix :: A journal of art, thoughts, and projects by Jason Beaird

Noisy Decent Graphics by Ben Terrett, a Graphic Designer in London

Positive Space :: The Graphic Design Blog

Spoon Graphics – the personal project of Chris Spooner, a UK based Graphic / Web Designer.

Swiss Legacy – Graphic design and typography

The Dieline – packaging design blog

The Serif – Your daily dose of design inspiration

things to look at – plenty of images, and oddly, things to look at

Type for you. A blog on typography, by Pedro Serrão, a graphic designer from Porto, Portugal.

TypeNeu dedicated to typography, fonts, lettering and typefaces

PR 4 blogs

AdGoodness – advertising and design blog from Frederik Samuel

Numbers 51 and upwards

Andy Budd :: Blogography – based in Brighton, England

Computerlove – Connecting Creative Talents

David the Designer – don’t underestimate the knowledge this man has acquired (and don’t call him Dave)

Elliot Swan survived three days without the internet

FormFiftyFive – Design Inspiration – the pet project of designers Glenn Garriock and Jack Daly

graphicPUSH – “a sporadically but faithfully updated design blog”

Graphic Design Blog – graphic design, freelancing, illustration, advertising, web design

Laughing Lion Design : Graphic Design & Illustration Ireland

Lealea Design: Blogblog: Design inspiration and introspection

Luz Cannon: The Work of David Brooks : Designer, Photographer and Audio Producer

NOTCOT.ORG – for your ideas + aesthetics + amusement.

Randa Clay Design – Design, Marketing, Blogging, Branding and all things Creative

SeptemberIndustry | a showcase of the best in international graphic design

SonSpring | Journal by Nathan Smith

Swiss Cheese and Bullets by Daniel Gray

We Made This (It’s Our Blog)

Your Brain on Design: A Graphic Design Blog | Leslie Tane Design

PR 3 blogs

gradient dropshadow curve – by Henry Tapia

Just Creative Design – personal blog of Jacob Cass, a graphic designer in Australia

Truly Ace – Graphic Design Blog

Tutorial Blog – Design Articles and Tutorials

Filed under: Designs

INFORMATION OVERLOAD

frewon9 — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 00:57:51 +0000

Understanding Information Overload

Information Overload is an increasing problem both in the workplace, and in life in general. Those that learn to deal with it effectively will have a major advantage in the next few years.

Information Overload is when you are trying to deal with more information than you are able to process to make sensible decisions. The result is either that you either delay making decisions, or that you make the wrong decisions.

It is now commonplace to be getting too many e-mails, reports and incoming messages to deal with them effectively.

How things have changed. Once information was a precious commodity, jealously guarded by the elite who deliberately withheld it from the masses in order to keep them in their place. Now information is everywhere, available to everybody, all of the time. While the democratization of information is undoubtedly a force for good, is there such a thing as too much information? And, who is verifying the information? Does something become true just because it has been written?

The Information Overload Age

The first recorded use of the phrase “information overload” was used by the futurologist Alvin Toffler in 1970, when he predicted that the rapidly increasing amounts of information being produced would eventually cause people problems.

Although people talk about “living in the information age,” written information has been used for thousands of years. The invention of the Printing Press a few hundred years ago made it possible to distribute written information to large amounts of people. However, it is only with the advent of modern computers that the ability to create, duplicate and access vast amounts of information has created Information Overload amongst the general population.

The root of the problem is that, although computer processing and memory is increasing all the time, the humans that must use the information are not getting any faster. Effectively, the human mind acts as a bottleneck in the process.

No issue has been more affected by the explosion of information than health. A 2009 study reported that 61 percent of all Americans currently look online for health information, a figure up from 25 percent in the year 2000. More and more patients are going to their doctors having already researched their symptoms on the Internet, and already convinced of their own diagnosis. What is more, doctors are also increasingly turning to the Internet, with nearly half of doctors reporting using the notoriously inaccurate Wikipedia as a source of medical information. Interestingly, despite their enthusiasm for Wikipedia as a source of information, around only 10% of the physicians surveyed actually created new posts or editing existing entries, which is surprising when you consider that these are the very people best qualified for the task.

So, just how reliable is all this information? A study from The Annals of Pharmacotherapy compared drug information from Wikipedia with the Medscape Drug Reference (MDR), the largest online drug reference designed for practicing physicians and reviewed by pharmacists. Researchers found that Wikipedia was able to answer less than half the drug information questions answered by MDR (40.0% vs. 82.5%), Wikipedia was rated 0% for information on dosing, compared with 90% for MDR, and answers on Wikipedia were 76.0% complete, compared with 95.5% complete on MDR. Errors of omission were also much higher on Wikipedia (48 in total) than MDR (just 14).

As well as the danger of inaccurate information on Wikipedia, there is some evidence that pharmaceutical companies have intentionally tried to delete or modify Wikipedia entries that have mentioned adverse effects associated with their drugs.

The irony is, that as the amount of information available grows, and people try to find ways to pick the reliable sources from the rest, it is the ‘old fashioned’ media that may ultimately provide the path through this minefield. As people are burnt by unreliable information from unknown, or discredited, sources, they may begin to go back to the names they know and trust. The traditional newspapers and broadcasting networks may yet benefit from the this age of information, particularly in the critical area of healthcare.

Not “Sensory Overload”

Information Overload needs to be differentiated from “Sensory Overload.” This is when your mind is bombarded with images, sounds and sensations that overload the brain.

The brain can actually handle tens of millions of signals from our senses every second. Think of the number of light sensors within the eye, and equate this to the resolution of a digital camera (and the corresponding file size of the photos it produces). Then include the thousands of touch-sensitive areas of the body, and the range of our hearing. But we can still deal with all of this, because the brain has had tens of millions of years of evolution to deal with this.

Compare those tens of millions of years to the few thousand years we’ve been dealing with information such as talking and writing. Our brains are still learning to deal with this, so we can only process a very small amount of it at a time.

Causes

Information Overload is now commonplace in offices around the World. Some of the causes include:

The widespread access to the Web
The ease of sending e-mail messages to large numbers of people
As information can be duplicated for free, there is no variable cost in producing more copies – people send reports and information to people who may need to know, rather than definitely need to know.
Poorly created information sources (especially online), which:
- are not simplified or filtered to make them shorter
- are not written clearly, so people have to spend more time understanding them
- contain factual errors or inconsistencies – requiring further research

How the Problem Spreads

In an office, the problem of Information Overload spreads like a virus. If one person is suffering information overload, they tend not to process the information they are handling very well. Rather than summarising a report or document, they just pass on the whole thing to everyone in the office.

Now, the rest of the office must wade through 80 pages to find the few key pieces of information that are relevant to their jobs and the decisions they need to make.

Solutions

Although there is no simple solution to the problem of Information Overload, there are some things that can be done to reduce the problem.

These include:

Spending less time on gaining information that is nice to know and more time on things that we need to know now.
Focusing on quality of information, rather than quantity. A short concise e-mail is more valuable than a long e-mail.
Learning how to create better information (this is what Infogineering is about). Be direct in what you ask people, so that they can provide short precise answers.
Single-tasking, and keeping the mind focused on one issue at a time.
Spending parts of the day disconnected from interruptions (e.g. switch off e-mail, telephones, Web, etc.) so you can fully concentrate for a significant period of time on one thing.

References

Clauson, K., Polen, H., Boulos, M., & Dzenowagis, J. (2008)

Filed under: I.J. (Information Mix)

Synersign Project

frewon9 — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 06:51:12 +0000

See Link: Synersign Service

Filed under: Synersign Project