It seems that people just take design at face value and it doesn’t help that we’re saturated with so-called designers who are simply glorified graphic artists equipped with Photoshop and Frontpage. Think of all these traditional print companies that decided to hop onto the Internet wagon. “Yeah, of course we know the Internet… It’s great! Check out this spinning logo. Isn’t that amazing? Yeah, of course you can have that as your email signature. I can make it blink too so you’ll really get their attention! We’re pioneers of this information highway, you know.”

I think some of the problem also lies in the fact that other trades have kinda appropriated the word to describe fashion and art, thus removing any functionality or problem-solving meanings that the word once had. Ironically enough though, when people think of design, not only do they think of fashion and art, but they also think of great product design like the iPod.

It would be rather silly to attempt to reclaim the word at this point — I don’t think a parade would improve things . However, Yahoo’s release of design patterns does fill me with some hope.

Designers, not design, are frustrated; and for good reasons. I say designers for the obvious reason that design hasn’t gone anywhere. It is just fine in it’s skin. What I believe is that designers are looking at and discussion the wrong problem.

Let me explain (your phase I am borrowing). My sense is that designers are craving meaning and voice. We have the difficult task of creating something that is essentially invisible. I was always taught that good design is transparent. Art on the other hand is quite different. It communicates ideas about the inner life of the artist-expression is a better word. While we can’t help but leave some traces of ourselves-a fingerprint-design is not about the designer. So we are essentially transparent and without voice.

However, this doesn’t have to be the case. If we could force ourselves to look to the past, just for a moment, we would see that much of the history of design involved ideologies and collective action. There where profound and meaningful ideas that were real movements, as we see in Art History. The Bauhaus is the perfect example.

So I am of the opinion that much of this is not our fault. Design education and the professional world have not encouraged nor educated us in other areas and outside disciplines. They have more and more promoted transparency. I also believe that it is our problem to solve, regardless of how it came to be.

We are responsible for making changes in ourselves and our knowledge areas. We don’t like to do this. We want to talk about design or why no one talks about design when the real issue is that we need to talk and learn about more than just design. More of this in an article I am writing for DWM. Again, Thanks as always.

By trade I am an applied experimental psychologist. By company title I am a human factors psychologist. Being an experimental psychologist I am intimately familiar with the value of testing participants (users), validating the study, and concluding only what there is evidence to back up.

Ideally, it seems that the answer to a question about a design decision should ultimately always be founded upon evidence resulting from a user study. I have yet to see ‘ideally’ happen. Let me explain further. I do have limited access to a handful of users, maybe 3 to 5. These individuals are used repeatedly, but not for design evaluation, rather for concept development. The design life cycle hardly completes a single iteration. The users are called upon (traditionally via email) as SMEs to help work out the details and develop the concept behind the interface, i.e. input on common usage, control preferences, expert ways of thinking about the domain, etc.. I then take that info and develop an interface around the concept. The interface is reviewed internally by peers and it is sent off to the developers. At best the design process can be labeled as BOGSAT and driven by the persona created from the initial SME interviews. However, that is simply an attempt to make is smell right by giving it some familiar terminology.

I am admittedly green, being that this is my first job out of school. Yet these are the resources I am working with. I have become frustrated, but complacent. I ask the design question of why, and realize that it’s only because I felt like making it look that way.

The reason that I stand for everything that is wrong with interface design is because I recognize the mistakes being made, but because I don’t know how to correct them I continue making them not under the guise of ignorance, but with an almost accepted intentionality.

How does one work towards being in a position to ask design questions and feel comfortable with the answers?