"I am not a fan of"….
Blog
Intentionality
Evidence
Language
In design school, I had this professor..
Mondays meant design critiques. Now, this professor wasn't a design expert; she taught narratives and interactive storytelling. There was one thing I found eccentric about her - her hostility towards the word "Intuitive" - first class she herself warned us to not use it, or we be ready for her wrath.
The word was banned for its lack of specificity. If "intuitive" was off-limits, imagine if we said something like "good," "bad," "nice," or, of course, "not a fan of."
Four years later…
"Intuitive" is still fine, but "I like" and "I am not a fan of" is infuriating. It is infuriating because..It's not an evidence, it's not scientific, it's downright lazy. And it's not helpful to the person seeking feedback and vice versa.
If the guiding force is our likes & dislikes then the critique has right there ended because we've put the person seeking feedback in a very uncomfortable position where they would not feel comfortable questioning your likes and dislikes.
Starting point is we should at least get rid of the following words from our dictionary, while giving someone design feedback or explaining your decisions.
Thinking out loud: Here is what we should do.
1
Just ban the following, these are absolutely unhelpful things to say both for the person seeking feedback and people present in the room.
It looks good
I am not a fan of
I like..
I would prefer ..
Modern
Minimal
Simple
Easy
Clunky
2
Focus on "what will a person think and feel if they see this"
I was working on this project where we had fewer ways to test prototypes, and I remember resorting to cognitive principles and meta-thinking. I was weighing my decisions against these principles.
In that whole process, I realised how we describe something depends on what we see, how we see, and those in return are a reflection of our own experiences, thoughts, knowledge and way of doing things.
Imagine a person that has never seen a donkey but they know of horses, when they see a donkey for the first time they will describe it as a type of horse, another person who knows about donkeys would call it a donkey, but if they had a zoologist next to them they would say "The 1st person is not completely wrong, it's a donkey but like horses, zebras they belong to the same genus called Equus."
Design is science, or scientific approximation.
If it's something else other than science, it shows in the language.
3
There is just one thing and one thing only at the core :
what is our design borrowing from our user's cognition and physiology, for the design to work.
What is the bare minimum user will have to lend, for our solution to work.
What is it "costing the user during and after the interaction."
Borrowed Element
Cost of Interaction
Cost After Interaction
Spatial Perception
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Visual Perception
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Sense of Touch
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Differentiation ( Size, Shape, Color )
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Recognition of Printed Words
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Problem Solving
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4
Ask questions!
What's the rationale behind using "grey background" ?
What's the rationale behind the "putting these fields into the right column"?
Has this been tested?
Or referred to any existing studies?
5
Practice
I have noticed when I don't have to justify the design in words to someone else for a long time, I start losing the language. While designing I have definitely internalised the principles : "this doesn't look visually grouped together" or I don't know where to focus, but if I have to describe it to someone else I struggle finding the exact words. Preciseness needs to be practiced everyday otherwise anyone can lose it however good they are at designing.