Here’s a question for my new readers* about design constraints:
A technique that I find incredibly useful at the beginning of a design project, is to start describing the ideal experience of this proposed product if there were not constraints. I’ll describe it in words, with sketches, or with recorded audio. If I’m familiar with the space, I’ll make a list of all the things that bug me about the solutions currently available. Most importantly, I will do this in a notebook and with my computer no where near me. Even in my sketches I try to show just how the user might be behaving and not what the interface might look like.
Too many times have I been burned by the desire to fire up Adobe Fireworks and start wireframing right away. I always seem to come up with a creative solution this way, but the problem is that I don’t consider constraints. Now I’m not talking about those “that’s going to be hard”, “that’s going to take a long time”, “We don’t have the man-power” constraints…but those brick steel wall constraints that make the idea nearly impossible.
So I ask, should I lay these constraints out before I start brainstorming? Sometimes I think that elements of my original idea make it into the final product, but other times my superiors think I’m being a turtle-neck wearing, hand-waving, time waster. What say you?
* I say new readers as if some of you having been reading this blog for years. In fact this is a brand new blog. I’ve been accused through email of posting an open-ended question as one of my first posts in order to get people to comment. Well guess what? That’s exactly what I’m doing!