This is an excerpt from an essay I wrote about part of Bill Buxton’s “Sketching User Experiences” for a UW class that focused on user-centered design.
In Buxton’s view, quality design inherently requires considering the social and physical context of the end user. He feels that the power of a tool is not just in improving what we can already do. A tool can also be powerful by enhancing the user’s ability to communicate information to other people or interact with information in a more efficient or useful way. Buxton references T.E. Lawrence’s quote: “A problem properly represented is largely solved.”
Buxton feels that there are two areas of design where creativity can be expressed. The first area is the one that comes to mind for most people – the ability to generate new ideas. However, Buxton considers the process of discarding ideas to be equally creative and important. Choosing which ideas to keep and which to throw away requires defining the heuristics by which your design decision will be made.
Another definition of good design to Buxton is “compromise”. In addition to the wide variety of people who might use the tool which is being designed, a diverse group of people with divergent priorities are typically involved in its creation. Buxton feels that scrutiny by all stakeholders helps improve the final result. He believes that if everyone has defined, shared goals for the project, disagreement can result in a clear articulation of why one choice is preferable to another. It also helps people who implement the design understand why they’re being asked to do it via that method. Having a multidisciplinary group involved in the decisionmaking process increases the range of experiences and perspectives. Buxton points out that many great ideas are the result of taking a decent idea and improving it through iteration.
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