My Personal Vision

My personal vision as an interaction designer consists of three elements:

Delight Our Users
Collaborate
Build Expertise

Vision Element 1: Delight Our Users

I chose the word delight specifically to evoke the emotions of joy and wonder. 

Too often, we focus on the purely functional aspects of our product design.  Does our user accomplish her task?  How long does it take?  What blocks does she run in to?  What was her error rate?

Ask one more question… did she enjoy the experience?

I believe our products should engage our users so deeply that they would rather use our product than anyone else’s.  In fact, so deeply that they choose to use our product instead of doing something else!

Of course, our products should serve their purpose, but that is insufficient.  Delight our users.

I also emphasize that those who buy and use our products are not the users but our users.   We have a responsibility to them – all of us involved in the product, from conceptualization through the entire lifetime of its use, and even when it is replaced, discarded, or obsoleted.  If we think of them as our users, we will hold them dear and treat them right.

We should also delight our users in our relationship with them and in the processes we use to design and build our products.  Too often, we engage in adversarial, bargaining relationships, I’ll give you this if you give me that.   Partner with our users.  Develop products that they want, need, and love.  Be trustworthy and thoughtful in your relationship with them.

Vision Element 2: Collaborate

Collaboration jazzes me.

Everything important, exciting, or meaningful I’ve ever done has been in collaboration with other people.  I believe that when you get a number of brilliant, enthusiastic people together – each applying his or her own talents – and apply them to a challenging problem, miracles occur.

Very few things worth doing can be done entirely alone.

Collaborate with your friends.  Collaborate with your colleagues.  Collaborate with your users.  Reach out to people you don’t know, and collaborate.

It’s not easy to do well, but learn the techniques of bulding and facilitating collaboration, and you and your products will benefit.

Vision Element 3: Build Expertise

I want to be an expert. 

I don’t mean that I want to know more about everything than anyone else and lord it over them.  I simply mean that I want continuously learn to be really good at something, or a few things, and be able to converse with other experts in that area.  I want to feel a part of an intellectual community.  Learning as part of such a community is a joyous part of my life.

Sharing my expertise and helping others to become experts is also part of my vision.  I don’t want to hoard this knowledge; the more people that can be part of my community, the better.

I also appreciate the different expertise of others, and I want to learn from them.  My goal is not to better them at their own game, but simply to understand them, their talents, and where my own fit with theirs.  And maybe they’ll inspire me to learn more about thier areas of expertise.

Building expertise as a team, and applying that joint expertise to product design, leads us to developing better and better products.  This leads to delighted users.  What more could I ask for?

_______

This article was originally serialized on the following days:

22 August 2001: ERROR (Vision Element 1: Delight Our Users)
23 August 2001: ERROR (Vision Element 2: Collaborate)
24 August 2001: ERROR (Vision Element 3: Build Expertise)

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