Design processes are a new concept to me in general – the first time I ever designed something was at my internship over this past summer, and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. The general format I followed there was what the rest of the team did – I created a document that outlined the project I was working on. This included providing context for the problem I was solving, existing solutions, and ultimately my implementation of my design. The first time I showed my document to my manager, there was a lot to change – many of the things that I had assumed people would know were things that had to be written down explicitly, and more examples were needed for how the design was going to work. I ended up revising this document about 4 or 5 more times before holding my first design meeting, where even more questions were thrown at the document. While I was able to answer the questions, it was clear that there was some things still missing from the document itself, for a new reader to be able to read it and totally understand the project, and my implementation.
There are a lot of parallels here to the scenarios mentioned in the book about building shared understanding. All of us on the team had similar, but not quite the same ideas about certain design features, and only by first writing them down, and then discussing them over meetings, were we able to figure out exactly what would be the plan going forward. A lot the questions mentioned in the meetings were also about the outcome and impact of the product I was developing, which is something that I had not really thought about at the time – I was just focused on making a product that worked. Therefore, a lot of the design refinements came in modifying the output of my project, and adjusting the scope so that I could maximize the impact of the project while minimizing additional work.
In the future, I think I can take a lot from the approach discussed in the book. I’ll start thinking about the overall scope of the project, and the impacts it could have on potential customers or users. Then from there, I can simply work backwards, and design a product that fits those desired impacts, at minimum cost and time.
