Comments on: UIEtips: 5 Design Decision Styles. What’s Yours?

By: Hienadz Drahun

Hienadz Drahun — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 14:57:35 +0000

James,

37signals are getting user feedback in their own way. Instead of coming to users and asking them about the products, Jason is getting direct feedback from the posts on his blog. Is not this more effective?

By: James

James — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:27:05 +0000

Interesting read. Just to play devil’s advocate, is it possible that designing almost entirely by heuristics and instinct, as 37 Signals seems to, might be adding to some of the criticism they receive for being a bit aloof and arrogant?

I’m not criticizing their products. I love Basecamp. However, they’ve often been pilloried for not taking user feedback into their development cycle, and now they admit it.

Hmmm.

By: Aaron Irizarry

Aaron Irizarry — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 16:25:47 +0000

As much as i would like to say that we use all 5 types at the company I work for, more times than not we end up with #1-Unintended Design, I have been pushing for more user testing have actually used this article to speak to certain issues we have been having with user testing and pushing projects through.

Thanks for a very useful and great read.

~ Aaron I

By: Bobbyf

Bobbyf — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 14:18:22 +0000

We employ “Genius,” or “Seen-it-all-before” style when designing what we call “commodity” features- those features that have been refined over time and for which many viable design patterns have previously emerged. When designing something really “new,” or something around a product for which we have insuffucient knowledge about user’s behavior, we do contextual inquiry and other user-centered research activities to inform the design. We don’t do a lot of personas. Personally, I think they’re mostly unnecessary unless designing for a highly-specific type of user whose circumstances cause them to behave differently than the mainstream.