Design should be a road. Design should be an envelope. Design should connect an audience with a destination and wrap them in a seamless experience. In short, the design of a work should be a solution to a given problem. Design should be the enabling device for a particular audience to engage, experience, and emotionally attach themselves to a project.
Design should not be an accident. Design should not be the path of the most options. Design should not be a second class afterthought. Design should not be driven by random audience opinion. Design should not be the culmination of a mob, no matter how apparently organized they may appear.
Why should we start with the keystones of audience and goal? First, they allow us to get something done.
Given an infinite number of options mixed with an infinite number of driving reasons, we will wallow in an infinitely deep bog. FLOSS culture cannot afford to waste effort and time. Defining an audience and goal establishes firm boundaries that permit creators to focus on the tasks at hand.
A second driving force behind these two keystones is that by clearly putting audience and goal first, we prioritize the most important part of any design -- the person. This is an absolutely critical component when it comes to creating satisfaction, emotional attachment, and adoption. In real world measurable dividends, this assures a healthy FLOSS project with a loyal following and the potential for colossal development.
While the foolish byproduct of ignoring these two important principles should be obvious to all readers of this blog, Mark Oldach summarizes it quite nicely:
Often a client presents you with a project or problem that has multiple audiences,Sound familiar?varied messages and unfocused objectives. This leads to confusing and unfocused design and the need for excessive text and complicated images. (This is, of course, always the designer's fault when it doesn't work rather than the client's fault for being unfocused.) Often the message contains too much information for the audience to even comprehend. A single communication piece can't be all things to all people. The more specific the message and the more focused the audience, the more effective the results.
-- Creativity for Graphic Designers
Oldach cites two important factors when defining a goal:
A single, clearly defined audience. It is difficult to persuade both a sixteen-year-old and his seventy-five-year-old grandparent in the same communication. Each uses a different language, lives within a different culture, and brings a different set of experiences to the situation.
A single message. If the message to be communicated cannot be distilled down to one or two sentences, you are saying too much. How much is too much obviously varies from project to project. A book can communicate a longer, more complicated message than a postcard. But as a rule, the message must be understood quickly.While the above quotations have been largely directed at graphic design, the overarching are also extremely relevant to more general design of interfaces and like areas. One could easily replace 'message' with 'goal' when it comes to designing a particular interface.
-- Creativity for Graphic Designers
In closing, I ask you, what are we doing with FLOSS design, and in particular, Ubuntu design? Who is our audience? What is our goal? If it biased toward aesthetics, what should the emotional resonance be in our audience? If it is interface or architectural design, what is the goal of the project / application / interface from the eyes of our audience?
Once we have considered both audience and goal, we will have restricted and limited our creative options available to us. This limiting allows our creativity to truly flourish with a clear direction. I'll leave you with the following quote out of Oldach's book:
Don't look at boundaries and parameters as limitations to your creativity. They actually narrow options to a manageable level. You can easily be overwhelmed approaching a situation with too many creative options available. Let boundaries serve as opportunities, but make sure they are fixed from the beginning.The next time you fire up an application, use an interface, or examine the aesthetic leanings of a FLOSS project, ask yourself:
-- Creativity for Graphic Designers
- Is there a clear intended audience or a hodge-podge of elements that might appeal / dismay several different audiences?
- Is there a clear message / goal / communication or a wash of tepid ideas / styles?
- With the above two questions in mind, what might help to further a project / presentation along? Who might the project / presentation be most useful for? What could the current design do to better serve that audience?
Let's start putting our audiences first. There are a lot of them out there.
Thanks again for reading. I am but the sum of your clicks.
7 comments:
But isn't Microsoft Windows XP operating system a proof of the contrary? That you can be successful with amoeba-design?
When I say design-by-amoeba, I speak of the culmination of a wandering approach to design. Not flexible design, but design without an audience and goal / vision.
Certainly elements of XP had a vision, but by and large, it too suffers from a distinct lack of audience and vision.
Success is a relative thing. I would also be hesitant to judge success by proliferation -- as with the case of XP -- it is hard not to be this type of 'successful' when you are distributed by default.
FLOSS should be the seed out of which the future of complete audience-driven computing is built. We have seen hints of this through the many customized distributions and projects such as the OLPC -- but we seem to hit a wall when it comes to the actual core development of features, aesthetics, and interfaces.
Here is a huge plus one to Ubuntu Christian edition, Muslim edition, etc. While they aren't there yet in terms of aesthetics, interfaces, and other elements to truly justify a remix, that is exactly the type of direction computing needs to drive toward.
PC is an acronym for 'personal computer'. Our culture stands on the precipice of actually making that an honest reality or disappearing in a puff of smoke following a 'we-don't-need-an-audience'. (You can probably find the KDE blog post that I am referring to.)
“... Here is a huge plus one to Ubuntu Christian edition, Muslim edition, etc. While they aren't there yet in terms of aesthetics, interfaces, and other elements to truly justify a remix ...” --> so you can target religious type X crowd as a one whole not taking into account their location, age, etc? (same visual interface for Christian grandmothers and Christian teenagers).
To me it seems that people are able to enjoy many things regardless of what $deity they believe in.
@k:
"so you can target religious type X crowd as a one whole not taking into account their location, age, etc?"
No. That would be exactly my point. However, in terms of overarching ideas -- the notion behind the off-the-cuff examples is extremely interesting, despite their inherent limitations.
I also would like to believe that it is this potential facet of FLOSS that proprietary operating system / software approaches cannot compete against. We should be looking at these sorts of derivatives as our strengths, and perhaps, as you say, extend them even further into customized audience presentations.
"To me it seems that people are able to enjoy many things regardless of what $deity they believe in."
Well that would be the company line peddled from Apple or MS wouldn't it? Again, they simply don't have the manpower, dedication, nor return on investment to see anything such as this to fruition, so it is wise if they avoid the discussions at all costs. It is even possible that they never even considered it. As much as some would dismiss the various distributions as bunk, I'd stand by them as yet the dawn of some of the most important computing innovations our culture has seen.
I'll offer up this link:
http://www.uigarden.net/english/global-market-global-emotion-global-design
(Fascinating stuff on that site, often translated from languages that I cannot read natively.)
Whether or not someone can function in an environment that doesn't meet their particular audience demographic is obviously not the question -- the vast majority of the computing culture has been suffocated with Windows dogma to make that clear. This has been the status quo for so long that the 'one size fits all' even deeply permeates the attitudes and opinions of our FLOSS culture.
The bigger piece of speculative fiction here is about potential futures. If we embrace audience driven design, where can we take this? How can FLOSS deliver computing experiences that the legacy dark age throwbacks Apple and MS cannot? What sort of granularity can we achieve regarding these audiences?
In science fiction literature we have often seen a cliched computing experience that magically morphs and wraps to the person harnessing it. With the distributed design ideals inherent in FLOSS, maybe this isn't such a far-fetched fantasy.
@k:
"so you can target religious type X crowd as a one whole not taking into account their location, age, etc?"
No. That would be exactly my point. However, in terms of overarching ideas -- the notion behind the off-the-cuff examples is extremely interesting, despite their inherent limitations.
I also would like to believe that it is this potential facet of FLOSS that proprietary operating system / software approaches cannot compete against. We should be looking at these sorts of derivatives as our strengths, and perhaps, as you say, extend them even further into customized audience presentations.
"To me it seems that people are able to enjoy many things regardless of what $deity they believe in."
Well that would be the company line peddled from Apple or MS wouldn't it? Again, they simply don't have the manpower, dedication, nor return on investment to see anything such as this to fruition, so it is wise if they avoid the discussions at all costs. It is even possible that they never even considered it. As much as some would dismiss the various distributions as bunk, I'd stand by them as yet the dawn of some of the most important computing innovations our culture has seen.
I'll offer up this link:
http://www.uigarden.net/english/global-market-global-emotion-global-design
(Fascinating stuff on that site, often translated from languages that I cannot read natively.)
Whether or not someone can function in an environment that doesn't meet their particular audience demographic is obviously not the question -- the vast majority of the computing culture has been suffocated with Windows dogma to make that clear. This has been the status quo for so long that the 'one size fits all' even deeply permeates the attitudes and opinions of our FLOSS culture.
The bigger piece of speculative fiction here is about potential futures. If we embrace audience driven design, where can we take this? How can FLOSS deliver computing experiences that the legacy dark age throwbacks Apple and MS cannot? What sort of granularity can we achieve regarding these audiences?
In science fiction literature we have often seen a cliched computing experience that magically morphs and wraps to the person harnessing it. With the distributed design ideals inherent in FLOSS, maybe this isn't such a far-fetched fantasy.
“... Here is a huge plus one to Ubuntu Christian edition, Muslim edition, etc. While they aren't there yet in terms of aesthetics, interfaces, and other elements to truly justify a remix ...” --> so you can target religious type X crowd as a one whole not taking into account their location, age, etc? (same visual interface for Christian grandmothers and Christian teenagers).
To me it seems that people are able to enjoy many things regardless of what $deity they believe in.
When I say design-by-amoeba, I speak of the culmination of a wandering approach to design. Not flexible design, but design without an audience and goal / vision.
Certainly elements of XP had a vision, but by and large, it too suffers from a distinct lack of audience and vision.
Success is a relative thing. I would also be hesitant to judge success by proliferation -- as with the case of XP -- it is hard not to be this type of 'successful' when you are distributed by default.
FLOSS should be the seed out of which the future of complete audience-driven computing is built. We have seen hints of this through the many customized distributions and projects such as the OLPC -- but we seem to hit a wall when it comes to the actual core development of features, aesthetics, and interfaces.
Here is a huge plus one to Ubuntu Christian edition, Muslim edition, etc. While they aren't there yet in terms of aesthetics, interfaces, and other elements to truly justify a remix, that is exactly the type of direction computing needs to drive toward.
PC is an acronym for 'personal computer'. Our culture stands on the precipice of actually making that an honest reality or disappearing in a puff of smoke following a 'we-don't-need-an-audience'. (You can probably find the KDE blog post that I am referring to.)
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