From User Research to Design, Designing to Address a Problem w/o Solution Ideas

vladimir

middle brother

-gets a lot of downloads on his apps by targeting the needs of parents for his location app

-surveyed about features

sergei

oldest brother

-makes a perfectly coded and compiled location app, but hardly any downloads

ivan

youngest brother, the “fool”

-figured out what motivates location sharing in families

-observed and talked to parents and kids

-built different apps for different kinds of needs (teens check in voluntarily, little kids wear a watch for location tracking, heel click to signify emergency, glanceable status of kids)

convergent thinking

coming up with the solution to a well-defined problem and iterating on the solution to make it better

-example: Vladimir

divergent thinking

exploring the problem space and coming up with lots of diverse choices and solutions

-example: Ivan

take-aways

-a good interface requires more than just programming skills

-good designers conduct significant user research to understand the context and come up with diverse ideas

-convergent and divergent thinking are both important for innovative design

finding the right problem to solve…

-who is the target user?

-what challenges do they face?

-what current strategies do they use to address these challenges?

-what values influence what they see as an acceptable technology?

wrong questions to ask

-what solution should I build for you?

-what technology do you want?

-what would solve your problems?