Not dead.
Busy.
And in my spare time –
I’ve been pondering several things. Firstly, what design, and the design process, can learn from account planning. I’ve had a natural affinity with planners for a long time, and I’ve come to the conclusion that a lot of “experience design” is actually just designers doing people-grounded marketing. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I’ve generally found ‘design research’ to be rather woolly, so I’m interested in the research and analysis techniques from advertising.
At the same time, how to blend user centred design, experience design and interaction design with agile programming processes. A lot of the dogma of interaction design is about big grand design up front. Time to slay some dragons.
Seemingly very different problems, but in reading around I noticed a key thought in both – “you act as the conduit of real users needs into the process… you are the customer”.
So, I’m looking for any thoughts, any examples, any learnings from anyone reading this. Does any of this work in design? Is trying to tie the two together along with a design process just too much? What is agile account planning?
Questions, questions.
Away from computers with lots of paper and books for a few days to think and ponder more. Will attempt to think this through in public, so everyone can help and see what works and doesn’t.
Sorry Chris, more woolliness from me – but I’d really like to hear what kind of research and analysis techniques you were interested in, if there was anything specific that you had in mind.
A colleague just sent me a presentation you gave on geo-locating a couple of years ago- the Internet never forgets!- and I found you here. I work as a “Strategist” for an interactive design firm in the States, and we’re all about using techniques from the traditional design disciplines to understand customer motivations and desires, then blending that with marketing/business requirements and a good dose of neat technology to make an effective marketing experience.
I think interactive got the jump on advertising firms because the Internet has always been a pull medium- you have to understand people and engage them to get them to hear your message, give to get.
I wrote a piece on this for Adotas that you might find interesting. (http://www.adotas.com/2007/02/the-compassionate-creative-calling-for-advertisers-to-let-empathy-and-insight-drive-design/- the mustache is gone)
Hope to see you around!
— Misha Cornes 2.11.07 #
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