Understanding “Purpose”
At the top of the UXD stack is purpose: “Why are we doing this project.” It’s critical to understand as much as possible about why the project stakeholders want to invest time, money, and energy into the endeavor.
I remember reading a quote about ten years ago by Elizabeth Boling that stuck with me:
“Designer” does not mean “artist” – though lots of people want to think it does. The job of a designer is not self-expression, it’s problem-solving.
The better we understand the problem, the better our chances will be at solving it. This sounds obvious, but its very easy to get caught up in what we can do without thinking about what really needs to be done.
A great example of understanding purpose that I remember from the same era as Boling’s quote above was in Jeff Veen’s talk from the Adaptive Path UX Week in DC. He shared this example from the USDoA Farm Service Agency: Hay Net.
The purpose for this site couldn’t be more clear, could it? It’s a clearing house for people to exchange hay. You either have hay, or need hay, and the prominent links help you initiative such an exchange.
Things to consider for a site or application’s “purpose”
Here are a few items to jog your thoughts when considering purpose for a business site:
What product or service does the company offer?
Make sure you understand fully the features and benefits of what the company provides to the market.
How do they compete with this product or service?
Are they the cheapest? Are they the highest quality? Are they the innovator offering something that nobody else has? Understanding how they compete will help you craft the visual and writing style to support their desired market position.
Will the actual transaction occur online?
Many product companies sell their items online through an ecommerce site. But not all transactions are suited for the web. Typically, the larger the purchase price the less likely the transaction will occur online. If there isn’t a shopping basket involved, what is the next logical step you’d like the audience to take to move them towards an eventual sale? Seth Godin coined the term permission marketing to describe the series of smaller (and mostly non-financial) transactions that occur in the process of making a larger commitment sale. If you’re working on a project for a services firm or another company that has an involved sales cycle, I highly recommend taking Seth up on his offer to get the first several chapters of his book for free.
Understanding purpose will help drive successful design decisions throughout the project.
The more you understand about the nature of your client’s business, the better suited you’ll be for success. Keeping the client purpose in mind will help avoid resembling the quote we’re all warned by in Jurassic Park: “Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”
Geniant Joins EMC Global Services
Last week, Geniant was officially acquired by EMC, the global storage, software, and services company. Traditionally EMC was known for their large-scale storage solutions. Over the last several years they’ve shifted their focus to a holistic approach to storing, retrieving, and securing information.
EMC acquired Geniant specifically for inclusion in the Microsoft Services group of EMC Global Services. Not too much should change in the short term. As we get fully integrated with our new team, I’m looking forward to the best of both worlds: having the increased opportunities afforded by a global organization while still working inside a super-talented user experience / design group. Given the wide range of opportunities related to EMC products and services, there should be many rewarding projects to work on.
Interestingly, we learned during orientation that the “2″ at the end of the EMC logo is simply an ornament. It’s never pronounced nor included in text versions of the company name. It’s only used in the type-based graphic logo. Regardless, when seen it does the intended trick of invoking thoughts of relativity, intelligence, or Albert Einstein himself.
Mock Data Generators
As Dan Brown demonstrates on his “Representing Data in Wireframes” poster, the fidelity of your data can make a big difference in its ability to identify flaws early in the design process. The main reason designers use repetitive or otherwise lo-fi data is that it takes time and creativity to develop realistic data. Here are two tools that could help generate higher quality “dummy” data for your mock-ups and prototypes in less time than it would take for you to make up your own lo-fi samples.
Kleimo Random Name Generator
This web page uses data from the US Census to randomly generate up to 30 male and female names at a time. It has an attribute for obscurity as well. This little page can be really helpful for creating a realistic list of names. A random pop culture reference is fun to throw in every once in a while. But if your list of names reads like the credits for the Simpsons, you could loose some credibility with your clients.
Truly Random password and number generator
A lot of junk came back when I googled “random generator mask” trying to find a web-based application for generating random strings and numbers using a mask. Most of the hits were for Windows applications to generate passwords or lottery numbers. After trying several I finally found one that could be very useful for generating mock data. Solid Programs’s Truly Random creates random strings based on a mask you provide. The mask is useful for creating numbers to match the format of your data. The downsides to this app (it’s in Windows and its not very easy on the eyes) are outweighed by the power it provides to generate plausible data quickly. It costs $19 to register Truly Random.
I wish someone would develop a web-based app to deliver both of these tools on a single, easy-to-use page (see update below). If not as a web app, a Universal Binary would be nice.
UPDATE: Benjamin Keen’s Data Generator provides the best of both tools mentioned below in an easy to use online form. He provides many useful datatypes (phone/fax, names, custom lists, etc.) that should cover most of the needs I can think of. Many of the types allow masked options editable for custom formats (like a Texas drivers license or client-specific account number). The output formats include HTML, Excel, XML and SQL. Very nice work.
