Scott Berkun kadert designers falen in met: “I’ve learned it’s rare to find a designer who can point to the finished product and say, “This is exactly all that I hoped it would be.””. Met andere woorden, veel designers ervaren dat het eindproduct zelden overeenkomt met het beeld dat zij voor ogen hadden. Berkun deed vorig jaar een onderzoek onder 389 respondenten: o.a. 33% Designers, 16,5% Projectmanager, 11,8% Programmeurs/testers, 9,5% Usability engineers, 6,9% Groepsmanagers.
The top 15 issues, ranked by average scores were:
People in non-design roles making design decisions 4.18 Managers making design decisions w/o design training 4.14 Designers don’t seek enough data before designing 3.92 No time is provided for long term thinking 3.81 Not receptive to critical feedback 3.69 Lack of awareness of the business fundamentals 3.66 Only lip-service is paid to “User centered design” 3.64 It’s never made safe to fail or experiment 3.62 Designer’s power diluted by too many cooks 3.60 Over-reliance on one kind of design style 3.54 Poor collaboration skills 3.51 Poor persuasion / idea pitching skills 3.49 Poor communication skills 3.49 Poor understanding of domain 3.48 Pressure to use first solution, not a good solution 3.45 Big Ego / Expects others to cater to their whims 3.41 Conclusions
- Many top reasons for failure are not typically considered design issues, such as collaboration skills, persuasion skills, and receiving critical feedback.
- General consensus on top issues: managers, non-managers, designers and non-designers all had highly similar scores.
- Nearly half of all respondents took time to write in additional issues and thoughts. There was a great deal of interest in discussing this topic further.
Download onderaan het volledige artikel van Scott, het onderzoek als PDF of de presentatie die hij hierover op UIE13 gaf. Of lees een interview met Scott op Adaptivepath.com over het falen van designers.