My team during the interactionary. Photo by Wayne Sutton
Yesterday was World Usability Day, and the TriUPA held an event and an interactionary at GSK.
First up was the keynote by Dr. Anthony D. Hall from IBM. He talked about collecting and visualizing user data for web design, in particular ibm.com. It’s too bad we couldn’t sign NDAs before entering the room because he got into some real interesting stuff that he couldn’t really elaborate on. (Specifically his work with swarm theory and dive patterns of seals.) I also really liked what he had to say about amusement park and airport layouts as analogs to high traffic websites. I love that kind of stuff and it was gratifying to see someone looking at nature and external industries for design inspiration.
Following Dr. Hall’s talk, the interactionary began. Three teams, assigned randomly, were given a design problem to solve in 10 minutes… in front of an audience. The design problem for this year’s competition was to design a voting system for the 2008 election that allowed users to research candidates and also allowed them to recast their vote if the candidate they voted for wasn’t in the lead.
I’m not sure what the other teams designed (we were sequestered), but my team’s approach was to spend a couple minutes brainstorming requirements and then to poll the audience on critical function/design decisions. Some of the questions we came up with were: Do users want to vote at home or onsite? Do they want to research candidates before or during voting? Do they want electronic or paper ballots?
Two members of the team polled the audience and reported their findings to the other two (of which I was one), who stayed up at the white board brainstorming more questions and designs. About two-thirds the way through we regrouped to discuss the actual design and started sketching out the prototype.
Our design allowed users to research candidates at home and choose their top three candidates for any given office. This selection resulted in a bar-coded printout with their top three picks. They can then bring that printout to the voting facility to be scanned in. If their top pick isn’t in the lead, they can recast their vote by scanning in their second or third choice.
So what did I learn? I’ve been struggling with this since last night after the competition. The experience was great for stressing me out beforehand and excellent at pumping adrenaline through my body during, but I’m still sort of waiting for the benefits of a 10 minute team-based design competition to dawn on me. One thing’s for sure, the folks I teamed up with have graduated from the mingle-shake-hands-see-you-next-time sort to something more intimate and genuine. That alone made the experience worthwhile.
One Comment
Beck, thanks again for participating in the interactionary. I admit that we missed the “ah hah!” moment in the interactionary, and it’s probably my fault. The goal of the interactionary is to help make the design process more visible to non-designers, expose fellow designers to new ideas and inspirations, and to have fun. Since we did mixed teams this year, it was also to get to know one another better. I’m glad that we succeeded in the latter, if not the former. In a brief chat with the judges, I realized that we didn’t really get a chance to review the efforts of the teams. I think that bringing the teams up front and inviting a Q&A with the audience would have been a good idea.
You know, elections for TriUPA offices are next month, and as an officer you could help make the next interactionary even better