Design Alternatives

Design Alternatives

When we've developed a good understanding of the needs of our

user, it's time to move on to the second phase of the design life
cycle, design alternatives. This is when we start to brainstorm how
to accomplish the task we've been investigating.
The Second Biggest Mistake
 The biggest mistake that a designer can make is jumping straight
to designing an interface without understanding the users or
understanding the task.
 The second biggest mistake though is settling on a single design
idea or a single genre of design ideas too early.
The Design Space
The Design Space
What Design Space Does
 When you open up a new project in Design Space, you get a
wonderful blank canvas to start creating projects.
Brainstorming

 Brainstorming is a group creativity technique by which efforts are made to

find a conclusion for a specific problem by gathering a list of ideas
spontaneously contributed by its members
 Brainstorming is a method design teams use to generate ideas to solve
clearly defined design problems.
 In controlled conditions and a free-thinking environment, teams approach
a problem by such means as “How Might We” questions.
 They produce a vast array of ideas and draw links between them to find
potential solutions.
Why Use Brainstorming?

 brainstorming provides a free and open environment that

encourages everyone to participate. Quirky ideas are welcomed
and built upon, and all participants are encouraged to contribute
fully, helping them develop a rich array of creative solutions.

 When used during problem solving, brainstorming brings team

members' diverse experience into play. It increases the richness of
ideas explored, which means that you can often find better
solutions to the problems that you face
How to Use the Tool

 You often get the best results by combining individual and group
brainstorming.
 To run a group brainstorming session effectively, follow these
steps.
Step 1: Prepare the Group

 try to include people from a wide range of disciplines, and

include people who have a variety of different thinking styles.
 When everyone is gathered, appoint one person to record the
ideas that come from the session. This person shouldn't
necessarily be the team manager – it's hard to record and
contribute at the same time. Post notes where everyone can see
them, such as on flip charts or whiteboards; or use a computer
with a data projector.
 If people aren't used to working together, consider using an
appropriate warm-up exercise, or an icebreaker
Step 2: Present the Problem

 Clearly define the problem that you want to solve, and lay out
any criteria that you must meet. Make it clear that that the
meeting's objective is to generate as many ideas as possible.
 Give people plenty of quiet time at the start of the session to
generate as many of their own ideas as they can. Then, ask them
to share or present their ideas, while giving everyone a fair
opportunity to contribute.
Step 3: Guide the Discussion

 Once everyone has shared their ideas, start a group discussion to

develop other people's ideas, and use them to create new ideas.
Building on others' ideas is one of the most valuable aspects of
group brainstorming.
 Encourage everyone to contribute and to develop ideas, including
the quietest people, and discourage anyone from criticizing ideas.
 As the group facilitator, you should share ideas if you have them,
but spend your time and energy supporting your team and guiding
the discussion. Stick to one conversation at a time, and refocus
the group if people become sidetracked.
Individual Brainstorming

 I'm going to brainstorm ideas for our problem of allowing

exercisers to consume books and take notes. So, I have my paper
for brainstorming.
Individual Brainstorming

 While group brainstorming is often more effective at generating

ideas than normal group problem solving, several studies have
shown that individual brainstorming produces more – and often
better – ideas than group brainstorming. [3]
 This can occur because groups aren't always strict in following
the rules of brainstorming, and bad behaviours creep in. Mostly,
though, this happens because people pay so much attention to
other people that they don't generate ideas of their own – or they
forget these ideas while they wait for their turn to speak. This is
called "blocking.“
 When you brainstorm on your own, you don't have to worry
about other people's egos or opinions, and you can be freer and
more creative.
Individual Brainstorming
Group Brainstorming

 You can take advantage of the full experience and creativity of all
team members. When one member gets stuck with an idea, another
member's creativity and experience can take the idea to the next stage.
 You can develop ideas in greater depth with group brainstorming than
you can with individual brainstorming.
 Another advantage of group brainstorming is that it helps everyone
feel that they've contributed to the solution, and it reminds people that
others have creative ideas to offer. It's also fun, so it can be great for
team building.
 Group brainstorming can be risky for individuals. Unusual suggestions
may appear to lack value at first sight – this is where you need to chair
sessions tightly, so that the group doesn't crush these ideas and stifle
creativity.
Rules for Group Brainstorming

 Brainstorming may seem to lack constraints, but everyone must

observe eight house rules and have someone acting as facilitator.
1. Set a time limit – Depending on the problem’s complexity, 15–
60 minutes is normal.
2. Begin with a target problem/brief – Members should approach
this sharply defined question, plan or goal and stay on topic.
3. Refrain from judgment/criticism – No-one should be negative
(including via body language) about any idea.
4. Encourage weird and wacky ideas – Further to the ban on killer
phrases like “too expensive”, keep the floodgates open so everyone
feels free to blurt out ideas.
5. Aim for quantity – Remember, “quantity breeds quality”. The
sifting-and-sorting process comes later.
6. Build on others’ ideas – It’s a process of association where
members expand on others’ notions(something that you have in
your mind) and reach new insights, allowing these ideas to trigger
their own. Say “and”—rather than discourage with “but”—to get
ideas closer to the problem.
7. Stay visual – Diagrams and Post-Its help bring ideas to life and
help others see things in different ways.
8. Allow one conversation at a time – To arrive at concrete results,
it’s essential to keep on track this way and show respect for
everyone’s ideas.
User Profiles
Personas
 The first common method we can use to flush out design
alternatives is called personas. With personas we create actual
characters to represent our users.
 the particular type of character that a person seems to have
and that is often different from their real or private character
 Personas are descriptions of individual people who
represent groups of users that would interact with your
system
 Timeline

Building on the idea of a persona we can take that person and

stretch her out over time and see what is she thinking, what
is she doing at various stages of interacting with our interface
or interacting with the task at hand.
After she decided to exercise, what did she do next? In theory
she doesn't just start right there. She goes exercise somewhere
she has kind of setup process.
Then what does she do? In this case, maybe she set ups her
audiobooks as she actually pushes play, puts her headphones in,
and so on.
 Scenarios and Storyboards

We can create general timelines or routine interactions with our

design alternatives, but it's often even more interesting to examine
the specific scenarios users will encounter while using our interfaces
The Purpose of Writing Scenarios and
Creating Storyboards after Ideation

 So, after running some successful ideation sessions and finding a

perfect idea that addresses the pain points, now is the time to
create some scenarios and storyboards to create a more complete
design solution, communicate the interaction and user experience
in a human-centered way.
Scenarios
• A scenario could be described as logical and real circumstances
created through words and text to understand how the design will
work in the real world and how will the users react during their
interaction with the product in a particular situation.

• It could also be described as a development of a story from the

users' point of view.

• As an example, a scenario could help to capture how would the

identified user or a group of users use the website on a mobile
device while making a purchase?
Storyboards
 The storyboards are a way to explore and illustrate scenarios
visually.
 It can also be explained as a sequence of scenarios illustrated to
explain, identify, and present the idea visually by understanding
the user flow.
 They help identify a problem that may come later while
prototyping, testing, and developing the idea.
 A Scenario is a description of a possible, imagined, and projected
sequence of events
 A Storyboard is an illustrative representation of how the scenario
unfolds
 Scenarios are self-created, workable, and flexible scenes created
to motivate "what if the user?" thoughts and storyboards are a
visual representation of how the users will interact with the
design solution.
 Scenarios and storyboards are techniques that help to connect
dots from the idea, to identify how will the idea work in the real
world. They create a bridge to explain the user experience in a
real situation through text and visual representations.