Product Behavior

How do we know we’re designing right? How do we know our design is good? Is “good enough” for a client the same as “good enough”? Who decides if a design is good? Or bad? Is good-or-bad really the right scale for describing design? How does a company manage design “quality” across a small, large, or distributed staff of designers? What is design “quality”?

I like sushi. Just last night, I had a delicious rainbow roll and some spicy tuna maki from a restaurant around the corner. I’m no sushi genius, but I can appreciate the textures of the different ingredients, I can tell fresh from sorta-fresh, and even though it’s on the expensive side, made-to-order sushi is worth [...]

I swing back and forth wildly between perfectionist and that’s-good-enough-ist. Perfectionism is easy to explain, and many designers and engineers spend time there. But what does it mean to feel like good enough is good enough? When do you cross from “not good enough” to “good enough”? Often, companies find themselves in a morass of market requirements, regulatory requirements, goals, nice-to-haves, and wouldn’t-it-be-cools, without good tools for sorting them out.

One simple thing I like doing when thinking about companies, products, and services, is the Modal Verb exercise. It’s interesting to do it by myself, and interesting to do with other designers and with clients. It’s easy–just fill in these blanks.

I’ve been talking to a friend who’s thinking of launching a startup. One of things he’s considering is how to adapt the principles of the “triple bottom line.” The ideas is that the company is beholden to stockholders, but also other stakeholders, and that it will pay attention to performance not only economically, but also environmentally, and socially. There are many versions of this floating around on the web. One of the interesting things about this kind of thing is the way it mirrors the way “design thinking” considers more than just problem-solving in product design.