The elephant in the creative room; When numbers drive change

More often than not, designers and creatives sit in rooms dimly lit by the light of projectors, viewing what must be an endless stream of PowerPoint presentations. Most can visualize this and immediately get the urge to gag. But the truth is for the average designer, projects begin and end this way. And unlike what school so often makes you believe, projects are not always ideal, not always perfectly defined, not always understood by all those involved and most importantly most definitely always not owned solely by the designer.

The progression of ones career yields two possible paths, the ability to self construct a structural system that lets you thrive as a sole entity ( Freelance designer) or one who will likely be sharing the fruits of any labor with a group of similarly minded folk out to make the world a little prettier(in-house or design firm designer). In both cases the giant elephant will most likely make the unfortunate appearance and shatter any hope of having a project that not only will run perfectly smoothly but most likely contain a series of caveats as to how it needs to be solved and why it needs to be solved that way.

The advent of data gathering and data mining has been an incredible tool in gaining insight into how people think. Most specifically when it comes to design. Opinions and surveys and user experience tests among many others, have become beacons of guiding light in solving design problems for the common average man. Average being the key word.

This notion, that we can take group responses to experiences, convert them into data that can later be mined and then rearranged so that a project manager can prop them on a presentation up on a screen and tell us designers how to solve the problem based on the critical and sometimes not so critical analysis of the data is one of the biggest drawbacks to acquiring this knowledge.

User experience design as its name states, is about the user, and trying to design for the user without any feedback is kind of pointless. But can a certain amount of numbers piled together help or hurt the process of trying to make the final experience better?

I ask because lately I seem to stumble of the idea of the user driving the change. And more often than not I don’t necessarily think its the user, but more a series of focus groups that allow experiences to be condensed to yes and no answers and result in metrics that suggest right and wrong. Perhaps there are degrees of user feedback, and the more sublime type of commentary may be lost when the results get simplified for easier consumption. At some point my fear is as a designer, that if you create an environment that will allow a user to interact with it, when do you stop making the decisions as to what needs to change, an when do you hand over the reigns to your users who are the day to day advocates of your service or site? Does it happen as soon as they voice a concern, does it happen before ? And if you provide a medium by which they can contribute, how much is noise and how much becomes key to the development and progress of the product ?

Successful brands have managed to balance the input from multiple sources and retain some of that creative and visual freedom that all designers need and want. But when you have a large team of people making sure that the product you are aligned with is producing, sometimes the design fall by the way side, it means you address the needs of your user based on what the product managers and business goals tell us to do and whats going to make that product more profitable.

Can designers achieve an internal peace by solving for the numbers and the users, and still make an educated and well designed decision? Is the job that we were all hired for not the sole reason why we can make a certain amount of executive decisions without having to vet them through a circus of polls by users and focus groups? Do you not go with gut instinct and then test that vs more conventional things rather than spitting a slew of solutions for the sake of addressing every possible need of a vocal client or user?

I am not quite sure, but at some point there is a line that can’t be crossed. That point happens when you cease to be the one puting forth the idea and letting it evolve and instead it becomes a game of catering to the lowest possible appeal, because that is where the average person manages to connect. Is it in the best interest of the user to aim for a higher level of quality and then expect them to educatethemselves and reach the balance of great product great experience? Again im not sure, all I know for certain is that quality deserves attention, and everyone is best served when that quality is at its highest, regardless of the fact that people will undoubtedly struggle, it seems weak to take the road that is simpler, just so that the people who will have problems with many things in this life, get a product catered to them as opposed to the people who seek excellence.

I will end with a quote from one of my favorite shows, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip ( prematurely cancelled) and one that has been actually used multiple times by Aaron Sorkin writer and creator of this and many marvelous shows.

Jordan McDeere ( Played by Amanda Peet)

“I’ll tell you what I do believe. I believe that the people who watch television shows aren’t dumber than the people who make television shows. I believe that quality is not anathema to profit.”