Seven Resolutions for 2006

by The Adaptive Path Team

January 10, 2006

Each year the Adaptive Path team chooses resolutions for the New Year. Here are a few of this year’s:

1. Perfect the wheel.

Mary Piontkowski

Fight the temptation to rely solely on best practices. The Web is still young, and its function is changing every day. It’s easy to create the same shopping basket, search mechanism, or navigation scheme over and over. Instead, plan time into project schedules to rethink solutions to common architecture and interaction design problems. We shouldn’t settle for a design that works well enough — we should strive to make our designs better each time. Let’s continue to search for new, superior ways of addressing common behaviors on the Web.

2. Empathize with the “bad guys.”

Brandon Schauer

In the user experience world we often paint customers as the poor downtrodden masses and businesses as uncaring oppressors. Maybe it’s just me, but most of the people I meet on the business side don’t have big fangs or three heads. They have problems with technology and complexity just like their customers. So in 2006, I’d like to extend empathetic design methods to include not just end users, but the business side too. Relating to both the users and the decision-makers creates a solution in the best interests of each.

3. Watch Global Technology Trends

Amanda Willoughby

Some say that when you travel you learn more about where you’re from than where you’re visiting. In 2005, I had the good fortune to visit Asia on several occasions. I worked on a project with a Hong Kong based client, and attended the Design For New China Markets conference. At the conference especially, I was both inspired and surprised by what I learned. As globalization intensifies, the cross-pollination of ideas will produce surprising new products and services. Corporations and academic teams are using technology more explicitly than ever to increase the standard of living and education levels around the world. Witness the $100 Laptop designed by MIT, and the work of IDE to end poverty through technology and micro-economics.

Exposure to so many new ideas and people in 2005 helped me step outside of my San Francisco-centric perspective of technology. My resolution for 2006 is to understand global technology trends, and then step back and see how our work at Adaptive Path fits into that picture.

4. Enhance the mundane.

Indi Young

Right now, a lot of exciting things are happening with interfaces, and it’s fun to apply new techniques to sexy projects like choosing a vacation. But what about more ordinary tasks? In the corporate, financial, medical, or academic worlds, the problems and the tools aren’t always so inherently appealing. While these areas can lack the glamour of travel, art, or entertainment, they present fascinating problems, and I want to design tools for them that are just as fascinating to use. I resolve to bring new enchantment and allure to the seemingly mundane tools that most of us use every day.

5. Draw more.

Dan Saffer

I have a master’s degree in design, and I’ve taken at least three drawing classes. I’m never on a project that doesn’t require some sort of visualization work. But when it comes right down to freehand sketching, I’m terrible at it, and I hate doing it — even if I’m the only one who will see it. I’m much more comfortable firing up InDesign and using the computer to do the hard work for me, but that can be a waste of time. I can do numerous sketches in the time it takes to render one clean example on the computer. A sketch only needs to convey an idea; it doesn’t have to be “just so.” But, perfectionist that I am, it’s hard for me to live with good-enough solutions. My drawings look so crappy compared to people who have a real talent for it. But next year, I won’t let myself fire up my Powerbook until I’ve used my designer-y blue pencils first. Practice, after all, makes perfect.

6. Get a grip on the new grammar.

Ryan Freitas

In 2006, I’d like to stop taking my users for granted. As a group, interaction designers have gotten comfortable with how people interact and engage with the interfaces we build. We rely upon a predictable set of behaviors, a grammar of usage, that we’ve come to think of as consistent.

Things are about to get a lot less consistent. The staid, easy-to-architect interfaces of the past are iterating and evolving. It’s our responsibility to pay attention to what works for our users, and pare away everything else.

I’m hoping to help define some new standards as they emerge from a huge wave of experimentation. Someone’s about to unveil a better shopping cart; undoubtedly, someone else will horrify us with the Ajax equivalent of a blink tag. All of this is for the best. The more examples there are, the better chance we have of seeing what works, and the closer we are to updating the conventions of Web usability. I resolve to spend 2006 observing the patterns in all this change, and see if we can declare some standards for documenting, designing, and building the next generation of Web applications.

7. Connect with the other side.

Chiara Fox

I spent some time this year visiting with folks on the other side of the metadata world — the data folks! These people understand data, they understand reuse, and they get the need for vocabulary control. But they don’t necessarily get the end user, or just how important the interface is. When I explain what I do as an information architect the response I always seem to get is, “Gee, I didn’t know there were people like you out there.”

In 2006 I’d like to see these worlds start to come together. Bridging the gap between IT and The Business is a tall order, but I think we can make inroads by raising awareness on both sides that the other not only exists, but also has something important to bring to the table. This means going to each other’s conferences, participating on list-SERVs, and sitting in on local events. This year, I want to be an information architecture ambassador.

The Adaptive Path team combines an industry-leading understanding of user behavior with a commitment to meeting the business goals of its clients.