Category: Process

The responsive design debate was set in motion around a year ago, but seems to have reached something of a crescendo of late. Some commentary borders on the totalitarian, others’ input is philosophical, while some contributions attempt to navigate a practical way forward. Fact is, there is a veritable scramble to coin the phrases that will become tomorrow’s industry-standard vocabulary.

Designers are just plain excited about responsive design, and it’s easy to see why. We have arrived at one of those industry-defining moments which precipitates huge leaps forward in practice – think HTML 3.2 & 4, CSS2. You can perhaps forgive the piousness of some commentators. As new practices bed in, you can always rely on designers to get sanctimonious about how inadequate our practices were up until a day or so ago.

Get up, stand up

Exciting as it is, there is also a huge challenge for designers to step up, not something we have always distinguished ourselves by. As the mass-market web came into being, designers (by and large) stood idly by waiting for someone to make it easy for them, instead of just getting in there, learning some basic markup and meaningfully engaging with a new communications medium.

A shared future

Things couldn’t be more different today; a new generation of designers are falling over each other to experiment, test, share and move the practice of online UI design forward into a new era. This time the catalyst is not a new markup specification, but advances in hardware: a critical mass in use of web-enabled devices has been reached. The rules of the game have changed. Mobile access is no longer an afterthought, or a box to tick, it has parity with desktop and laptop access.

Papa don’t preach

The volume of the debate is rising, but those preaching too loudly or broadcasting their opinions on who is or isn’t doing it ‘right’ are demeaning themselves, and missing the point. We are all in this together. Our internal industry dialogue will continue and something will emerge from all this, almost certainly not in the form of a single proposal or approach. Thought leaders will get us in the general vicinity, but best practice emerges from the efforts of many, and continues to evolve, as we evolve both as designers and as a community.

The new reality

Subscribing to new thinking is one thing, but deploying it on a relevant, commercial project is another. I’ll readily admit to being right at the start of the transition and pursuing a trail-and-error approach; much preferable to breathlessly following anyone who screams they have ‘the answer’. Plus, attempting to stay ahead of the curve on this issue looks like the path to madness when even the originator of the term ‘responsive design’ has identified somewhat inevitable grey areas.

In conclusion

This is as fresh a challenge as we could hope for in our industry, and these are exciting times. The least helpful contributions to a discussion tend to be the most vociferous, but we’re off and running, on the road to best practice and the community will win. Let’s enjoy the ride and look forward to what emerges on the other side.

Wireframes are a pillar of best practice in any interface process, but what happens when they get in the way?

What happens when say, the client has no interest in them, or doesn’t feel empowered to take decisions based on what they see, what then? Should a principled designer hold firm until the client sees the ‘error’ of their ways… or alternatively, do we graciously step down from our pedestal and move on, acknowledging that adherence to an idealistic idea of best practice can occasionally get in the way of progress?

A quick reality check: clients know their business best, and will care most about that. They are not hugely concerned with what constitutes best practice for designers; they simply want effective results. In at least one recent project, wireframes became either a barrier to progress or a literal waste of time, completely failing to elicit the responses and decisions they were designed to achieve. And yet the “client education” card is played all too often by elements of the design community as the fix-all solution to allow us to work the way we would like.

Having have long since accepted that designers are not artists, and rightly so, we should accept also that we are not surgeons, or nuclear engineers. Call it ‘agile’ if it makes you feel better, but the fact is that our processes should be mature enough to accommodate a degree of compromise, and still produce effective outputs.

If wireframes can lead to a more effective end solution, then their benefits will be apparent to all and their use a formality. If not, then maybe, just maybe, they are not appropriate or required.

Investment in design services is a huge leap of faith for so many clients. While the ROI on considered and well-executed design might be a given to those of us in the industry, it remains a significant outlay for clients who already have budgets stretched to breaking point by many other aspects of their project. Heard through that filter, the sound of a designer labouring the benefits of wireframing might easily sound like “that’s just how we do things around here, although of course you wouldn’t know this stuff, being a client and all that”.

From experience, winning confidence is the most effective path to what we sometimes rather demeaningly term client education – and has far more value than that. Ditch the designer vocabulary and pretensions and earn the trust of your client. Once achieved, rather than having made your client feel slightly patronised, any project is guaranteed to run more smoothly.

Wireframes or no wireframes.

You don’t have to follow too many designers on Twitter for too long before seeing Moleskines touted as the ultimate in note-taking, sketching or idea capturing.

I tried Moleskines for a whole year – even dubbed it ‘the Moleskine Experiment’™ – using a week-to-view notebook, a squared notebook for wireframe thumbnails and a blank notebook for sketches.

After a couple of weeks in use however, for me they became… just another notebook. The quality of the paper became immaterial, the ideas no better or no worse for being committed to Moleskines. I also discovered something cheaper of comparable quality – the ASDA executive notebook (reviewed here and here) that offered a similar feel, quality and, if you must, “experience” that a Moleskine offers for around a third of the price.

Moleskines are a meme amongst some designers; you’re not a real designer until you’re using them, right? Don’t get me wrong, I’m no hater. Moleskines are more than pleasant to the touch and there’s no disputing their quality. They have managed to establish themselves as the Apple of the notebook world and for that, I congratulate them.

For the record though, the Moleskine Experiment™ ended with the conclusion that notebooks shouldn’t be that expensive. To paraphrase a previous post: if a particular brand of notebook makes you more productive, buy it. If you think it makes you more creative, you’re doing this whole design thing wrong.