Designing the User Experience: Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments more

School of Design, Northumbria University, Newcastle/UK      Designing the User Experience:   Creating Innovative Design  Software Solutions within  Collaborative/Distributed Design  Environments        A Thesis presented in part fulfillment for MA Design Practice  Itamar Medeiros 4/26/2009    Table of Contents  Designing the User Experience: Creating Innovative Design Software Solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments 6  1.  Abstract ..................................................................................................... 6  2.  Introduction ............................................................................................. 7  3.  Context Review ........................................................................................ 8  3.1.  3.2.  3.3.  3.4.  3.5.  3.6.  3.7.  3.8.  What is Interaction Design ................................................................................ 8  Designing the User Experience: Analyzing Interaction Paradigms ........... 11  Terminology........................................................................................................12  Interaction Paradigms.......................................................................................13  Networked Computing interaction paradigm ...............................................14  Designing the User Experience: Interaction Design Process ......................16  The Global Context for the Interaction Design Practice at Autodesk ........16  My Current Design Practice .............................................................................18  4.  Problem Framing and Research Questions .................................. 19  4.1.  4.2.  4.3.  4.4.  Creativity and Innovation .................................................................................19  Information Technologies that support Creativity .......................................19  Collaborative and Distributed Design............................................................ 23  Problem Framing: Distributed Design Issues .............................................. 25  4.4.1.  Design Methodology ........................................................................................ 26  4.4.1.1. Needs Analysis/problem clarification .......................................................... 26  4.4.1.2. Information Gathering/Research................................................................. 27  4.4.1.3. Ideation/Creative Thinking............................................................................ 27  4.4.1.4. Information Generation/Analysis ................................................................ 27  4.4.1.5. Evaluation and Optimization ........................................................................ 28  4.4.2.  Collaboration ..................................................................................................... 28  4.4.2.1. Cognitive synchronization/reconciliation ................................................... 29  4.4.2.2. Shared Memories & Meaning ........................................................................ 29  4.4.2.3. Negotiation ........................................................................................................ 29  4.4.2.4. Communication of Data, Knowledge, Information................................... 30  4.4.2.5. Planning and Management of Activities, Tasks, Methodologies ............ 32  4.4.3.  Teamwork .......................................................................................................... 32  4.4.3.1. Ownership and Commitment ........................................................................ 33  4.4.3.2. Shared Design Workspaces............................................................................ 34  4.4.3.3. Organization Incentives (Team Spirit, Reputation, Cooperation).......... 36  4.4.3.4. Roles and Responsibilities............................................................................... 37  4.4.4.  Knowledge Management................................................................................. 37  4.4.4.1. Design Intent ..................................................................................................... 38  4.4.4.2. Design Rationale .............................................................................................. 39  4.4.4.3. Design History .................................................................................................. 39  4.4.5.  Design Representation..................................................................................... 40  4.4.6.  Design briefs .......................................................................................................41  4.5.  Combining the Frameworks ........................................................................... 42  5.  Analysis ................................................................................................... 43  5.1.  5.2.  5.3.  5.4.  5.5.  Analysis Framework......................................................................................... 43  Presenting and discussing the analysis framework ..................................... 43  Identifying Issues and Stakeholders .............................................................. 44  Visual Records/Analysis of the Data.............................................................. 46  SOCIAL................................................................................................................ 51  5.5.1.  Challenges .......................................................................................................... 53  5.6.  POLITICAL........................................................................................................ 55  5.6.1.  Challenges .......................................................................................................... 59  5.7.  ORGANIZATIONAL ........................................................................................ 60  5.7.1.  Challenges .......................................................................................................... 63  5.8.  TECHNICAL ..................................................................................................... 64  5.8.1.  Challenges .......................................................................................................... 65  6.  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention ........ 66  6.1.  6.2.  Research Methods ............................................................................................ 66  Strategies for Intervention ............................................................................... 67  6.2.1.  Social Issues ....................................................................................................... 67  6.2.1.1. Opportunities .................................................................................................... 67  6.2.1.2. Strategies ........................................................................................................... 68  6.2.2.  Political/Economical Issues ............................................................................ 69  6.2.2.1. Opportunities .................................................................................................... 69  6.2.2.2. Strategies ........................................................................................................... 70  6.2.3.  Organizational Issues ....................................................................................... 72  6.2.3.1. Opportunities .................................................................................................... 72  6.2.3.2. Strategies ........................................................................................................... 72  6.2.4.  Technical Issues ................................................................................................ 73  6.2.4.1. Opportunities .................................................................................................... 73  7.  Hindsight Review of Interventions ........................................................... 74  7.1.  7.2.  Introduction of Reflective Practice Models through Design Journals...... 74  Establishment of Structured Mentorship/Partnership Arrangements.....75  8.  Final Remarks............................................................................................ 76  9.  Bibliography .............................................................................................. 77  10.  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model ..........................................89  11. Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting ........................................... 94  11.1.  Design Methodology: ....................................................................................... 94  11.1.1.  Exploring Solutions .......................................................................................... 94  11.1.2.  Needs Analysis/Problem Definitions............................................................. 94  11.1.3.  Ideation/Creative Thinking............................................................................. 95  11.1.4.  Design Methodology: OVERALL SCORES .................................................. 95  11.2.  Collaboration: .................................................................................................... 96  11.2.1.  Planning Of Activities/Tasks/Methodologies .............................................. 96  11.2.2.  Management of Tasks ...................................................................................... 96  11.2.3.  Communication of Data/Information/Knowledge..................................... 96  11.2.4.  Developing Shared Memories/Meaning....................................................... 97  11.2.5.  Collaboration: OVERALL SCORES ............................................................... 97  11.3.  Team Work: ....................................................................................................... 98  11.3.1.  Roles & Resposibilities ..................................................................................... 98  11.3.2.  Shared Design Workspaces ............................................................................. 98  11.3.3.  Ownership & Commitment............................................................................. 98  11.3.4.  Organizational Incentives ................................................................................ 99  11.3.5.  Team Work: OVERALL SCORES .................................................................. 99  11.4.  Knowledge Management: ............................................................................. 100  11.4.1.  Information Gathering & Research.............................................................. 100  11.4.2.  Consulting With Peers.................................................................................... 100  11.4.3.  Disseminating Results.....................................................................................101  11.4.4.  Knowledge Management: OVERALL SCORES .........................................101  11.5.  Design Representation:.................................................................................. 102  11.5.1.  Visualizing Data/Processes ........................................................................... 102  11.5.2.  Design Rationale ............................................................................................. 102  11.5.3.  Design Intent ................................................................................................... 102  11.5.4.  Design History................................................................................................. 103  11.5.5.  Prototyping/Simulation Tools ...................................................................... 103  11.5.6.  Design Representation: OVERALL SCORES ............................................ 103  12.  Appendix C: Contextual Relationship Maps ................................ 104    Abstract     Creating Innovative Design  Software Solutions within  Collaborative/Distributed  Design Environments  Designing the User Experience: A Thesis presented in part fulfillment for MA Design Practice By Itamar Medeiros* 1. Abstract  The current status of the software industry – where most products are globalized and the development is distributed through teams around the world, across different continents and time zones – poses a problem to interaction designers: *Itamar Medeiros, from Brazil, currently  lives in Shanghai (China), where he works  as User Experience Design Manager of the  Geospatial Platform Solutions of the  Infrastructure Modeling Product Line at  Autodesk®, and helps promote Interaction  Design as local coordinator for the  Interaction Design Association (IxDA).  Working in the Information Technology  industry since 1998, Itamar Medeiros has  developed several websites and  interactive media campaigns, both as art  director and, later, as creative director for  several new media agencies in  Pernambuco, Brazil. As an Information  Design specialist, served a two‐year term  as member of the Board of Directors of  the Brazilian Society of Information  Design, lead the Design Research team of  the Hypermedia Lab at the Universidade  Federal de Pernambuco, and held a  lecturing position as Assistant Program  Director of the Visual Communication  Department at Raffles Design Institute,  Shanghai. Since 2001 has been teaching  on Human‐Computer Interaction (HCI) and  Hypermedia in Design and Information  Systems undergraduate programs, as well  in some graduate studies departments.  knowledge and expertise of all parties involved must be exploited, no matter how these parties are distributed geographically and organizationally. In this project, we’ve analyzed the current interaction design processes and methodologies at Autodesk® by reviewing the development cycle of one product, contrasting it with current research findings in the field of collaborative/distributed design, identity areas for improvement and propose strategies for supporting creativity and innovation in this process. A number of interventions were proposed, and some considerations were made based on a hindsight review of strategies implemented to improve processes. Introduction  2. Introduction  As an User Experience Design Manager for Autodesk® – world's leading design software and digital content, and proud producer of successful products like AutoCAD®, 3Ds Max® and Maya® – I’m interested in understanding how to design interfaces of software that would help our customers be more creative and foster innovation. The challenges are many: first, given the nature of the software we design, a better understanding of the nature of creativity and the processes that underpin it are needed in order to be able to make contributions to the design of creativity support tools (Johnson & Carruthers, 2006). Second, given the current status of the software industry – where most products are globalized and the development is distributed through teams around the world, across different continents and time zones – and the networked computing interaction paradigm with which our designers have to work on, we must learn to exploit the knowledge and expertise of all parties in the design team, no matter how distributed geographically and organizationally these parties might be (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). This distributed/collaborative design process is relatively complex, and often results in various conflicts due to technical and social factors (Lu, Cai, Burkett, & Udwadia, 2000). Therefore, to understand the relationships between design process and design conflict is critical to improve the collaborative design productivity. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 7  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  3. Context Review  3.1. What is Interaction Design  “Interface” has become a trendy (and lucrative) concept over the last several years – a phenomenon that is largely attributed to the introduction of the Apple Macintosh 1 . When we think of humancomputer interfaces today, we are likely to visualize icons and menu bars, or perhaps command lines and blinking cursors. But it wasn’t always so (Laurel, 1999). In the first decades of computer-software development, technically oriented programmers designed text editors, programming languages, and applications for themselves and their peers. The substantial experience and motivation for these users meant that complex interfaces were acceptable and even appreciated. Now, the user population for mobile phones, instant messaging, e-business, and digital libraries is so vastly different from the original that programmers’ intuitions may not be appropriate (Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2005). The role of user-friendly software has become more important. In fact, a program's "look and feel" could be its most important, marketable factor today (Bordoloi, Ilami, Peter P. Mykytyn, & Mykytyn, 1996). Corporate marketing and customer-assistance departments are becoming more aware of the importance of usability (Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2005). 1  Macintosh, commonly shortened to Mac, is a brand name which covers  several lines of personal computers designed, developed, and marketed by  Apple Inc. The Macintosh was introduced on January 24, 1984; it was the first  commercially successful personal computer to feature a mouse and a  graphical user interface rather than a command‐line interface (Wikipedia,  2009).  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 8  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  Software developers and designers started to realize the need of a highly specialized discipline to mind the user experience 2 , called interaction design. According to Dan Saffer (Saffer, 2006): “Back in 1990, Bill Moggridge 3 , a principal of the design firm IDEO, realized that for some time he and some of his colleagues had been creating a very different kind of design. It wasn’t product design exactly, but they were definitely designing products. Nor was it communication design, although they used some of that discipline’s tools as well. It wasn’t computer science either, although a lot of it had to do with computers and software. No, this was something different. It drew on all those disciplines, but was something else, and it had to do with connecting people through the products they used. Moggridge called this new practice interaction design.” Interaction Design strive to design interactive products to support people in their everyday and working life, creating user experiences that enhance and extend the way people work, communicate and interact. Often working closely with specialists in visual design, information architecture, industrial design, user research, or usability, interaction designers define the structure and behaviors of interactive products and services, and user interactions with those products and services (Preece, 2007). 2  User Experience: the overall experience, in general or specifics, a user,  customer, or audience member has with a product, service, or event (Shedroff  N. , 2006)    3  William (Bill) Moggridge, a British industrial designer, is co‐founder of the  Silicon Valley‐based design firm IDEO. He helped design what was arguably  the first laptop computer, the GRiD Compass. He advocated user‐centered  design process in product development cycles and also worked towards  popularizing interaction design as a mainstream discipline (Wikipedia, 2008).   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 9  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  Figure 3‐1: User Experience Honeycomb (Morville, 2004)  The success of products in the marketplace depends on the design of high-quality, engaging interactive experiences. Good interaction design (IxDA, 2004-2009): effectively communicates a system's interactivity and functionality; defines behaviors that communicate a system's responses to user interactions; reveals both simple and complex workflows; informs users about system state changes; prevents user error While interaction design has a firm foundation in the theory, practice, and methodology of traditional design, its focus is on defining the complex dialogues that occur between people and interactive devices of many types—from computers to mobile communications devices to appliances. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 10  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  3.2. Designing the User Experience:  Analyzing Interaction Paradigms  Design is a practical and creative activity, the ultimate intent of which is to develop a product that helps its users achieve their goals. According to Preece (2007): “Developing a product must begin with gaining some understanding of what is required of it, but where do these requirements come from? Whom do you ask about them? Underlying good interaction design is the philosophy of user-centered design, i.e. involving users throughout development, but who are the users? Will they know what they want or need even if we can find them to ask? For an innovative product, users are unlikely to be able to envision what is possible, so where do these ideas come from?” Heim (2007) proposes the 5W + H heuristic to define existing interaction paradigms and spaces and explore the elements and objects with which the user interacts: What/How – an in-depth understanding of the physical and virtual interface components of the various computing system (the what) is essential for the creation of usability systems. Where/When – computer systems can also be defined by their particular computing space. This can clearly be seen by comparing the desktop computing space with the wearable computing space. Wearable computing is a result of advances in the fields of mobile and network computing and has given rise to a new network space: the personal area network (PAN). PAN is defined by the user’s ability to access computing functionality remotely (the where) and at any time (the when), regardless of his or her physical location or even while he or she is in transit if desired. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 11  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  Who/Why – one should also consider the types of tasks these physical devices and interface components facilitate. These tasks define the reasons why we use computers. This does not disregard the fact that technological developments are often driven by the need to accomplish new tasks or fine the way current solutions are implemented. It simply means that current system facilitate certain tasks, which create particular motivations for their use. 3.3. Terminology  Advances in technology have brought a new range of computerassisted services to a large portion of the general public. Interaction architectures must now be designed for a greater range of human circumstances and a greater range of potential user. Let’s clarify a few of the terms used to describe these developments. According to Heim (2007): Information Space – defined by the information artifacts used and the content included, for example, a book and the topics covered in the book. Interaction Architecture – the structure of an interactive system that describes the relationship and methods of communication between the hardware and software components. Interaction Mode – refers to perceptual modalities, for example, visual, auditory, or haptic 4 (used in the literature to refer to interaction styles or particular tasks such as browsing or data entry). 4  The Haptic Modality is a composite of the Tactile and Proprioceptive  modalities: Tactile is the sense of touch and, of course, is very familiar to us.  Its receptive transducer is the system of nerve endings just under the skin;  Proprioceptive relates to the sensory information we receive from our  muscles, joints and body parts.  For example, close your eyes and raise your  hand in the air: you know where your hand is even though you are not looking  at it because the muscles and joints in your hand and arm are sending  information to your brain telling it the position of your hand (Hall, 1999)  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 12  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  Interaction Paradigm – a model or pattern of humancomputer interaction that encompasses all aspects of interaction. Interaction Space – the abstract space defined by complex computing devices such as displays, sensors, actuators, and processors. Interaction Style – the type of interface and the interaction it implies. For example, command line, graphical user interface (GUI) or speech. 3.4. Interaction Paradigms  Let’s look at some of the various interaction paradigms and their manifest in interaction spaces. According to Heim (2007), the principal paradigms one should consider are: Large-scale Computing Personal Computing Networked Computing Mobile computing Some of the significant manifestations of these paradigms that arise from the confluence of particular paradigms are: Desktop Computing (personal and networked) Public-personal computing (personal and networked) Information Applications Some of the convergent interaction spaces that have evolved in the recent years are: Collaborative environments (personal, networked, and mobile) Embodied virtuality systems (personal, networked, and mobile): o Ubiquitous Computing (personal, networked, and mobile) o Ambient Computing (mobile and networked) Designing the User Experience:   Page | 13  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  o o Invisible Computing (mobile and networked) Wearable Computing (personal, network, and mobile) Immersive Virtual Reality (personal, network, and mobile) Figure 3‐2: Computer Paradigm Diagram. Large circles represent principal  diagrams, and oblong shapes represent convergent paradigms. Words without  surroundings shapes represent specific system architectures, sometimes used  for a paradigm reference, as in desktop computing for personal computing  (Heim, 2007)  Since the development cycle that this paper investigates regards the Geospatial Platform and Server products of the Infrastructure Modeling product line of the Architecture, Engineering & Construction group of Autodesk®, let’s look at the various styles on interaction that the Networked Computing interaction paradigm involve: 3.5. Networked Computing interaction paradigm  Autodesk® customers – like many other knowledge workers – need to communicate and share documents with each other. They require access to corporate documents and databases. It is simply not practical or often possible to maintain individual repositories Designing the User Experience:   Page | 14  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  of corporate information; office and institutional PCs need to be networked. According to Heim (2007), the Networked Computing interaction paradigm comprises, by analyzing it through the 5W +H heuristic, of: What/How – networks may differ in scope (e.g., Personal Area Network [PAN], Local Area Network [LAN], Metropolitan Area Network [MAN], or Wide Area Network [WAN]) and connection modality (wired or wireless). There may be limits on the file access and restrictions on the network location, but the systems often allow for “user profiles” that customize the interface for each individual so that he or she can work in a familiar environment. Networking does not alter the “what” and the “how” of humancomputer interaction to any large degree: the user interacts with more or less the same hardware and software configurations available on a non-networked PC and in much the same way. Emerging technologies – on the other hand – are shaping the way that networks will be structured in the future and changing the interaction paradigms that will become common for a large portion of the networked population. Where/When – by enabling remote access, networks have altered our concept of where we use computers. We no longer have to travel to the office to access the company’s database; we can do it from any location that has internet access. We also can access networked resources at any time: large corporations with global locations (like Autodesk®) can take advantage of work cycles on different continents to create work flows that optimize office hours worldwide. Time constraints have been altered; “when” in now a more flexible issue. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 15  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  Who/Why – networked computers can offer more things to more people and, therefore, have expanded the diversity of the user population. Young people are spending increasing amounts of time playing networked games and instating messaging each other. Older people are enjoying photos or grandchildren who live far away. People of all ages and backgrounds with diverse interest and levels of computer literacy are finding reason to use networked computers, significantly altering the profile of typical users. 3.6. Designing the User Experience:  Interaction Design Process  In the best organizations, the techno-centric style of the past is yielding to a genuine desire to seek direct interaction with users during the design phase, the development process, and throughout the system lifecycle (Shneiderman & Plaisant, 2005). One of the basic tenets of User-Centered Design is that iterative design proceeds before all requirements are fully understood (Dix, Finlay, Abowd, & Beale, 1998).     3.7. The Global Context for the Interaction Design Practice  at Autodesk  Autodesk, Inc. is the world leader in 2D and 3D design software for the manufacturing, building and construction, and media and entertainment markets. Since its introduction of AutoCAD software in 1982, Autodesk has developed the broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art digital prototyping solutions to help customers experience their ideas before they are real. Fortune 1000 companies rely on Autodesk for the tools to visualize, simulate and analyze real-world performance early in the design process to Designing the User Experience:   Page | 16  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  save time and money, enhance quality and foster innovation (Autodesk, Inc., 2007). Innovation involves inventing something or finding a new way to do something. Interaction Design strives for innovation by creating new computer devices and interfaces or by improving the way people interface with existing technologies (Heim, 2007). Working as an Interaction Designer in Autodesk comes as both an exciting opportunity and a great challenge: as opportunity, designers can help millions of users to create novel designs, to be creative, productive, and enhance their experience. The challenges are many: first, given the nature of the software we design, a better understanding of the nature of creativity and the processes that underpin it are needed in order to be able to make contributions to the design of creativity support tools (Johnson & Carruthers, 2006). Second, given the current status of the software industry – where most products are globalized and the development is distributed through teams around the world, across different continents and time zones – and the networked computing interaction paradigm with which our designers have to work on, Autodesk must learn to exploit the knowledge and expertise of all parties in the design team, no matter how distributed geographically and organizationally these parties might be (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). This distributed/collaborative design process is relatively complex, and often results in various conflicts due to technical and social factors (Lu, Cai, Burkett, & Udwadia, 2000). Therefore, to understand the relationships between design process and design conflict is critical to improve the collaborative design productivity. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 17  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Context Review  3.8. My Current Design Practice  As User Experience Design Manager of the Infrastructure Modeling Product Line for Autodesk® in Shanghai, I provide coaching and leadership to a team of 5 interaction designers, who's duties include user research, interaction design, visual design, and usability engineering for Autodesk's Geospatial Business Unit based in Shanghai, producing computer software for desktop Geospatial Information Systems (GIS) and Web Mapping. These designers collaborate remotely with senior designers located in San Rafael (USA), Waltham (USA), Calgary (Canada), and Guemligen (Switzerland). Such collaboration supports the company on the delivery of business solutions through technology, products and services by: researching and validating clear and achievable interaction design specifications for the company’s software products, based on user input; translating customers needs into innovative design solutions; optimizing product usability, learnability and customer satisfaction; creating and documenting conceptual designs and feature specifications; Designing the User Experience:   Page | 18  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    4. Problem Framing and Research Questions  4.1. Creativity and Innovation  Autodesk believes that the power of innovative design serves to positively affect the economy, the environment, and society as a whole (Autodesk, Inc., 2009). According to (Kelley, 2001): Why should business care about creativity? Visit your local mall or trade show and you’ll see that creativity sells. We’re all searching for the next iMac or VW Beetle – any worthwhile innovation that captures the public’s imagination and strengthens the company’s brand. But many companies shy away from novel solutions. Moreover, they tend to believe that truly creative individuals are few and far between. We believe the opposite. We all have a creative side, and it can flourish if you spawn a culture to encourage it, one that embraces risks and wild ideas and tolerates the occasional failure. Autodesk drives awareness and increase adoption of sustainable design principles not only by delivering great solutions to our customers, but also by fostering innovation within the User Experience Design community by sponsoring several design conferences in the past few years through the world, like TED, UPA’s UserFriendly 2007, ACM’s SIGCHI, and both IxDA’s Interactions ’08 and Interactions ’09, to name a few (Medeiros, 2009). 4.2. Information Technologies that support Creativity  A challenge for interaction designers set for themselves while creating design software tools is to construct information technologies that support creativity. This ambitious goal can be attained by building on an adequate understanding of creative processes. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 19  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    The large literature on creativity offers diverse perspectives (Boden, 1991; Couger, 1996; Garner, 2001). Shneiderman (2000) classifies proponents of creative processes as inspirationalists, structuralists or situationalists. Inspirationalists emphasize the ‘eureka’ moment. They promote techniques for brainstorming, divergent thinking and lateral thinking, and advocate strategies that allow an individual to change their direction of thinking (Bono, 1992). They use a number of ways to visualize the problem, such as sketching and concept mapping. The playful nature of creativity means that software support for inspirationalists emphasizes free association using textual or graphical prompts to elicit novel ideas. Inspirationalists are often oriented to visual techniques for presenting relationships and for perceiving solutions. They would be sympathetic to information and scientific visualization strategies that helped users understand previous work and explore potential solutions. Structuralists highlight more systematic approaches (Mayer, 1992) and the use of methodological techniques to explore the conceptual space and to evaluate potential solutions. Structuralists draw attention to orderly methods of problem solving such as those described by Pólya (1957). These include understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan and looking back or reflecting. For structuralists, libraries and Web sites of previous work are important, but the key software support comes in the form of spreadsheets, programmable simulations, and domain-specific scientific/engineering/analytical/mathematical models. These software tools support “what-if” processes of trying out Designing the User Experience:   Page | 20  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    assumptions to assess their impact on the outcomes. They often show processes with visual animations. Structuralists are usually visual thinkers but their preferred tools are for drawing flow charts, decision trees, and structured diagrams. Since they favor methodical techniques, they are likely to appreciate software support for step-by-step exploration, with the chance to go back, make changes, and try again. Situationalists move from focusing on individuals to emphasizing the social context as key to the creative process. They see creativity as embedded in a community of practice with changing standards, requiring a social process for approval from scientific journal editors, museum curators, or literary prize juries. For example, Csikszentmihalyi (1999) sees three components to creativity: (1) domain, such as mathematics or biology, “consists of a set of symbols, rules, and procedures.” (2) field which includes all the individuals who act as gatekeepers to the domain. It is their job to decide whether a new idea, performance, or product should be included in the domain.” (3) individual person whose creativity is manifest “when a person using the symbols of a given domain such as music, engineering, business, or mathematics has a new idea or sees a new pattern, and when this novelty is selected by the appropriate field for inclusion in the relevant domain.” Shneiderman (2000) in developing his Genex framework advocates that software designers can create support tools that enable users to be more creative. The Genex (generator of excellence) proposal consists of four phases: Designing the User Experience:   Page | 21  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    Collect: learn from previous works stored in libraries, the Web, etc. Relate: consult with peers and mentors at early, middle, and late stages; Create: explore, compose, evaluate possible solutions; and; Donate: disseminate the results and contribute to the libraries. These phases also support the cyclical nature of the process in that dissemination of results should support future users who seek to learn from previous work. Shneiderman (2000) proposes that with careful design it is possible to combine inspirationalists’, structuralists’ and situationalists’ perspectives. Within this framework, Shneiderman proposes eight activities software tools should support: Searching and browsing digital libraries; Visualizing data and processes; Consulting with Peers/mentors; Thinking by free association; Exploring solutions (“what-if” tools); Composing artifacts and performances; Reviewing versions; Disseminating Results. Given the current status of the software industry, though – where most products are globalized and the development is distributed through teams around the world – would Shneiderman’s fourphase framework be well suited to support distributed and/or collaborative design environments like Autodesk, where we have over 30 product design teams spread into 3 different continents across 16-hours time zone difference? Designing the User Experience:   Page | 22  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    To answer this question, one needs to understand how these distributed teams collaborate: what’s working, what areas need improvement, and recommendations for future directions on how to have better collaboration between Chinese and Western designers. 4.3. Collaborative and Distributed Design  Globalization of development processes is based on the principal of making the most efficient use of resources possible for whatever task needs to be done. In product design, this principal means exploiting the knowledge and expertise of all parties involved, including marketing, engineering, design, management, suppliers, production, etc., in the design team, no matter how these parties are distributed geographically and organizationally (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). The same logic applies to software development In response to this increasing need to assist collective work in an information technology context, recent studies have shifted their foci toward cooperative work, concerning to the creation of new technical-organizational systems, which support collective work, greater interaction between design stakeholders, as well as capitalization and reuse of design knowledge (Détienne, 2006). Falzon (Falzon, Montmollin, & Béguin, 1996) has stressed out a distinction between two design situations according to the nature of shared goals: co-design (or collaborative design) and distributed design. In Collaborative design, design partners develop the solution together - they share an identical goal and contribute to reach it through their specific competences, they do this with very strong constraints of direct cooperation in order to guarantee the success of the problem resolution. The competence of the Designing the User Experience:   Page | 23  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    partners can vary depending on the level of competence (e.g. interaction between designers of different seniority) or on the type of competence (e.g. interaction between drafters and engineers). Design solutions are not only based on purely technical problem solving criteria. They also result from compromises between designers: solutions are negotiated. In Distributed Design, the actors of the design who are simultaneously (but not together) involved on the same cooperation process carry out well determined tasks. Such tasks having been allocated beforehand, and they pursue goals (or at least sub-goals) that are specific to them and have as an objective to participate as efficiently as possible in the collective resolution of the problem. Distributed design is typical for concurrent engineering in which the various sides of the production system must function in strong synergy during the product development cycle. The current practice at Autodesk seems to favor distributed design arrangements, in which junior designers collaborate remotely with senior designers located in San Rafael (USA), Waltham (USA), Calgary (Canada), and Guemligen (Switzerland), working in different tasks according to the level of their skills, and industry domain knowledge. Interaction design problems that need to be solved at Autodesk tend to be large and complex. They are not generally confined to local problems, and the variables and their interrelations are too numerous to be divided into independent sub-systems. In individual design, the division of problems into sub-problems is supposed to result in a reduction of complexity—often, however, design problems are difficult to decompose into independent subproblems, and different decompositions of a same problem are possible. In collaborative design – which can be viewed as a Designing the User Experience:   Page | 24  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    paradigmatic case of tightly coupled work (Olson & Olson, 2000) – this complexity produces great work interdependencies. Managing task interdependencies is an important issue on collaborative design (Schmid & Roddenb, 1996): actors engaged in cooperative work are mutually dependent in their work. ‘Being mutually dependent means that A relies positively on the quality and timeliness of B’s work and vice versa’. This has to be opposed to ‘distributed cooperation’ where operators share an information space but are not necessarily conscious of other operators work. Given the current configuration of the decision making process at Autodesk, which places the principal stakeholders – Product Managers, Software Development Managers, and Software Architects –either in North America or Europe, most managers try to minimize risks by minimizing tasks interdependencies, distributing tasks and co-locating the development teams when possible. The reality is that, although management can gain great performance benefit from collocating cross-functional product development teams, collocation is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve as companies globalize and form alliances (Smith & Blanck, 2002). 4.4. Problem Framing: Distributed Design Issues  Since the distribution of tasks has been identified as means of minimizing software development risks, let’s analyze the current interaction design process at through Distributed Design perspective. Lang, Dickinson and Buchal’s Cognitive Factors in Distributed Design seem an appropriate framework to start with (2002), which divides the design process through distributed Designing the User Experience:   Page | 25  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    teams into 5 areas, namely design methodology, collaboration, teamwork, knowledge management and design representation:. What follows is literature review of the cognitive aspects of the distributed design the framework proposed by Lang, Dickinson and Buchal (2002), and a comparison with challenges interaction designers face in their practice. 4.4.1. Design Methodology  The design activity transforms available information, knowledge, and expertise to construct a mapping from an expressed need to a solution. The transformation has been viewed as an iterative evolution of design from the abstract to concrete. Design problems can vary in type from ill defined to parametric. A broad range of activities may need to be undertaken with the major steps including (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002): needs analysis/problem clarification, information gathering/research, ideation/creative thinking, information generation/analysis, evaluation, and optimization. 4.4.1.1. Needs Analysis/problem clarification  The main problems with User Needs Analysis include the decision as to where to begin and where to end the analysis, deciding how to document and present the outcomes to ensure seamless translation into user interface design and completeness of the design. Existing methodologies – such as Contextual Inquiry (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998) – and techniques appear to be helpful in some, but not all aspects of the User Needs Analysis process. They all appear implicitly to presume well defined user Designing the User Experience:   Page | 26  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    roles and responsibilities, tasks and task procedures. (Lindgaard, et al., 2006). These assumptions are generally not met when designing novel applications, which is usually the case at Autodesk. 4.4.1.2. Information Gathering/Research  In any design task, information relevant to the task has to be gathered from a variety of sources. Information search strategies for designers are poorly understood (Kuffner, 1991). Gathering information is a more overt activity than it might be otherwise. Relevant information not only has to be gathered, but also extracted from its source and somehow shared among the team (Cross & Cross, Observations of teamwork and social processes in design, 1995). 4.4.1.3. Ideation/Creative Thinking  Design ideation can be seen as a matter of generating, developing and communicating ideas, where ‘idea’ is understood as a basic element of thought that can be either visual, concrete or abstract (Johnson B. , 2005). Johnson (2005) further suggests that design ideation is an interaction, or a dialogue between visualization (non-verbal) and language (verbal), similar to what has been described elsewhere as the language of design (Schön, 1983), the translation problem (Tomes, Oates, & Armstrong, 1998), or the picture-word-cycle (Dorner, 1999). 4.4.1.4. Information Generation/Analysis  In addition to the confusion about roles, responsibilities and tasks associated with User Needs Analysis, Interaction Designers face the serious problem of documenting and presenting the outcomes of the analysis such that they can easily be translated Designing the User Experience:   Page | 27  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    into user interface design and checked for completeness of the design. The contextual design methodology (Beyer & Holtzblatt, 1998) does do a reasonably good job of this via the affinity diagramming technique (Lindgaard, et al., 2006). 4.4.1.5. Evaluation and Optimization  Traditional product design systems use a sequential mode of design generation, which breaks a design task into a number of sub-tasks that can be sequentially executed in a predefined workflow. Recently, such a sequential design mode has been found to be brittle and inflexible. It often requires numerous iterations, which make design expensive and time-consuming, and also limit the number of design alternatives that can be examined. It may also cause insufficient design evaluation/optimization and hence inefficient product development due to the absence of manufacturability checks at the design stage, based on available resources (Shen, Hao, & Li, 2008). 4.4.2. Collaboration  Collaboration is an activity where a large task is achieved by a team. Often the task is only achievable when the collective resources are assembled. Contributions to the work are negotiated and mediated through communications and sharing of knowledge. It is worth noting that the boundary between teamwork and collaboration is not well defined. Successful collaboration requires effectiveness in a number of areas (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002): cognitive synchronization/reconciliation, developing shared meaning, developing shared memories, negotiation, Designing the User Experience:   Page | 28  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    communication of data, knowledge, information, planning of activities, tasks, methodologies, management of tasks. 4.4.2.1. Cognitive synchronization/reconciliation  Cognitive synchronization enables partners collaborating in a distributed design environment to reach two objectives (Falzon, Montmollin, & Béguin, 1996): (a) Assure that they each have a knowledge of the facts relating to the state of the situation - problem data, state of the solutions, accepted hypothesis, etc, and (b) Assure that they share a common knowledge regarding the domain - technical rules, objects in the domain and their features, resolution procedures, etc. Cognitive synchronization activities will vary depending on the amount of shared knowledge. This means in particular that the parity or non-parity of the dialogue (dialogue between pairs vs. expert/novice dialogues, or dialogues between subjects with distinct knowledge) will have an effect on the necessity to communicate general knowledge. 4.4.2.2. Shared Memories & Meaning  Developing shared meaning requires achieving a mutually accepted and understood lexicology, schema or language in which to communicate, despite differences in backgrounds (education, training, experience, fields, etc.) of the team members (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). 4.4.2.3. Negotiation  In a collaborative environment, Design is a process of negotiating among disciplines. Solutions are not only based on purely Designing the User Experience:   Page | 29  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    technical problem solving criteria. They also result from compromises between designers: solutions are negotiated (Bucciarelli, 1988). Therefore, it is important to establish common ground and negotiation mechanisms in order to manage the integration of multiple perspectives in design (Détienne, 2006). Negotiation is a vital part of collaboration (Sonnenwald, 1996; Perry & Sanderson, 1998), and computer tools exist that formalize and implement mediation and facilitation techniques to assist in the process. Communication remains a weak link for computer-assisted collaboration due to varying standards, platforms and versions of software between organizations as noted by Perry and Sanderson (1998) when communicating formal documents (forms). The difficulties are even greater when faced with trying to facilitate productive and natural communication between distributed team members as found by (S.R. Fussell, 1998) and (F. Penã-Mora, 1998). Scope exists for continuing work on facilitating both document and natural communication. 4.4.2.4. Communication of Data, Knowledge,  Information  Successful collaborative product design depends on the ability to effectively manage and share engineering knowledge and experience throughout the entire development process. No effective and practical system exists for capturing, storing, compiling, and retrieving design knowledge and experience in collaborative product design. This circumstance causes a bottleneck in managing and sharing valuable product information, design knowledge and experience in collaborative and distributed design environments (Chen, Chen, & Chu, 2008). Designing the User Experience:   Page | 30  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    Typical communications problems in design collaboration have been observed in previous studies (Chiu, 2002) are as follows (1) The media problem: design information needs to be conveyed, and the communication problem is related to how to transmit communication symbols precisely. (2) The semantic problem: the purpose of communication is the accurate conveying of information. The problem is how to let transmitted symbols carry their original meaning without interference from noise. (3) The performance problem: the problem is related to how to effectively receive meaning in messages and influence behavior as the sender wished. (4) The organizational problem: to reach the right persons for sharing expertise or ideas, design information has to pass throughout the hierarchy of an organization. The complexity of transmission is related to the scale of distribution. The last problem is far more critical to design collaboration in a large project than the others are. The transmission between two persons is easy, particularly by face-to-face contacts, but the transmission among multiple persons or between two groups requires coordination and management of information flows. When more persons or groups are involved, the communications become more complicated. Therefore, the implementing distributed engineering knowledge management, which not only supports design teams in various design tasks but also synthetically accumulates and utilizes corporate memory situated at various locations, is an essential feature of the most important task in collaborative product design (Chen, Chen, & Chu, 2008). Designing the User Experience:   Page | 31  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    Challenges in this area include knowledge discovery, support for natural language processing and information retrieval, the capturing of design intent in multimedia formats, dynamic knowledge management, self-learning, reasoning and knowledge reuse (Shen, Hao, & Li, 2008). 4.4.2.5. Planning and Management of Activities,  Tasks, Methodologies  The process of planning, managing and controlling design activities has been identified as a key requirement for the development of computer-integrated design applications (Fenves, Flemming, Hendrickson, Maher, Terk, & Woodbury, 1994). Planning of activities, tasks and methodologies as well as the management of tasks is quite a mature domain and many advanced commercial products already exist to assist in these functions, such as Microsoft Project™ (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). Prototype tools also exist as integrated parts of collaborative systems (F. Penã-Mora, 1998; Saad & Maher, 1996), including information communication means, real-time interactive tools, and threaded discussion services, etc., to support the coordinated exchange of information within potentially large user communities synchronously or asynchronously (Fan, Kumar, Jagdish, & Bok, 2008) 4.4.3. Teamwork  The sociological aspect of collaborative design is teamwork. Teamwork is important in maintaining focus and commitment. The development of teams is largely due to organizational factors and decisions, but must be mediated by technology in a distributed environment. Technical aids should be focused on the problems of (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002): Designing the User Experience:   Page | 32  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    ownership and commitment, shared design workspaces, organization incentives (team spirit, reputation, cooperation), member assumed roles and responsibilities. 4.4.3.1. Ownership and Commitment  In a collaborative product design environment, multiple designers in different disciplines and from different enterprises cooperate to develop a complex design on the basis of common consensus, trust, and cooperation (Chen, Chen, & Chu, 2008). Some argue that the involvement of the team in the product definition increases the sense of ownership (Smith & Blanck, 2002): Time spent together exclusively for creating a product specification helps to bond the team around this definition of the product. The sense of ownership and deep understanding of product definition issues, which comes with the opportunity to influence the definition, will move the remainder of the project along faster. Commitment – on the other hand – is tightly coupled with trust, which is much harder to maintain when the team is dispersed. The more barriers the team encounters—distance, organizational boundaries, cultural and political differences, and language barriers—the more difficult it is to build and maintain trust. When members feel appreciated and supported, they will speak up during meetings, share ideas, and discuss issues freely and in a collaborative manner. Without this trust and respect, meetings are not as effective, innovation suffers, and discussion can bog down in meaningless details (Smith & Blanck, 2002). Literature recognizes the contribution of senior management and the involvement of staff in the improvement effort –commonly Designing the User Experience:   Page | 33  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    termed internal process ownership (Rainer & Hall, 2003). Managerial control appears more effective when it is behavior oriented while team member control is more effective when it is outcome oriented. This suggests that effective teams have a manager with the skills and capabilities to influence how work is accomplished while the pressure to meet deadlines and commitments arises from one’s peers (Henderson & Lee, 1992). 4.4.3.2. Shared Design Workspaces  During multiple task collaboration, the design problem is divided among the participants so that each person is responsible for a particular portion of the design. Thus, multiple task collaborative design does not necessarily require the creation of a single shared design conception, though designers work cooperatively in a common virtual workspace (Simof & Maher, 2000), be they aware or not. Multi-user applications have been developed with the notion that shared facilities are either distributed among different users in the same place or geographically displaced. Research in computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and groupware provides a basis for the development of multi-user applications that support group interaction. Video conferencing software enables a group of people to extend the shared workspace over considerable distance by overcoming the barriers of physical separation. Users can interact through a virtual space that connects two or more geographically displaced spaces. Groupware allows the participants to share an application, going beyond the concept of a meeting to support a working group (Saad & Maher, 1996). A multi-user system implies the simultaneous presence and participation of all users. This kind of system is classified as a synchronous system, which differs slightly from asynchronous systems where collaboration is allowed over time without the Designing the User Experience:   Page | 34  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    simultaneous presence of all team members. Asynchronous collaborative systems do not require special collaboration aware applications to be written. In contrast, synchronous systems are collaboration aware. The different types of interaction can be considered in a space/time matrix, which is based on two principle dimensions of collaborative systems: the location of the users and the time of the collaboration involved (Saad & Maher, 1996).   Same Time  Different Time    Asynchronous  communication  (file management,  bulletin boards)  Same Place  (meeting rooms, design studios)  Face‐to‐face  Interactions  Different Place  Synchronous Distributed (video‐conferencing, chat‐rooms)      Asynchronous  Distributed  (email, discussion lists,  networked file sharing, etc)    Figure 4‐1: Space/Time Matrix definition of Collaborative Work  Design collaboration through asynchronous or synchronous design meeting is not only seeking a place for exchanging and sharing information, ideas, concerns of individuals, but also functions as a place for understanding the context and situation 0f a project, exploring and developing design concepts and ideas, and reaching a consensus of a team (Yamaguchi & Toizumi, 2000). Finally, shared design workspaces can also positively contribute to team spirit (check the next topic) for distributed groups by further enhancing the feeling that members are contributing to the group effort [20,22], by providing everyone with the same interface to the project’s shared design forms. Shared design workspaces also often becoming another tool for making distributed team communication richer (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). Designing the User Experience:   Page | 35  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    4.4.3.3. Organization Incentives (Team Spirit,  Reputation, Cooperation)  Teamwork can make or break a collaborative project and affects all of the design activities, particularly in the selection of design alternatives and resolution of conflicts (Cross & Cross, 1995). Traditionally, team spirit is developed in face-to-face environments with team leaders acting as facilitators encouraging harmonious relations within the group (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). Though modern technology and communication media can bring many of the modes of communication prevalent in face-to-face meetings to distributed groups, it currently does not bring them together as an integrated, natural, whole (Perry & Sanderson, 1998). To help establish rapport for distributed teams, it is important to support as rich a communication interface as possible, particularly at the start of a project. The potential benefits of fostering team spirit include improved effort and innovation by individual ‘‘spirited’’ members, which would in turn encourage others to do the same (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). One mechanism that can contribute to the team spirit is activity monitors giving constant but unobtrusive feedback of task statuses and team member activity, which enhances the feelings of contributing to a group effort (Fussell, Kraut, Lerch, Scherlis, McNally, & Cadiz, 1998). To inspire further individual effort, allow members to build and enhance reputations by providing mechanisms to record and rate member contributions and to share these ratings across projects. These mechanisms may also foster improved co-operation, as Designing the User Experience:   Page | 36  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    individual assistance on a task would often be reciprocated later as well as potentially adding to an individual’s reputation (Huang, 1999). 4.4.3.4. Roles and Responsibilities  Team members often naturally assume different ‘‘roles’’ to assist in the communication process inside and outside team boundaries. These roles include facilitating or mediating intraand inter-team discussion as well as acting as spokespeople for the team with company or enterprise representatives (Sonnenwald, 1996). Understanding and facilitating these communication roles can result in better team harmony, more support from company officials and better co-operation with external company representatives. Thus, when designing tools to support design groups, consideration should be given to what sort of communication roles will often be performed while or after using the tool in question and efforts made to facilitate those communication roles (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). 4.4.4. Knowledge Management  The main difficulty associated with a collaborative design process is to understand the product data exchanged during the design. Efficient and effective coordination of design activities relies on a thorough understanding of the dependencies between share product specifications throughout the entire development cycle (Ouertania & Gzarab, 2008). The capture and expression of this knowledge is vital if teams are to be able to use both existing knowledge and generate new knowledge for future activities. Designing the User Experience:   Page | 37  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    There are three basic types of design knowledge that are important (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002): design intent, design rationale, design history. 4.4.4.1. Design Intent  Most design solutions can only exhibit what the design is, but cannot reveal how and why an artifact is designed the way it is. Design intent is the motivations, rules and reasons behind design activities, and the capture, representation and transmission of design intent are of great significance to externalization of tacit knowledge 5 (Liu & Sun, 2008). Consumers/Users inference of design intent of a product allow them not just to categorize products, but to develop an understanding of how those products should be used. Taking software as an example, if a user can develop a good idea of what a system is designed to do, they can reliability predict that system’s behavior without understanding how it works (Crilly, Good, Matravers, & Clarkson, 2008) That being said, if one wants to design use-to-use software, it’s the utmost importance that – from a user experience design perspective – that its design intent of can be easily inferred by its target users. To realize a truly collaborative product design and development process, effective communication among design collaborators is necessary. In other words, the design intent that is imposed in a 5  With tacit knowledge, people are not often aware of the knowledge they  possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered  more valuable because it provides context for people, places, ideas, and  experiences (Wikipedia, 2009).  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 38  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    product design should be seized and interpreted properly by all parties involved (Kim, Manley, & Yang, 2006) 4.4.4.2. Design Rationale  Design Rationale is a representation of the reasoning behind the design of an artifact (Shum & Hammond, 1994). Design Rationale answers to questions like Why and How were product specifications created, modified and/or evolved in the way they are (Ouertania & Gzarab, 2008). Given the importance to establishing common ground and negotiation mechanisms in order to manage the integration of multiple perspectives in the collaborative design process (Détienne, 2006), properly capturing the design rationale of a particular design solution can support the cognitive synchronization needed to keep the entire design team in the same page. Zaychik and Regli (2003) begin with the reasonable assumption that manual capture of Design Rationale usually fails because designers and software developers do not like interruptions to the flow of their thinking and work. Digital tools have been created to assist in the capture of design rationale, like the Socio-Technical Design Process Management System (Lu, Cai, Burkett, & Udwadia, 2000), which is not only able to learn the design expertise and the design rationale, but also can improve designers' recognition and the organization structure, norm and culture. 4.4.4.3. Design History  Reflecting on work is a central notion in quality improvement, creativity, and education methods. The processes that promote Designing the User Experience:   Page | 39  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    self-awareness are learnable, but software support to capture the history of all user actions would seem to be a good foundation for many services (Shneidernan, 2000). Since the large amounts of intermediate results produced in design process are the major sources of design history knowledge, the ultimate goal of data collection and management is to create coherent knowledge. (Feng, Cui, Wang, & Yu, 2009). Due to multi-actors interaction, conflicts can emerge from disagreements between designers about proposed designs. Hence, a critical element of collaborative design is to manage the detected conflicts and particularly the impacts once they are resolved (Ouertani, 2008) In collaborative creative solving-problem environment, it should be possible to simply click on a button and have access to a menu of information about the tool, help on the tool, exemplars of its use, the history of an existing artifact: such functionality can reduce the burden on human memory considerably (Hewett, 2005). For example, tools like CoCreate OneSpace®, designers can organize 2D or 3D project files in a database and helps track of document version and history (Lia, Ong, Fuh, Wong, & Y.Q. Lua, 2004). 4.4.5. Design Representation  Design intent, rationale and history are important basic types of knowledge that knowledge management systems are required to capture, organize and manipulate to help generate new design knowledge. Such designs are instantiated in a number of different forms. These forms can consist of different representations of artifacts, prototypes, process plans, etc. The forms serve as the Designing the User Experience:   Page | 40  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    instantiation of the artifact under design and catalysts for further development and evolution. Representations of the artifact in different domains and at different levels of abstraction and certainty are often needed. Efficient methods of representing design artifacts in different forms are needed to allow designers to (a) capture of design expertise as a corporate asset, (b) reuse of design expertise to accelerate future designs, and (c) facilitating backtracking during complex, ill-defined, and ill-structured design problems (Lang, Dickinson, & Buchal, 2002). Artifacts typically produced by Interaction Designers at Autodesk included (but are not limited to): Design Briefs Conceptual Design Documents; Detail Specification Documents; Speclets; Prototypes; 4.4.6. Design briefs  Design brief is a creative response to the client brief – or project brief, which describes the client organization would like to achieve, the market opportunity identified, and estimate of budget and time allocated and any key deadlines – and reflects the knowledge, skills, and experience of the design team as well as the strategic objectives and business viability of a project (Best, Facilitating the Design Process, 2006). In a similar fashion, Design briefs in Autodesk are written by Interaction Designers, in response to Product Requirements Documents compiled by Product Managers Designing the User Experience:   Page | 41  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Problem Framing    4.5. Combining the Frameworks  Merging the both previously mentioned frameworks (Shneiderman’s Genex, and Lang, Dickinson and Buchal’s Cognitive Factors in Distributed Design) allowed me to capture enough aspects of the design process in distributed teams, so that I could start analyzing the design practice at Autodesk. planning of activities/tasks/methologies exploring solutions ideation/creati ve thinking developing sha red memories/meanings manageme nt of tasks needs analysis/ probl em clarification simulatio n tools communication of data/in formation/ knowledge onli ne collabora on ti tools Design Methodology Collaboration visualizing data/processes shared design workspaces Design Representation design rationale/intent /history Team Work organizational in centives Knowledg e Management prototyping ownership & commitment consul ting with peers i nformation gathering/research concurrent versioning systems disseminating result s Figure 4‐2: Contextual relationships that provided the initial analysis  framework for the design practice at Autodesk: the major research interests of  this project closer to the center of the circle, and the peripheral interests  around the borders.  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 42  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5. Analysis  5.1. Analysis Framework  The new combined framework helped identify major areas for investigation and map issues. But the areas were too broad to relate to the specifics of practice at Autodesk. So, the level of granularity of the data entry points needed to be refined, through Brainstorming (Goldschmidt, 1995) Figure 5‐1: Refining the level of granularity of the framework through  brainstorming  5.2. Presenting and discussing the analysis framework  Once I was comfortable with the level of granularity of the framework, I started a round of discussions with a few peers at Autodesk. One thing that became clear out of these discussions was that – while other managers appreciated the thoroughness with which the design practice at Autodesk as captured in the framework – it was difficult to visualize – if there was any – Designing the User Experience:   Page | 43  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    trends or specific areas that required troubleshooting. And – once specific issues were found – who would be the stakeholders? 5.3. Identifying Issues and Stakeholders  I needed to find a way to – by looking at the different aspects of the design practice at Autodesk – identify and rank the issues (be them enablers or barriers), as well as their corresponding stakeholders. So I decided to look to at the design practice at Autodesk for the organization strategy’s point of view. An organization’s strategy may be examined using multiple criteria (Mintzberg, 2003). Focusing multiple lenses on a given phenomenon – in my case here, different aspects of a design process – highlights different aspects of that phenomenon (Ancona, 1998). Each lens suggests a different set of practices and solutions to managers. The lenses I’ve chosen to analyze the organization strategy were – and a few assumptions I had about them – were: Social/Cultural Issues: would relate to the cultural and social gap between Western designers and Chinese designers background. As Product Design Manager, I could facilitate their collaboration and be a "bridge": that could provide me with insights of how can I help they improve their collaboration with their overseas peers; Political/Economical Issues: would help identifying key players not only in our team but the other teams my designers interact with (software developers, QA engineers, etc...), who could influence practices/policies (like training, processes, decision making rights, etc...); that could give me insights of who are the stakeholders I'd need to get buy in for improvement Designing the User Experience:   Page | 44  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    recommendations; Organizational Issues: would relate to the current practices/policies in place at Autodesk, and how these foster/hinder collaboration between my team, their peers overseas, as well as with others teams; that could give me insights about what processes need to be improved; Technical Issues: would relate to technological hindrances for collaboration of design distributed teams; looking at these issues could give insights of which tools/training needs to be provided/better used by the team in order to improve collaboration. In order to analyze the design practice at Autodesk from all these different lenses simultaneously, I’ve decided to use a card sorting technique (Spencer, 2004). I’ve invited my peers Douglas Wang – also a Product Design Manager for Autodesk in Shanghai – to help me rank each issue according to its nature in a scale from 1 to 5 – where 1 was “low” and 5 “high” – into (S) social/cultural, (P) political/economical, and (O) organizational, and (T) technical. Figure 5‐2: card sorting exercise, done by Douglas Wang (left) and Itamar Medeiros (right)   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 45  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    My assumptions were that issues that ranked – for example – high on the Social (s) would related to my team’s culture and, therefore could be dealt locally); Political/economical (P) would involve higher level of management; Organizational (O) are related to the processes at Autodesk; Technological (T) would relate to the skills/facilities/training (or lack of!) that support the design. Figure 5‐3: Each issue was ranked according to its nature in a scale of 1 to 5 ‐‐  where 1 was “low” and 5 “high” ‐‐ into (S) social/ cultural, (P)  political/economical, and (O) organizational, and (T) technical.    5.4. Visual Records/Analysis of the Data  All the data generated during the Brainstorming and Card Sorting Sessions were stored into Spreadsheets, with the corresponding reflections/insights (please refer to Appendix B for the full set of data): Designing the User Experience:   Page | 46  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    Figure 5‐4: All the data has been stored into spreadsheet files, with its  corresponding insights.  Design Methodology: OVERALL SCORES Figure 5‐5: Design Methodology Overall Scores  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 47  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    Collaboration: OVERALL SCORES Figure 5‐6: Collaboration Overall Scores  Team Work: OVERALL SCORES Figure 5‐7: Team Work Overall Scores  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 48  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    Knowledge Management: OVERALL SCORES Figure 5‐8: Knowledge Management Overall Scores  Design Representation: OVERALL SCORES Figure 5‐9: Design Representation Overall Scores  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 49  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    In order to visualize the relationship between the issues, I decided to produce Contextual Relationship Maps. Given the massive amount of data produced and the complexity of the relationships (several issues were recurrent in different aspects of the design process), I’ve broken down the process of producing the maps into steps (check appendix A: reflective practice model): Making individual maps for each lens (social, political, organizational, technical); Comparing/contrasting the maps; Four Contextual Relationship Maps were produced -- Social, Political, Organizational, and Technical -- by listing the highest ranking issue on each line of the spreadsheet (check the appendix B: contextual relationship maps). As to the contextual maps, simplification was still needed. That said, I’ve analyzed which were the most “connected” issues, and classified them into either: Tools; People; Processes; Artifacts. These four maps allowed to dissect the design practice at Autodesk its very essential aspects, as well as to point the different stakeholders in the organization. What follows now is a presentation of the maps, including the highest ranked insights collected during the card sorting session, an analysis of the insights in context, as well as some bibliographical references to support the insights:   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 50  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5.5. SOCIAL  Focusing only on the SOCIAL/CULTURAL ISSUES, I’ve noticed that communication seem to play in important role on the practice; not just as language issues, but all the other aspects of communication that facilitates members of different teams to stay on the same page. Some of these concerns include having shared understanding of design problem spaces, knowing how to better convey design rationale/intent during feedback sessions/design reviews, etc... Figure 5‐10: Social Cultural Contextual Relationship Map  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 51  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    Based on the insights highlighted on the map, my assumptions are that we should look into ways of facilitating Cognitive Synchronization through better support to multiple means of communications such as Emails and Instant Messaging, and Expanding their Problem Analysis and Thinking Tools, which enables the partners to reach “n” objectives: Assure that they each have a knowledge of the facts relating to the state of the situation/problem data, state of the solutions, accepted hypothesis, etc; Assure that they share a common knowledge regarding the domain - technical rules, objects in the domain and their features, resolution procedures, etc. With increased global connectivity, managers are faced with new technologies and rapid organizational changes. For instance, organizations may adopt emerging technologies such as Instant Messaging in order to increase collaboration at a distance and to decrease communications costs (Cameron & Webster, 2005). Cognitive synchronization therefore aims at establishing a context of mutual knowledge, at building a common operative system of reference (Falzon, Montmollin, & Béguin, 1996) Cognitive synchronization activities will vary depending on the amount of shared knowledge: in particular that the parity or nonparity of the dialogue (dialogue between pairs vs. expert/novice dialogues, or dialogues between subjects with distinct knowledge) will have an effect on the necessity to communicate general knowledge. This leads each partner in the dialogue to build a model of the other as it has been shown in different studies (Cahour & Falzon, 1991). At the team level, big/dense design artifacts take longer to produce, therefore designers don’t get to see each other’s work Designing the User Experience:   Page | 52  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    until major design reviews take place. The design team misses opportunities to leverage of the collective expertise – the difference between what one can do without help and what he or she can do with help (Vygotsky, 1978)– and collaborate at earlier stages of our process. Regarding Problem Analysis and Thinking tools, Mathias (1993) found that novice designers tend to rush towards embodiments with undue haste and they tend to ‘justify’ their designs. This suggests that they limit their creative search space due to a limited understanding of the substantive issues relating to the design problem. It can be argued that they lack an appropriately comprehensive methodology or thinking tool for mapping these complex dynamically interrelated issues that result in an adaptable and malleable problem structure (Kokotovich, 2008). The central findings of Kokotovich (2008) tended to support the notion that thinking through and mapping the issues of a design problem prior to embodiment greatly assists in the convergence towards, validation of, and development of creative wellconsidered designs. 5.5.1. Challenges  At light of the analysis above, there are a few challenges regarding Cognitive Synchronization I believe needed to be faced at Autodesk: How to assure that junior Chinese designers each have knowledge they need – of the facts relating to the state of the situation/problem data, state of the solutions, accepted hypothesis, etc – to establish the common ground with senior designers, given the issues with language gap, lack of exposure to a corporate environment, and their perception of the design reviews? Designing the User Experience:   Page | 53  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    How to assure that senior designers share a common knowledge regarding the domain – technical rules, objects in the domain and their features, resolution procedures, etc – with junior designers? Regarding Expanding their Problem Analysis and Thinking Tools, there are also a few challenges that needed to be faced: How to help junior Chinese designers avoid hasting into design decisions before they make sure they have expanded their understanding of the design problem space?   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 54  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5.6. POLITICAL  Focusing only on the POLITICAL/ECONOMICAL ISSUES, I’ve noticed that knowledge management issues related to supporting decision making seem to play a strong role: Figure 5‐11: Political/Economical Contextual Relationship Map  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 55  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    In the context of distributed design – in which design teams and other functional groups have to collaborate with Product Management to turn Marketing Requirements into Product Requirement Documents – it’s only natural that Product definition occurs at the beginning of the project, which is precisely when the team has the least experience in working together, making dispersed meetings less effective (Smith & Blanck, 2002). Therefore, Designers need to facilitate decision making by assuring stakeholders of the quality of the artifacts produced and the innovative aspects of their design solutions (hence, the Collaboration with Product Managers and the Qualitative User/Customer Concept Validation Methods). In qualitative studies, the data is usually being gathered directly, whereas in quantitative studies, the data is gathered indirectly, through an instrument, such as a survey or a web server log. In field studies and usability studies, for example, the researcher directly observes how people use technology (or not) to meet their needs. This gives them the ability to ask questions, probe on behavior or possibly even adjust the study protocol to better meet its objectives. Analysis of the data is usually not mathematical. By contrast, insights in quantitative methods are typically derived from mathematical analysis, since the instrument of data collection (e.g., survey tool or web-server log) captures such large amounts of data that are coded numerically (Nielsen, 2008). Most User Experience practitioners know a couple of research methods fairly well and use them repeatedly, but very few have a strong grasp of the entire landscape of research and analytic methods or when to use which method. In addition, there isn’t a common understanding of when it is appropriate to harness the power of quantitative methods and when a qualitative approach Designing the User Experience:   Page | 56  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    will yield to more useful insights, nor how they complement each other (Rohrer, 2009). Figure 5‐12: Research Methods by Data Source vs. Approach vs. Context of  Product User (Rohrer, 2009)  Some would argue that it’s a designer’s responsibility to – apart from understand user needs such as fulfillment of designer, pleasure and enhanced capability – be aware of business needs such as viability, sustainability and (usually) profitability as well. Unfortunately, designers are seldom taught tools for these explorations (Shedroff N. , 2003). This is no different at Autodesk: designers have to pickup such tools by themselves (in this case, research methods), or leverage on other team-members skills to help them come up with strategies to how to obtain the data to support stakeholders’ decision making. Decision makers and managers of design projects are faced with the extra challenge of reducing or managing the risk of design iterations after establishing a design plan (Ouertani, 2008). In our case, Product Managers and Software Development Managers -- would like to rest assure they have solid information background to make their decisions: Designing the User Experience:   Page | 57  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    Stakeholders rely on the information provided in the different artifacts produced by designers to make their decisions, which – in turn – should feel confident that the artifacts portrays the records of their assumptions (check Social Map) and help them easily trace back their decisions (check Technical Map). Milton et Al. (1999) advocates for the importance of record tracking by mentioning the Anderson Consulting case study: during such decision making processes as planning and design, numerous decisions are made to arrive at the best solution. However, much of the knowledge of why a particular decision was made and what alternatives were discarded (i.e. the “audit trail”) is often lost. This is because those involved forgot either what happened or failed to keep adequate records. Hence, stakeholders in such decisions such as managers, decision implementers and future decision makers have no access to knowledge, which could be vital for them. The decision making process does not depend on the quality of the artifacts produced by designers alone: such artifacts need to be distributed among the decision makers in a timely fashion (hence, the need for document/artifacts sharing). The efficient sharing of data and knowledge within an organization is necessary to enhance the competitiveness of companies. Data management systems can effectively manage a great deal of data with different owners, different versions and different designing aims in a collaborative development process (Feng, Cui, Wang, & Yu, 2009). Designing the User Experience:   Page | 58  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5.6.1. Challenges  At light of the analysis above, there are a few challenges regarding the qualitative user/costumer concept validation methods I believe a few challenges needed to be faced at Autodesk: How to ensure that junior designers at Autodesk are using the appropriate user/costumer concept validations methods? Given the distance between Chinese designers and the typical user for which they are designing solutions for tools (North America, Europe), how to ensure the access to a significant pool of users to validate design concepts? Regarding documents/artifacts sharing, I believe a few challenges needed to be faced: • Technology poses many threats to the flow of information within Autodesk, since the organizational memory is scattered across dozens – sometimes, hundreds – of places (shared network folders, SharePoint® sites, wikis 6 , Intranets 7 , etc)? • Since Autodesk values team input/feedback by encouraging Design Review sessions, how to do get the best out of each session conducted remotely? 6  A wiki is a collection of Web pages designed to enable anyone with access to  contribute or modify content, using a simplified markup language. Wikis are  often used to create collaborative websites and to power community  websites. The collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia is one of the best‐known  wikis (Wikipedia, 2009).  7  An intranet is a private computer network that uses Internet technologies to  securely share any part of an organization's information or operational  systems with its employees. Sometimes the term refers only to the  organization's internal website, but often it is a more extensive part of the  organization's computer infrastructure and private websites are an important  component and focal point of internal communication and collaboration  (Wikipedia, 2009).  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 59  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5.7. ORGANIZATIONAL  Focusing only on the ORGANIZATIONAL ISSUES, I’ve noticed that collaboration processes that facilitate the production of artifacts seem to play an important role. Figure 5‐13: Organizational Contextual Relationship Map  Given the distributed nature of the design process at Autodesk, the efficiency of producing artifacts that clearly communicate design intent and rationale is crucial to inform the decision makers (check Political Map); Designing the User Experience:   Page | 60  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    This is where the Social Issues start affecting the Organization: producing quality design artifacts that clearly communicate design intent and rationale will be tightly coupled with the ability of junior designers (as individual contributors, or Authors of the design artifacts) to Modularize / Decompose design problems, of their skills of Argumentation / Justification during Presentations they do for Design Reviews, which are fundamental aspects of the problem solving framework of the design practice. As a result of his investigations comparing and contrasting the problems solving strategies of expert and novice designers, Mathias (1993) found that novice designers omitted some important aspects in their process/framework when compared and contrasted with the problem-solving process/framework utilized by expert designers. In the early phases of problem solving, as highlighted in the expert framework in Figure 5‐14 (Mathias, 1993), it was clear that a central element absent in the Novice designers’ framework was Analysis of Problem Statement. Figure 5‐14: Expert and novice framework for designing (Mathias, 1993)  Similar to the views of Mathias (1993), while acknowledging that problem structuring occurs throughout the problem-solving process, in their paper discussing problem structuring, Restrepo and Christiaans (2003) contend that problem structuring and Designing the User Experience:   Page | 61  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    analysis occurs mainly at the beginning of the problem-solving process (Kokotovich, 2008). In his protocol studies relating to problem decomposition strategies, Ho (2001) lends further support to the idea that expert designers tend to establish problem structure at the beginning of the design process, stepping back from the brief contextualizing the problem in their own way. The impetuous novice designer, lacking a sound methodology for properly mapping their thoughts, ideas and the issues germane to the problem, rushes into an embodied solution early in the design process. Typically, novice designers refrain from ‘stepping back from the brief’; often they do not separate ideas from the embodiment of those ideas. This results in a tendency to develop less creative and more pedestrian solutions (Kokotovich, 2008). Once the initial design problem has been properly decomposed, a few solutions have been propose, enter the Justification / Argumentation process that happens during Design Reviews. This is when presentations become a decisive part of the equation. The ability to present yourself and your idea is essential to good communication, persuasion and the ability to influence key decision-makers: One-to-One briefings can be handled differently from larger audiences, so one must prepare a presentation, equipment needs, and the layout of the room accordingly (Best, Verbal Communication, 2006). Held at intervals throughout the design process, a design review evaluates the project against the criteria in the brief and the agreed key stages (Best, Facilitating the Design Process, 2006). Design Reviews not only gives the opportunity for designers to validate their solutions by getting inputs from multiple Designing the User Experience:   Page | 62  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    perspective, but also – depending how it is conducted – can help build the team by increasing the sense of ownership of the design by different team members. 5.7.1. Challenges  At light of the analysis above, there are a few challenges regarding Modularization / Decomposition of design problems I believe needed to be faced at Autodesk: How to improve the methods by which junior designers analyze design problem? Considering that these junior designers have to collaborate with not only with Senior Designers, but Product Managers, Software Developers, Test Developers, how to decompose design problems in a collaborative/distributed way? Regarding Presentations done during Design Reviews, I believe some of the challenges that needed to be faced are: Language barriers and lack of exposure to a corporate working environment end up playing strong roles for making junior designers’ presentations inefficient. How to minimize the roles of these two factors within the team in China? Apart from these two factors, we still have the remote/dispersed aspect of our team. How to conduct efficient design reviews in this kind of environment? Designing the User Experience:   Page | 63  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    5.8. TECHNICAL  Focusing only on the TECHNICAL ISSUES, I’ve noticed that both tools for coordinating processes, as well as representation methods for communicating design history and rationale seem to play a strong role: Figure 5‐15: Technical Contextual Relationship Map Designing the User Experience:   Page | 64  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Analysis    In the “traditional” co-located design process, designers have multiple ways of representing there design ideas: sketching, storytelling, prototyping. One of the most detailed studies of the act of sketching was conducted by Goel (1995). He identified two types of operation occurring between successive sketches in the early stages of design, namely lateral transformations and vertical transformations: in a lateral transformation, movement is from one idea to a slightly different idea. In a vertical transformation, movement is from one idea to a more detailed and exacting version of the same idea. Goel concludes that freehand sketches, by virtue of being syntactically and/or semantically dense and/or ambiguous, play an important role in the creative, explorative, open-ended phase of problem solving. He believes that the properties of the freehand sketch facilitate lateral transformations and prevent early fixations (Rodgers, Green, & McGown, 2000). Sketches also possess the potential to act as both facilitator and recorder of creative acts presenting opportunities for improved evaluation and the re-stating of problems (Temple, 1994). 5.8.1. Challenges  At light of the analysis above, there are a few challenges regarding sketching/storytelling techniques I believe needed to be faced at Autodesk: Sketching works both as facilitator and recorder of creative acts presenting opportunities for improved evaluation and the re-stating of problems, in particular during design reviews. How to produce/share them remotely? Designing the User Experience:   Page | 65  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  6. Research Methods, Opportunities and  Strategies for Intervention  6.1. Research Methods  Since the design practice at Autodesk has been mapped out, I intend to discuss with a few of the stakeholders the problematic areas and investigate ways to improve them. Most modern businesses assume that their issues are complicated, and that problems can be solved through the application of analytical tools—such as trend analysis, fishbone analysis (determining cause-and-effect relationships), and psychometric testing. Although it might be valid for the parts of a business that are ordered and regimented (such as well-defined business processes), this thinking is inappropriate for complex issues (such as culture, trust, innovation, and so on) in which many people are interacting and from which group behavior emerges. That said, given the complexity of the issues at hand, and the short term I would like to get significant results, I’m planning to discuss with different stakeholders at Autodesk, identify a very specific issue, and propose an organizational intervention -- a discrete action designed to improve the system but you can’t predict exactly how things are going to turn out. It’s not a project in the sense that there is a clear objective and a set of milestones over sometimes lengthy periods (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2006). Looking at the previously mentioned challenges, let’s discuss a few strategies for creating these small interventions: Designing the User Experience:   Page | 66  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  6.2. Strategies for Intervention  What follows is an outline of the strategies for intervention, at the light of the challenges previously mentioned: 6.2.1. Social Issues  6.2.1.1. Opportunities  The problems that designers face are rarely straightforward and clear. They are complex and lack "right answers." Skillful professional practice often depends less on factual knowledge than on the ability to reflect before taking action (Schön, 1992). I believe that, by introducing smaller design deliverables more closely spaced in between the milestones and easily shared with other designers/team, we could address the challenges mentioned above: 1. At the individual level, designers will be able to better monitor their own progress of their understanding of the design problem; 2. At the design team level, designers will rapidly iterate their designs with other members on the team, who – in turn – will be able to understand better and give more insightful feedback to smaller chunks of design, facilitating cognitive synchronization; 3. At the management level, managers will make better use of their bandwidth by better assessing the individual needs for each designer, and provide the appropriate coaching; Designing the User Experience:   Page | 67  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  6.2.1.2. Strategies  For the opportunities mentioned above, I’ve considered the adoption of the 2 (two) strategies to be implemented during the research plan: Individual/Management Levels: USE OF DESIGN JOURNALS Schön would argue the professional practice education should be centered on enhancing the practitioner’s ability for “reflectionin-action” – that is, learning by doing and developing the ability for continued learning and problem solving throughout the professional’s career (Schön, 1992). The use of Design Journals and Action Research Methods, like Reflective Practice Models (McKernan, 1996), can help us accomplish that. My personal experience working with Chinese Designers – both at the Raffles Design Institute of DongHua University and at Autodesk – has showed me that such tools also minimize the role of language barriers. For example: some Chinese Designers might have difficulty to verbalize their design concepts and the development of their ideas; on the other hand, they can easily record their research in a sketchbook and visualize their ideas through sketches, so that others can see their progress. This works both ways: as their coach/manager, is also easier for me to give them feedback – in forms other than verbal – by making annotations their research/sketches in the same medium (in this case, a sketchbook). Design Team/Organization Levels: DESIGN REVIEWS While the main purpose of reviews may be to improve quality, one possible byproduct is the sharing of knowledge and experience between the more experienced and less experienced members of staff (Rainer & Hall, 2002) Designing the User Experience:   Page | 68  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  The practice of design reviews is already in place in design teams at Autodesk, so it would be a matter of encouraging designers to to present the findings of their research and reflection in a more “incremental” way, rather than presenting huge artifact reviews near each milestone. By doing that, senior designers will likely have better chances of understand of the design problem that junior designers are trying to address and give more insightful feedback to smaller chunks of design. At the team level, I envision this incremental presentations being put into to practice by breaking down a design deliverable (let’s say, a Design Brief) into its sections (like Competitive Analysis, User Research, Prioritize Scenarios, etc…) and have them being presented as each section is completed, instead of reviewing the whole document in the end of each milestone. At the organization level, I see members of other functional groups (like Product Managers, Software Developers, Test Developers, etc…) participating on such reviews: they might not be willing (or even able!) to review a whole 100+ pages design document, but might understand a simple presentation of – for example – a competitive analysis. They might provide insights and good feedback, and – ultimately – give other teams a greater sense of ownership of designs they have a better understanding of. 6.2.2. Political/Economical Issues  6.2.2.1. Opportunities  In regards to ensuring that junior designers at Autodesk are using the appropriate methodology, one of the challenges that we face – to exploit the knowledge and expertise of all parties in the design team, no matter how distributed geographically and organizationally these parties might be (Lang, Dickinson, & Designing the User Experience:   Page | 69  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  Buchal, 2002) – also works as an opportunity. Junior designers in China have access to a pool of over 80 people in the global User Experience Design team, from which they can learn from when it comes to design methods. In regards to the challenge of improving the flow of information, I believe that are opportunities to benefit from Web 2.0 8 aspects of tools previously mentioned (SharePoint® sites, wikis, Intranets, etc…) by pursuing a “push-approach” to information gathering, making use of RSS 9 feeds, Alerts, and Feed Aggregators 10 . 6.2.2.2. Strategies  For the opportunities mentioned above, I’ve considered the adoption of the 2 (two) strategies to be implemented during the research plan: At Individual/Management Level: SUPPORT MULTIPLE CHANNELS OF COMUNICATION We must make use of a combination of technologies to provide channels of communications that are already at our disposal at 8  Web 2.0 refers to a perceived second generation of web development and  design, that facilitates communication, secure information sharing,  interoperability, and collaboration on the World Wide Web. Web 2.0 concepts  have led to the development and evolution of web‐based communities,  hosted services, and applications; such as social‐networking sites, video‐ sharing sites, wikis, blogs, and folksonomies, which  encapsulates the idea of  the proliferation of interconnectivity and interactivity of web‐delivered  content (Wikipedia, 2009).   RSS (an abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed  formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries,  news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format. RSS feeds benefit  publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit  readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to  aggregate feeds from many sites into one place (Wikipedia, 2009).  10 9  feed aggregator, also known as a feed reader, news reader or simply  aggregator, is client software or a Web application which aggregates  syndicated web content such as news headlines, blogs, podcasts, and vlogs in  a single location for easy viewing (Wikipedia, 2009).  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 70  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  Autodesk, such as Wikis, Instant Messaging Tools, TelePresence Rooms, etc. Figure 6‐1: Charlie Crocker (Senior Product Manager for Autodesk, San Rafael,  California) in a TelePresence conference with Sean Yu (Software Development  Manager for Autodesk Civil 3D, Shanghai, China)  At Design Team/Organization Level: TAKE ADVANTAGE OF CONTENT AGGREGATION Since the organizational memory is scattered across dozens – sometimes, hundreds – of places (shared network folders, SharePoint® sites, Wikis, Intranet, etc…) design team could benefit from a “push” approach to information gathering, in which the content “comes” to the designer through RSS feeds: Documentation Updates/Review/Approvals; Teammates Status Updates; Project Updates; Upcoming milestones/Events; Designing the User Experience:   Page | 71  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  6.2.3. Organizational Issues  6.2.3.1. Opportunities  In regards to ensuring that junior designers at Autodesk improve the way they analyze design problems, I believe there are plenty of opportunities (in alignment with the Political / Economical Issues previously mentioned) for Junior designers in China to leverage on the expertise of other designers across the company. They have access to a pool of over 80 people in the global User Experience Design team, from which they can learn from when it comes to design methods. Regarding Presentations done during Design Reviews, there are opportunities for complementing the Design Journals (strategy suggested to address some of the Cultural Issues) with other reflective practice templates, like the use of checklists, etc.. 6.2.3.2. Strategies  For the opportunities mentioned above, I’ve considered the adoption of the 2 (two) strategies to be implemented during the research plan: At Individual/Management Level: ESTABLISH STRUCTURED MENTORSHIP/PARTNERSHIP ARRANGEMENTS Trying to minimize tasks interdependencies and collocating partners as much as possible, we should look into pairing designers with different skills sets/levels. At Design Team/Organization Level: EXPLORE THE USE OF REFLECTIVE PRACTICE MODEL TEMPLATES FOR DESIGN REVIEWS/PRESENTATIONS While it is at the best interest of the designer who has requested a review to capture as much insights as possible out of the discussion, using templates/questionnaires/checklists could help Designing the User Experience:   Page | 72  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Research Methods, Opportunities and Strategies for Intervention  designers process information on their own time, minimizing issues with language. 6.2.4. Technical Issues  6.2.4.1. Opportunities  In regards to ensure that designers keep using sketches for improved evaluation / re-stating of design problems even in a distributed environments, I believe that are opportunities for us to leverage on communication technology already at our disposal at Autodesk – like the annotation features of LiveMeeting™ –or explore the possibility of acquiring full-fledged collaborative design systems, like Interactive WhiteBoards 11 . 11  An interactive whiteboard is a large interactive display that connects to a  computer and projector. A projector projects the computer’s desktop onto  the board’s surface, where users control the computer using a pen, finger or  other device. The board is typically mounted to a wall or on a floor stand  (Wikipedia, 2009).  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 73  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Hindsight Review of Interventions  7. Hindsight Review of Interventions  7.1. Introduction of Reflective Practice Models through  Design Journals  Regarding the use of design journals (check session 6.2.1.1), the practice has been introduced with relative success: communication has improved between myself and the junior designer, although the process for them to generate templates they felt comfortable working with took longer than expected. That said, it was not possible to capture a whole product release cycle through the templates. Figure 7‐1: Reflective Practice Model created by Hao Na – interaction designer  for the Geospatial Platform and Server Product Line in Shanghai – to help her  keep track of her own tasks.  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 74  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Hindsight Review of Interventions  7.2. Establishment of Structured Mentorship/Partnership  Arrangements   Regarding the Mentorship/Partnership arrangements, the practice has been introduced, but some issues have risen, in particular of 2 (two) kinds: “Personality conflicts”: the lack of interpersonal skills to cope with conflict made some of the pairs to performance below of the best of their combined skills; Managing Tasks Interdependencies: the distribution of teams across Autodesk – at times – does not allow as much collocation of team as one would wish. That said, although the pool of potential pairs of designers was large, the gap between the skills set required for designers to work on specific projects limited the numbers of possible pairs to be formed. Figure 7‐2: Designers Steve Winter (left) and Sudip Ghosh (right) – from  Autodesk Geospatial Platform and Server Product Line team in Shanghai –  brainstorm on the requirements for a “Team Site Mash up”, to aggregate  content/updates relevant to each team member.  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 75  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Final Remarks  8. Final Remarks  Regarding the issues listed in the hindsight review, we’ve noticed that – although a lot of challenges regarding the distributed / collaborative design practice we’re identified – there were subtleties of this collaborative environment that were not part of the scope of this research, and yet that could have rendered better results had they been address during the interventions. To name two: organizational incentives (motivation) and conflict resolution. 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Designing the User Experience:   Page | 88  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  10. Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 89  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 90  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 91  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 92  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix A: Reflective Practice Model  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 93  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11. Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.1. Design Methodology:  Exploring Solutions Social/Cultural artifacts 1. Political/Economical 1. Organizational 3. Technical 4. Given the constraints of access to real users, quantitative is "easier" (internet surveys, intelligence programs, etc...) in terms of access, but the technology 4. becomes an issue. Designers in China wish they had more access to users, but they lack the support from other departments, like product management, sales, and 1. marketing. 1. 5. Chinese designers seems to take the feedback sessions as "what is right/wrong", while western designers take feedback sessions as an opportunity to engage stakeholders and 3. get buy-in. “Sketching works very well to quickly communicate design ideas face-to-face; the challenge is how to support remote 4. communication this way” 4. Reflections 11.1.1. Quantitive User/Customer Concept Validation 2. 2. 3. Qualitative User/Customer Concept Validation Methods Theory Simulation Tools 3. 3. 2. 4. 2. 3. 2. 1. 4. Design Reviews/Feedback Sessions 4. 2. 4. Sketching Feasibility Analysis 3. 1. 1. 3. 1. 2.   11.1.2. Systems Theory Needs Analysis/Problem Definitions Social/Cultural 3. Political/Economical 1. Organizational 3. Technical 2. “Product managers -- most of the time -- seem to work as a buffer between designers and users. And the fact that they are located in America and Europe complicates the access to user information in 2. China.” lack of industry knowlegde, and lack of acess to customers/users are the biggest challenges for designers to define the 4. problem space 4. Given the constraints of access to real users, quantitative is "easier" (internet surveys, intelligence programs, etc...) in terms of access, but the technology 4. becomes an issue. Designers in China wish they had more access to users, but they lack the support from other departments, like product management, sales, 1. and marketing. Reflections Collaborate with Product Managers 3. 5. 4. Define Problem Space Artifacts 4. 1. 3. 1. 2. 3. Quantitative User Research Methods 2. 2. 3. Qualitative User Research Methods 3. 4. 2.   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 94  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.1.3. Ideation/Creative Thinking  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Reflections junior designers (not only chinese) tend to explore only one solution until it's exhausted, instead of taking 4. several approaches very little brainstorming is done; if any is done, it's not 2. properly captured Sketches seem to be a good way of communicating ideas; the challenge is to share 5. them real-time “Since Junior Designers are left to construe their own understanding of the tasks they’re involved, here there is much room for misunderstanding: they apparently have been used to being told what to do, instead of decompose the 1. problems by themselves." Lateral Thinking 5. 1. 2. Brainstorming 3. 2. 1. Sketching 3. 1. 1. Modularization/ Decomposition 1. 1. 3. 11.1.4. Design Methodology: OVERALL SCORES  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 95  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.2. Collaboration:  11.2.1. Planning Of Activities/Tasks/Methodologies  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical good method for risky  projects, but a  challenge for  distributed teams a lot  more  communication/negoti ation skills from  Chinese junior  5 designers very suitable for  remote collaboration,  but requires a lot more  commitment/self  management skills  from junior chinese  1 designers Agile Methods 4 3 4 Water Fall 2 4 5 11.2.2. Management of Tasks  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Product managers ‐‐ most of the  time ‐‐ seem to work as a buffer  between designers and users. And  the fact that they are located in  America and Europe complicates the  1 access to user information in China. cultural/language barriers seem to  1 be at play quite strongly 2 3 Given that the team has to ‐‐  occasionally ‐‐ switch between  projects, the diversity of process,  formats of deliverables, and ‐‐ most  importantly ‐‐ the project  management tools (Jira, Sharepoint,  Microsoft Project, etc...) makes it a  challenge for Product Designers to  4 keep up. collaborate with  product managers collaborate with  design managers Manage Multiple  Priorities Electronic Meeting  Systems 2 4 1 3 4 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 Project Management  Tools 2 2 4 11.2.3. Communication of  Data/Information/Knowledge  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Technology poses a lot of  threats to the flow on  information, since the  organizational memory is  scattered accross dozens  (sometimes, hundreds) of  4 places. language/culture are obvious  barriers, but the lack of  corporate culture seems to  1 play even stronger roles 4 very effective means for  communication, but timezone  difference is the biggest  1 barrier 4 4 2 second to phone document/artifacts sharing 1 2 5 email video conferencing 5 1 1 1 1 4 phone wikis blogs instant messaging 4 1 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 3 2 1 Designing the User Experience:   Page | 96  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.2.4. Developing Shared Memories/Meaning  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Technology poses a lot of threats  to the flow on information, since  the organizational memory is  scattered accross dozens  4 (sometimes, hundreds) of places. document/artifacts  sharing 1 1 5 SharePoint OneNote Instant Messaging Blogs Wikis Video Conferencing 1 1 3 3 3 1 3 1 1 1 1 4 4 4 1 1 1 3 “As previously mentioned, the  organizational memory is scattered  across dozens (sometimes,  hundreds) of places, mostly using  Sharepoint, which ‐‐ so far ‐‐ has  not proven to be an effective way  of making the access to  5 information any easier” 3 1 3 3 4 company has invested in digital  white board, which is a superb way  of remote/synchronous design  collaboration; unfortunetaly not  available in all sites of the  4 company 3 language is BY FAR the biggest  1 barriers developing a common vocabulary  seems to be even more important,  since most employees are not  1 native speakers 3 4 4 Digital White Boards facilitation schema/language 1 4 5 3 2 2 2 4 1 lexicology cognitive  syncronization group elicitation  method electronic meeting  systems 4 5 1 4 1 1 3 5 3 1 1 3 11.2.5. Collaboration: OVERALL SCORES  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 97  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.3. Team Work:  11.3.1. Roles & Resposibilities  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical designers ‐‐ differently than  developers/QA ‐‐ are expected  to work as individual  contributors, fact that generate  a lot of anxiety with chinese  designers, due to their lack of  2 experience 3 1 2 1 individual  contributor team  contributor Subject Matter  Expert Tech Pubs QA Engineers Software  Engineers Product  Designers Tech Pub  Managers QA Managers 5 4 2 2 2 2 4 1 2 4 3 3 2 2 3 3 2 2 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 1 1 Since the resources for software  implementation are limited,  Software Development  Managers end up having a lot to  do with the final user experience  of a feature by determining how  much of the specs can actually  1 be implemented. Software  Development  Managers 2 5 4 11.3.2. information  sharing process  management Shared Design Workspaces  Social/Cultural 2 3 Political/Economical 1 1 Organizational 4 4 Technical 4 3 political/economical: providing the  space and the tools is a challenge,  when the organization is striving to  3 keep costs low social/cultural: The lack of a share  4 design  reflections exploration  space communication  media 3 4 2 1 1 3 11.3.3. increasing  accountability enhance reputation assignment of  decision rights Ownership & Commitment  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical junior chinese designers have difficult  time to be resposible for their own  1 management 1 chinese designers have to first prove  their "worth" before taking up more  1 responsibility junior chinese designers seem to have  difficult time grasping what is their  contribuition to the work, and what are  1 the expectations for their performance 1 designers ‐‐ differently than  developers/QA ‐‐ are expected to work  as individual contributors, fact that  generate a lot of anxiety with Chinese  2 designers, due to their lack of experience a technique that seems to work quite  well with coaching western designers  doesn't seem to be so effective with  1 Chinese designers 5 3 3 4 2 2 3 5 2 setting expectations build self‐ confidence 2 4 4 3 3 3 authorship 3 3 4 non‐obstrusive  feedback 4 2 2 Designing the User Experience:   Page | 98  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.3.4. employee  engagement Organizational Incentives  Social/Cultural 4 Political/Economical 2 Organizational 4 Technical 1 chinese employees seem to put a lot of  emphasis on relating to people at a personal  level in order to better collaborate with  1 them at a professional level 4 a lot of chinese companies seem to have  more "faster tracks" than their equivalent in  1 western countries 1 programs were speciffically created to  1 recognize high achiever with titles team building professional  development 5 2 2 4 4 4 career path salary/benefits enhance  reputation 4 3 5 5 4 4 5 4 2 11.3.5. Team Work: OVERALL SCORES  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 99  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.4. Knowledge Management:  11.4.1. books blogs digital libraries Information Gathering & Research  Social/Cultural 3 3. 3. Political/Economical 1 1. 1. Organizational 2 1. 1. Technical 1 3. 3. chinese junior designers tend 1. to think that, because it's in the internet, it MUST be true! the company has a good 3. base of users who uses our feedback forums designers in China wish they had more access to users, 1. but they lack the support from other departments, like sales/marketing quantitative is "easier" (internet surveys, intelligence programs, etc...), but the technology becomes an issue search engines 4. 2. 1. internet forums 2. 2. 5. qualitative user research 2. 5. 4. quantitative user research artifacts collaborate with product managers 2. 2. 4. 4. 3. 2. 1. 4. 3. 3. 4. 1. 11.4.2. Consulting With Peers Social/Cultural Collaborat e with Product Manager Document /Artifacts Sharing Wikis Blogs Design Reviews/F eedback sessions Phone Email Instant Messagin g Political/Economical Organizational Technical product managers -- most of the time -- seem to work as a buffer between designers and 1 users technology seem to pose a lot of threats to the flow on 5. information 3. 3. the company values team input/feedback; the challenge 2. is how to do that remotelly most issues related to time3. zone difference 1. 2 4 5 1. 3. 3. 2. 1. 1. 4. 1. 1. 4. 3. 2. 1. 1. 3. 5. 2. 4. 3. 1. 1. 3. encouraging video conferencing because it recognizes the need of "faceto-face" communication, but 1. needs to cut costs of travelling 1. Video Conferenc ing Face-toface 3. 3. 1. 2. 4. 4.   Designing the User Experience:   Page | 100  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.4.3. Disseminating Results Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical junior designers feel they must use high fidelity concept drawing, while senior designers would 4 prefer rapid iterations 1. 1. sketching secrecy authorship intellectual property product developm ent document/ artifacts sharing 4 3. 2. 1 4. 4. 1 2. 3. 2. 3. 3. 1. 2. 3. 4. 3. 2. 3. 4. 3. the tools of choice of the company for sharing documents; unfortunetly is not well received by the employees, due to usability/performance 4. issues SharePoin t Electronic Meeting Systems 2. 2. 5. 3. 3. 5. 3.   11.4.4. Knowledge Management: OVERALL SCORES  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 101  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.5. Design Representation:  11.5.1. presentations Visualizing Data/Processes  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Reflections issues with language/culture seem to make  chinese designers disavantaged when  2 collaborating with western designers good domain of writing skills make chinese  designers feel more comfortable with this  4 medium Lack of sketching issues prevent designers to  4 communicate ideas through storyboarding sketching works very well to quickly  communicate design ideas face‐to‐face; the  challenge is how to support remote  5 communication this way 3 4 4 5 1 5 reports 3 2 3 storyboarding 3 1 1 sketching facilitating decision  making graphs storytelling 3 4 2 3 1 4 2 3 1 3 4 3 11.5.2. justification argumentation Design Rationale  Social/Cultural 3 3 Political/Economical 3 3 Organizational 5 4 Technical 2 2 Reflections decision making 3 5 3 Senior management (Product Management,  Software Development Managers, Project  Managers) are relying on Product Designers  for making decisions regarding project scope  for features, if they are only able to  understand the rationale behind the design  2 decisions Product Designers make. As consequence of the issues regarding their  approach to design reviews, and issues with  interpreting tasks, few Junior designers  record their assumptions over the design  decisions, which will reflect on poor (at  3 times, inexistent) design rationales. 3 As consequence of the issues on poor (at  times, inexistent) design rationales, it's  difficult for junior designers to have a clear  picture of why they've chosen to make the  5 design decisions they've made  record assumptions future directions 4 3 2 3 2 4 tracing back decisions 3 3 3 11.5.3. Design Intent  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Reflections The high‐level planning of all products at Autodesk is  executed by Product Management team and consolidated  through the Marketing Requirements Document. Such  team ‐‐ as previously mentioned ‐‐ work as a buffer  between designers and users, who ‐‐ in turn ‐‐ might have  a different perception of the high‐level goals of products,  3 given their understanding of the user tasks. Similarly to the Marketing Requirements Documents,  designers might have a different perception of the high‐ level goals of products, given their understanding of the  3 user tasks. 2 4 Since Junior Designers are left to construe their own  understanding of the tasks they’re involved, here there is  much room for misunderstanding, making cognitive  5 synchronization very important. Marketing  Requirements  Document Product  Requirements  Document User Requirements Functional  Requirements 1 5 4 2 3 3 4 3 2 5 3 4 Interpretation 4 4 2 Designing the User Experience:   Page | 102  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix B: Data Entries from Card Sorting  11.5.4. Design History  Social/Cultural Political/Economical Organizational Technical Reflections Although Junior Designers are familiar with  the concepts of brief (which would improve  a lot of their up‐front research work and  understanding of the tasks at hand), most of  them were never asked to write one. And  given the time contraints at corporate  environment, Junior designers have to  construe their own understanding of the  2 tasks they are involved. Given the issues previously mentioned (lack  of access to users, less than desirable time  for research, tendency to explore only one  solution until it's exhausted, instead of  taking several approaches simultaneously),  concept design documents tend do not  5 thoroughly explore the problem space. Design Specifications play a key role in the  development cycle of products at Autodesk;  yet, if designers are not given the  appropriate time and access to tools,  customer/user information, this artifacts  4 renders itself useless to faulty user research. 3 Design Brief 5 3 2 Concept Design  Document 4 4 3 Design Specifications Speclette 3 2 5 3 5 4 11.5.5. high fidelity  prototyping Prototyping/Simulation Tools  Social/Cultural 3 Political/Economical 5 Organizational 5 Technical Reflections high fidelity has greater response with  4 customers/product managers low fidelity seems to be more effective for  communicating design concepts internally,  but demand more iteration, which can be an  2 issue due to language skills low fidelity  prototyping 5 2 4 11.5.6. Design Representation: OVERALL SCORES  Designing the User Experience:   Page | 103  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix C: Contextual Relationship Maps  12. Appendix C: Contextual Relationship Maps  Social Designing the User Experience:   Page | 104  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix C: Contextual Relationship Maps  Political Designing the User Experience:   Page | 105  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros  Appendix C: Contextual Relationship Maps  Organizational Designing the User Experience:   Page | 106  Creating Innovative Design Software solutions within Collaborative/Distributed Design Environments   by Itamar Medeiros