After reading Hugh Dubberly’s “How Do You Design?” I have identified some steps that should be added into my own creative process. Let me start by expressing that I cannot help but be drawn to the IDEO processes and techniques. Their innovation and creativity based on interdisciplinary collaboration is simply inspiring. I would love to be able to add their cross-disciplinary team style into my own process in order to better understand my customers and their users experiences.

The concept and method behind behavioral mapping, photographing the user within the space over time to determine commonalities and also the extreme user interviews provide the opportunity to establish subjective perceptions and objective realities. This actually ties in with my thesis concept in regard to how we, as designers, can enhance the user(s) experience through the marriage of art and science?

The notion of interviewing users across a spectrum of relation, from very familiar to not at all familiar, with the product provides a more comprehensive view of desired user experience. Not to mention that as users continue to demand products that improve experiential quality of life, our job as designers, must be to understand their needs and wants in order to provide a long-term relationship with the user and the product/service/environment. This concept falls within the realm of user experience and phenomenological study. As I research this process more, I hope to touch upon it further in my next blog entry.

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Photo Credit: tashadean.com