Every week I face my archnemesis in a battle of will and endurance. I stand with firm footing, eyes narrowing as I lock onto my target. I extend my hand in an attempt at a truce—a peace offering. Goaded into a false sense of security my index finger trembles as I gently push the start button. Nothing happens.
“Five times?! You’re gonna make me start over five times today?” I cry out in desperation.
I turn off the washing machine again, choose my settings and place my finger on the button as though I were a fly-fisherman sending out my hook to land with grace and precision. The lid locks with a thud and the machine chirps. Finally.
That start button has never given my wife trouble. She can start it instantly, every single time. For some reason, that touch-only sensor doesn’t register my finger, no matter the angle, velocity, position, or time-in-contact. It’s a silly problem, I know, but I think it is representative of some of the problems we’ve introduced through technology that is supposed to be removing problems.
Design Thinking
If technology is ultimately about solving problems or at least making it easier to accomplish some goal, why wouldn't it be better for every day items to become smart items (meaning connected to the Internet)? Why shouldn't we use cool looking sensors and panels and interfaces that are more futuristic?
Apple—the company that gave us the iPod, the iPhone, Helvetica as a system font, and a really nice Unix-based terminal—has been propped up as an idol in the world of design. The success of their products, the bold and trend-setting visuals, the packaging experience, the focus on details, all have set a high bar that designers of all kinds aspire to meet. With all of the admiration swirling around Apple, a problem emerges: convergent design.
A theory behind creativity and design is to start with divergence. We can use techniques to encourage exploration and innovation. One method is looking to find connections between two things or two ideas that usually have no business with each other. Or we can try and find the extremes like James Victore says, Try to find the wrongest solution.
This is where discoveries are made: leaving the body of work that is familiar or known and looking outside to find possibilities.
Convergence, on the other hand is where we whittle down possibilities. We start to come together towards the final solution. The end-product of convergence is really important. Although there are pretty little charts like the one above, describing this process that seem straightforward, getting to the final decision isn’t clear or simple. Sometimes we converge too quickly, ignoring options that may have had significantly better results. Sometimes we converge on something that isn’t actually a good fit—even though everyone else is converging on it with great success.
The design process failed in the case of my washing machine. Likely influenced by the trends, it seems like the designers opted for a button based more on the sleek look, rather than on functionality or reliability. That kind of sensor-as-a-button is a design choice. It could be a physical, mechanical button that provides haptic feedback and actually pushes in, but instead it’s trying really hard to be a smartphone instead of a washing machine.
In the midst of all the possible ways a washing machine could be designed, we see trends of convergence towards a means that is actually less effective in its context than it is in another. For example, the standard smart phone has some excellent features and design choices. The interfaces can be somewhat complex for such a small, rectangular screen. They (usually) have great sensors that help distinguish between our taps and our swipes.
In contrast to a washing machine, the complexity of the smart phone lends itself to having these dextrous, complex interactive capabilities. A washing machine has one job, even if that one job has many settings, it ultimately must perform its sole purpose: cleaning my clothes. It is so tempting to bring in solutions that are proven and effective and slap them onto the problem you are trying to solve. The concern is when too many of us are short-cutting the process and moving past the divergent-thinking phase in favor of the convergent phase.
Human-Centered
“Design thinkers observe how people behave, how the context of their experience affects their reaction to products and services. They take into account the emotional meaning of things as well as their functional performance. From this try to identify people’s unstated, or latent, needs and translate them into opportunities.”
If there was nothing else I could learn from studying design, the one thing I would never give up is the aggressive insistence on prioritizing people. The best designers remember that each number in analytics and reports is a real, actual person.
As a developer, I felt even more distanced from people, because I don’t have much interaction with the site visitors. It seemed very cold and isolated to dive into code and abstract theories about structuring databases until I discovered the concept of accessibility (the effort made to enable people of all abilities to use a website). All of a sudden my design instincts merged with my programming skills—I found my touchpoint with humanity.
Accessibility has been my Polaris, guiding me back to the practices I had left behind as I gave up on my dream of being a designer. I could design better experiences for the blind or for people with low vision. I could make sure people who are sensitive to motion can safely open a page without getting a migraine. I could make the information easy to navigate for people who can’t use a mouse (or don’t want to, since the keyboard is the best way to use a computer 😉).
Seeing all of the people in my mind has increased my ability to participate in the design-thinking process. When I look at a new component, the challenge of satisfying all of the constraints, requirements, and sometimes ideals feels like a convergence process—it’s already limited. The limits can have the opposite effect, however, and propel me to seek out as many divergent ideas as possible.
As a final thought, going back to home appliances, I can’t summarize it any better than this wonderful creator did. Next time you turn on an oven or a microwave, consider how its design impacts you—and how it might impact someone with different abilities. This is how we practice design thinking and helps us all build bridges between technology and humanity.