The first two of these segments have an obvious appeal. When it comes to justifying creative time and managing those resources, painful decisions are often involved. Some of these include when to discount jobs for new clients, or setting up which clients' work should be a priority over another.
The third segment I listed, concerning the ethnography of a designer's audience, is especially resonant with third/fourth semester MFA/GR students at the Academy. One of the thesis-development-related methodologies we are exploring in Visual Communications Lab involves this same building of audience profiles, in order to more effectively focus the appeal and relevance of our respective messages. As noted in the discussions of that class, the AIGA itself had produced a primer on ethnography, and sent it to its members about a year or two ago. Without any formal training to understand it, it simply sat on my shelf. I'm excited to be able to tie in these myriad resources that I have apparently been overlooking for too long.
The last segment listed doesn't specifically relate to user testing as I noted, but rather speaks to task prioritization. Goto notes Stephen Covey's "Secrets of Highly Successful People" and uses this table to explain why designer's don't do user testing:
The "a-ha" moment occurs when she notes that, by this diagram, most people are said to be actively ignoring everything that is both important and not urgent. I think this is a terrific insight. I'm going to start evaluating my time usage based on this standard, with the goal of moving more items onto the "urgent" list that I can accomplish quickly.
Like cleaning up this blog, for example.
2 comments:
Good luck on your new Urgent Non Urgent objective!
V
I agree with what you are saying. It's helpful to see a plan laid out. At my job, designers follow a similar formula, but of course it's a bit different for interior design. Same concept, though.
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