inheritance in user experience design
by which, I mean, inheriting someone else’s user experience design, or proposal, or thesis, or presentation, or, even, 5 year plan. there is nothing quite so painful but satisfying as developing your user experience methodology and describing, in the most insightful of prose, the application of the process unto the design challenge that is the growth target that begets the business that spawns the project that produces the artefact that describes the outcome that provides the design solution. from whence that design solution was so eloquently detailed is the brainism that you channelled and distilled and expertly crafted into methods and practices and timelines and checkpoints that spake of some experience alchemy magick’d up from your mind cauldron.
in other words, its nice to define a process that supports a practice that enables you to deliver against your goals and make the online world that little bit better each time. actually, that last bit might be a rather grandiose and pompous blart, but without there being kind of user experience light at the end of the funnel towards which we steer the online improvement charabanc, why would we bother?
therefore, having just said whatever I just said there, it’s a significantly greater challenge to mind-mangle a process design when it actually begins as someone else’s. I’m currently co-working on a proposal for developing an experience design practice that helps enable a business transition. except that proposal is someone else’s and I’m collaborating on the further development and enhancement to get it to where it ends up on a projector in a boardroom and people start raising their eyebrows and checking their iphones for status updates from farmville, but its a good challenge. its also a challenge that’s likely to make the outcome more successful. in this case, the two heads are much better than the one head. the one head being mine.