Detailed Design and Validation - Contextual Design: Evolved - page 40

andvisualdesigner,withdifferentskillsandlanguage,areallontheteamtogetherthecon-
versation gets even more complex. Contextual Design helps a team separate the conver-
sations—even when they're happening at the same time—so that everyone knows what is
being discussed.
The layers of design overlap not only because they inform each other, but because the
design is created iteratively. Iteration with user feedback is fundamental to this phase of
Contextual Design. Itkeeps the design ontrack. Designers sitting inaroomtalking toeach
other—even when they start from user data—get lost in the details of a design. They think
too hard about points that don't matter and argue too long about questions that can only be
resolved by the user. They spend vast amounts of time developing a feature only to discov-
er, on user test, that users don't value that feature—and then they're too invested in it to
giveitupeasily.SoContextualDesignencouragesaquicktripthroughthelayersofdesign,
taking the result out to users for feedback, and using that feedback to redirect the design. *
Thefirstiterationmaybeveryrough,andthat'sfine.Lateriterationswillrefinethedesign,
add detail, and finally result in a polished product.
There's also a good business reason for early prototyping and iteration. Putting your
conceptinfrontofusersgivesyouearlyfeedbackonwhethertheconceptitselfisanygood,
and helps you make the business case for developing the product. Field interviews can val-
idate the basic concept while getting feedback on the presentation layer. And if the Cool
Metric is used at the same time, feedback from the score can tell the team what dimensions
of the cool user experience are strong or weak. Together, the user feedback and score can
guide the team in design changes. If the Cool Metric was used on a prior product or com-
petitive product, the team can compare their scores to the other product to make sure they
are moving in the right direction.
The result of explicitly designing in layers is a flexible process that works well with
modern iterative development practices, such as Agile and Lean UX [ 7 ] . We'll now walk
throughtheactivitiesofContextualDesignfordetaileddesign:InteractionDesignPatterns,
Storyboarding, User Environment Design, and Validation testing. We will discuss each in
turn, but remember throughout that in practice they happen in parallel and continuously in-
teract with each other.
5.1 INTERACTION DESIGN PATTERNS
To ensure that the team has the best modern design materials, they start by looking at ex-
isting interaction design patterns for inspiration. Once possible high-level approaches are
identified, the interaction design patterns evolve and are iterated along with the other as-
pects of the product's overall design.