UI/UX

When I was studying to be a designer in IDC, in 1970; there was no separate discipline of design called ‘User Interaction Design’. Design was seen as holistic and integrated activity where one looked into all aspects: Functional, Formal, Technical, Ergonomical (also called Human Factors), and Behavioural, and then designed the whole product. Designing the interaction and the interface were just among of the many competences one had to acquire.

The discipline of UI/UX emerged as a response to the need of design of digital displays of many new devices: laptops, tablets and the mobile phone and the ever-mushrooming world of apps for them, all of which required the visible display and the interaction to be designed. From 1990s, design schools started having programs in Interaction Design. Because the venture-funding based start-ups paid more for UI/UX designers; the best students from both Industrial Design and Visual Communication began to join these new technology start-ups; and UI/UX has now become the profession of choice for aspiring design students. The profession created its own jargon and methodology and seems to have established itself as an independent creative activity.

IDEO’s prescribed method for designing called ‘Design Thinking’ and Don Norman’s ‘7 Principles of Interaction Design’ presented the act of designing as a linear, sequential process; which was easy to teach and learn, but reduced the enjoyable, creative act of design, to something like a ‘Painting by Numbers’ approach to creating art. The industry welcomed and adopted the prescribed methodology, and it seems to have become the norm for designing product interactions, in spite of the many flaws of this approach. The situation was further aggravated by dividing User Experience Design into ‘User Interface Design’ and ‘User Interaction Design’, with separate set of people given these tasks, much like the assembly method of mass-production, where one was only involved with a part of the project, doing what one is told to do, for example, putting skins to given wire-frames following the visual templates which were decided by yet another higher-up person based in USA. An exciting, holistic, creative activity was broken into boring tasks one had to perform; forgetting the original inner urge which led one to take up design as one’s calling.

There are many negative fallouts of the way the UX profession works at present. From the student life itself, those pursuing courses in UI/UX are taught to design in a fixed manner, which is considered UX Design Curriculum. They do primary and secondary research; contextual inquiry, make empathy maps and create personas in a fixed style; and present them in a fixed, approved manner, ending with a final project which is completely predictable in its outcome. There is no room for creativity in this approach. This is ‘Design- Made-Easy’ or ‘Design for Dummies’ as the book series is called.

I have sat in numerous student UX presentations, where these project steps are presented. When we presented our design projects, the image on the screen was expected to be legible and readable. Now it is completely acceptable that you present a screen shot of tens of Post-it stickers on a wall, without the text being readable; or dense Figma created flow charts with very fine lettering which no one can read. The only aim seems to be to establish that one has followed the process. It is not considered necessary to have understood its relevance and use in the actual design process. Personas are created and presented in great detail, without knowing how creating personas may help in the final design. Same with empathy maps. A recipe for creating UI/UX designers has been agreed upon, and this is considered enough. That one should be able to cook a variety of great dishes depending on the need, is not really expected.

With such a curriculum, one does not develop an integral understanding of the design process, or even of what an interface is. I had asked a PhD in Cognitive Ergonomics during a faculty interview, ‘What is the user interface in a pencil?’ After a great deal of thinking the candidate offered a tentative answer: ‘Colour?’. With this level of general lack of understanding of one’s own profession how can one can come up with better and more creative solutions?

In professional life, UX seems to have become a self-serving profession, with very little scope for creativity. A boring mechanical task, with endless meetings and discussions, analyzing massive research data collected. When the main job becomes routine and uninteresting, the organizations have to spend millions on ping-pong tables, gyms, swimming pools, and chilling out spaces, to make them ‘Great places to work’. If the work is challenging, one would not mind working from a garage. So many of my former students have left high-paying UX jobs to take up more fulfilling pursuits.

In my opinion the agreed process for creating user interactions is so complicated that it just cannot create simple interfaces which is usually the objective. One gets lost in the process, forgetting the overall goal. User experience is not limited to digital displays. Whenever human beings use anything, there is user experience. Improving that expereince is the objective of designing.

I remember a M.Des. student who was designing a Vegetable Buying app as the final project. During the data collection phase, he came to me with a long questionnaire. One of the questions was ‘How much is your annual budget for vegetables?’. I told him ‘I have been buying vegetables for 60 years, and am able to do this without the vegetable vendor ever asking my annual budget’.

Prof Gui Bonsiepe cautioned about the trap the data collection phase is. It appears a useful and respectable activity, and can go on as one keeps on searching in the unlimited data which is available to search from. In our RCA class on ‘Technological Innovation: A Methodology’ Prof Bruce Archer used the photography metaphor to explain the solution finding process. The first step in finding a solution is to point in the right direction; and then turn the lens till you can see the stitches on the collar. For us, as students, the reference book to follow was ‘Design Methods’ by J. Christopher Jones; which described the various problem-solving methods without prescribing a fixed method, as ‘Design Thinking’ and ‘7 Principles of Design’ do. One selected what one needed for the project, as design projects are different, needing different methodologies.

?I have found ‘Self-evidentness’ a goal to aim for in the design process when designing interactions. I had talked about it in detail in an HCI conference in Hyderabad years ago. The concepts of ‘Sahridayata’ (like-heartedness) and ‘Sadharanikaran’ (generalization) proposed by 8th Century Poetics Scholar Anandavardhan are extremely useful for interaction design and need to be an integral part of the curriculum of designers. As has been said, ‘What is the point of all learning, if it does not make one a poet?’

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