October Workshop Review: UPA-STC
" Design Thinking 2007" Workshop

by Jackie Damrau , STC Associate Fellow,
and Elisa Miller, LSC 1st Vice President

A great, innovative idea is no guarantor of success. Forrester Research reported that business leaders can no longer differentiate their service or product through price, features, selection, or brand. Today, customers want greater access to information through the use of the Web, mobile devices, and emails to transact their business. This interaction requires businesses to consider the “interactive experience of its target audience to remain competitive, grow revenue, and increase brand loyalty” (Usability Sciences, 2007, www.usabilitysciences.com/design-thinking-2007).

In what we hope will be the first of an annual event, the local chapters of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) and the Lone Star Community (LSC) of Society for Technical Communication (STC) worked together to produce the first “Design Thinking” workshop on October 19, 2007. The UPA program co-chairs asked LSC to co-host the event since we have direct experience producing workshops and regional conferences of this type. The LSC representatives were Elisa Miller, 1st Vice President, and Jackie Damrau, Managing Newsletter Editor and Education Manager.

To start off, I’d like to define “design thinking”—it is to move thinking away from the traditional—relying on inductive and deductive reasoning—to embracing the “abductive” reasoning skills in continually discovering and leveraging new and better solutions, resources, and methods by opening up a highly collaborative dialog with the target audience and peers.

Keynote: Chris Bernard – Design Thinking:
Door to Actionable Innovation

Chris Bernard is a bit of an odd duck at Microsoft. He works with the software design, development and business domains to communicate Microsoft's position on the importance of user experience in software design—and he is based in Chicago, not Redmond. During his presentation, Chris shared that the business methods for designing software and Web sites are broken. He explained that we need to keep up with the trends and innovative ideas for leading businesses to new highly compatible companies. The economics of software are changing, thus causing a disturbance in how we design and create software and Web sites.

Chris talked about how some businesses build the user interface (UI) after the application or Web site has been architected, which is nothing more than “pushing icing on the cake.” What he is referring to is that you can make the application or the Web site pretty, yet it does not fix the fundamental problem -- that software was not designed for the target audience.

Design thinking involves user research, UI design, design planning, information design, and usability testing.

The conclusion of Chris’s keynote left us with four concepts to think about: function (make it work well), aesthetics (make it look great), interaction (understand the context), and process or story (generate memories with an emotional connection).

Afternoon Sessions

The next two sessions covered “Hidden Entrances” (Stephen Anderson from Sabre) and “Hesitant Exits” (Jackie Damrau, STC). Stephen talked about how design is an ever important engine of corporate profit and is both an outcome (things we see) as well as part of a process (looking at the whole system). Jackie talked about how our careers as technical communication professionals or usability design professionals are quickly changing as new technology emerges. We must have a passion for continuing our education on our own to keep ourselves employable in the field that we enjoy the most.

The next session was a panel discussion where several local industry professionals talked about how their organizations are changing and why. Panel speakers included two local UPA officers and representatives from Nokia, Hotels.com, EDS, IMC2, and Usability Sciences. The message from this session was that businesses need to move away from reactive thinking and more towards revolutionary, proactive thinking to meet the needs of their target audiences. As professionals in this space, we need to maintain broad knowledge in the areas of user-centered design, information analysis/architecture, information design, and user research methods.

Evening Sessions

The afternoon sessions ended with a lavish spread of hors d’oeuvres sponsored by IMC2 (catered by Breadwinners Café and Bakery). After everyone was plentifully stuffed, we scattered into individual evening workshops on topics like:

• The Reading Corner hosted by Garrett Dimon and Adam Polansky who held open discussions about books that inspire the field of Design Thinking.

• Silverlight (Chris Bernard) helped attendees 1) learn how the intersection of design and technology is fundamentally changing how professional disciplines work together when creating digital experiences and rich Web applications, and 2) gain in-depth perspectives on next generation concepts and platforms to enable enterprise and consumer experiences.

• Influencing Change Through Presentations (Travis Isaacs) helped attendees see how a well designed presentation can be an invaluable tool for telling your story, incubating ideas, and making change in your organization.

• Windows Help Files: looking Back, Moving Forward… (Darice Lang, STC) helped attendees take a quick look at the history of Windows help files, the structure of a Windows help file, and then I will share tips and tricks for creating and maintaining Windows help files. No computers are required for this class. Information about help files will not be directed to a specific help generation tool; it is simply informational about help files in general.

• FrameMaker Tips and Stuff I Found Useful (Mike Hiatt, STC) helped attendees learn tips and tricks that Mike learned over the years (and last week) about using Frame as well as some methodologies he developed for creating and managing documents with shared content. Mike also provided information on some plug-ins for Frame that he found useful over the last ten years of using Frame, as well as provided suggestions for looking for additional plug-ins.

• Axure: Design by Example (Kelly Rader/Hank Henry) provided attendees with a hands-on experience using this prototyping application.

Other Activities

IMC2, the facility host, provided a walk-about tour of their company. It is very Google-ish in that cubes are made of raw wood (not the traditional modular gray cube walls) with unusual conference room names, zen rooms, Wii rooms, and even an upside-down room.

LSC hosted the bookstore with the books covering topics on usability design and technical communication. The bookstore was staffed by Jackie’s parents and daughter-in-law, who did an excellent job in selling books.

Conclusion

The event was successful and opened the doors to new ways of thinking about my own approach to my technical work. Designing and delivering technical content requires a special trait in knowing how to get the right information to the right people in a way that they can understood and perform their job.
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*All photos in this article are courtesy of Lou Capone, IMC2 host.