I've seen designers coddled and defended against avalanches of negative feedback under dubious auspices that users don't know what they want or that it's a natural thing to complain...
Then those aren't designers, those are artists. Artists have the option of creating a singular vision and defending it against all comers. Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing. If your "designers" are artists (or, just as common, you rely on your programmers implicitly being designers), then, yeah, you've got a problem, because they're focused on the product and not the process.
Incidentally, the sort of UX concepts you see on Dribbble are usually art, not design; most of them are created in isolation and outside of actual design methodologies, which is why they look great but are completely impractical for daily use.
I'm not a big fan of assigning identities to others. I've got disagreements on the culture.
If we didn't have this current culture and the older style continued, this mobile phone would have a physical slide out keyboard.
There may have been a physical scroll wheel on the side of the phone that could go through programs, scroll this page And do volume - not just that.
Maybe even buttons on the back of the phone like on the PlayStation controller to take selfies, dim the screen... If the phone was dropped, the replaceable industry standard battery would eject to absorb the impact. Cracked screens would be even more rare on top of that because the device would be a durable absorbent plastic.
The interface itself would have global text and keyword search, the color scheme would change at night, There'd be an sd slot and a dual band gsm/cdma chip etc...
I look at the trajectory we are currently on and I'm envisioning everything to be a toddlers interface in 10 years that's enormously infuriating and useless where you're cattle prodded into doing some very precisely planned flows with intentionally no room for deviation.
Nothing stupid is off the table. Replace the url input box in a web browser with a "share" button to post it on Facebook or Twitter? Google nagging you about new results to some random search from last week? News sites using third party cookies to only present articles on the front page that agree with your biases? A merging of sms and email so you have no idea how things are being sent?
everything to be a toddlers interface in 10 years that's enormously infuriating and useless
No need to wait 10 years, you've just described what we have now. Sure, it'll be worse in 10 years, but what we have now is already so simple that toddlers do use smartphones.
What's infuriating is that there is no pro- or power-user version. I'd pay AU$1200 for the device you described above but not for a flagship smartphone from Gooapple.
don't know if you'll see this ... but I think that part of the reason that we don't have this is because nobody has made it "sexy" enough.
I think we've conflated user desires in things like the iphone as the clever marketing from Apple Inc. I think the effect of their marketing really eclipsed the quality and features of their product line and we've drawn a false equivalency that the methodology of their product line is what consumers actually want.
I have no empirical evidence to support this wacky theory however and I remiss that it's likely 80% wishful thinking.
> Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing.
I think this approach is actually part of the problem of the UX today. It ignores the fact that most of the time, users have no "desires" about the product, and that instead what user does and wants is directly shaped by their interaction with the product. It's discovery by looking it the mirror - you don't see what your users want (because they don't want much, UX-wise), you only see reflections of your own preconceptions.
My belief is you should focus on understanding the problems your target users want to solve with your tool, and then design UX around making the product a powerful and convenient tool for solving those problems. And if you think UX is your product, then I don't want to waste my time even checking it out.
My belief is you should focus on understanding the problems your target users want to solve with your tool, and then design UX around making the product a powerful and convenient tool for solving those problems.
I agree! And, when I talk about "design," UI and UX are only one facet (because strategy, content, and technology are their own components in the larger design space).
When I talk about "desire," I'm following Gause and Weinberg in Exploring Requirements, where they say, "[W]e don't know how to figure out what people need, as opposed to what they desire. ... We do observe, however, that by clarifying their desires, people sometimes clarify what they really need and don't need." In that sense, they are in agreement with your approach: determine the desires your users have (what do they want out of the product, what will the product help them do, etc), and then use that to inform their needs (here's what the product should specifically do or afford). Your experience designers then work with you on how to create experiences that effect the needs to address the desires.
What I'm saying is, I think, that you're already thinking at a very sophisticated level in terms of design, it just sounds like your experience with design has been with organizations at a lower stage of process maturity.
Then those aren't designers, those are artists. Artists have the option of creating a singular vision and defending it against all comers. Designers have to create a vision that matches the discovered desires of the users, and then ruthlessly road-test that vision through prototyping and structured user testing. If your "designers" are artists (or, just as common, you rely on your programmers implicitly being designers), then, yeah, you've got a problem, because they're focused on the product and not the process.
Incidentally, the sort of UX concepts you see on Dribbble are usually art, not design; most of them are created in isolation and outside of actual design methodologies, which is why they look great but are completely impractical for daily use.