Differences in design

Not that long ago my team at work was tasked with creating a new homepage for our client. In true team fashion we were allowed our input as to the problems and solutions to the current home page. Now I work as a web developer so my input was mostly technology based, and was mostly along the lines of what we can and cannot do. We discussed best practices and prototyped what we thought would work best.

The design included a large broadcast space for promotions and specials as well as a fat footer with links deeper into the site targetting specific tasks we had identified as common to most users. Thankfully the client had agreed to do usability testing. The results were quite unexpected. Most of our assumptions were wrong. Users were not responding to the elements we thought were important and most actually preferred the old homepage.

The only person who appreciated the new homepage was someone who worked in the internet industry. Being a saavy user, she was able to relate to the choices we made.

This brought to mind something I had read about the differences in design approaches. And these approaches are best illustrated by the two big computer manufacturers, Microsoft and Apple.

Apple employs the genius design prinicple. They have a particularly gifted individual or team create something, then they manufacture it and sell it. The perfect example of this is the iPod. The iPod is not the best mp3 player on the market. There are others that perform better, have longer lasting batteries, have more features. But when you hold an iPod, it “just feels right”. The downside is that it can also lead to spectacular failures. Sometimes the designers just get it wrong.

Microsoft employs a different technique starting with a user panel and then allowing for rounds and rounds of user testing prior to launch. The advantage to this is that your product has all the features that everyone wants. The downside of course if that the product is unnecessarily complicated and not everyone wants all the features. To understand what I mean, open up MS Word and then open every possible menu and feature bar. There are far too many when most people just want a word processor. It is a safer approach than the “genius design” but can get very cumbersome.

So the solution? The solution in my mind is a mixture of both. Take your best crack at designing something. Refine your ideas as best you can and then allow for limited usability testing. The user group should be the actual people who are likely to use the product. Based on the results of the testing re-address your original premise and see if it is correct. I believe that this will produce better results than either of the other approaches, and save headaches in the long run. Does that mean that usability testing is really design research?