Comments on: design is no place for democracy (things we learned from the drupal.org project)

By: nicalorber

nicalorber — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 18:06:19 +0000

Well said. Story of my life. I’ve been in this situation a million times.

By: Larry Roth

Larry Roth — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:09:46 +0000

Your points are spot on. I don’t think it’s stressed enough that the most important part of usability testing is HOW you ask the questions. Even something as basic as “What was going through your mind as you tried ______”? as opposed to “How would you want to see it work?” can make a huge difference in the feedback you get.

By: Des Traynor

Des Traynor — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:16:24 +0000

One thing I’ve consistently found is that you get the worst feedback when you directly solicit it.

So many times I’ve presented a design and said “What do you think of this?” and then peoples attitude moves from user to “informed art critic” and you start to hear their thoughts about what they think they’d like to see.

Occasionally I’ve had the pleasure of working with clients where I deliver a solution and promise them I’ll make any amendments they want after two weeks of use. It’s shocking the difference in the quality of feedback.

No one talks about blue gradients, the focus of the conversation is entirely on “What can we do to make this better”.

By: Andreas

Andreas — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:13:26 +0000

I fully aggree on this after experiences with clients on design decisions.
I love to remember one project where I had used wireframes to communicate with our client. The project’s designer created screen designs afterwards, conforming to the application’s design guidelines and CI.
The client would have preferred the wireframes for their design!
He said, they were more “simple” and “clear”, nothing disturbing…
He would ignore that they had no personality, did not comply to CI, had weird colors. If he were able to choose, he would have chosen the wrong desing.

By: Johnny van de Laar

Johnny van de Laar — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 08:36:22 +0000

Isn’t democracy a governing method where “the people” elect a few experts that make the best decissions for them?

And this is exactly what has happened. We elected the Drupal Foundation for their expertise. They decide what is best for drupal.org and the Drupal Foundation decided that it was best to hire you for the redesign ;)

By: alex_b

alex_b — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:35:19 +0000

This is why I think Drupal’s first goal shouldn’t be to have a good user interface but to enable a good user interface.

By: Simon Hobbs

Simon Hobbs — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 23:07:14 +0000

Anyone who’s been through the process from the designers perspective would agree.

What brought it home for me in our redesign was with the logo. I looked at a bunch of variations and immediately rested on logos that appeared to have harmony. 2 days later I looked again and realized how quickly they had become mundane. It was clear that the best logos had some sort of eccentricity – they became more memorable and had a personality. Regardless of the design science behind this, what I can say is that my immediate opinion was flawed and subjective. It’s these opinions that can derail a design process.

As a non-designer talking about design, I suddenly assume the form of an “amateur designer” – it’s quite simple and wrong to do.

But at the end of it, our designer was very open, patient to explain the reasons for different things. When we consistently expressed concern about something he would find a compromise. As far as I can see, the Drupal.org redesign has benefited from a similar process.

By: sun

sun — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 20:38:59 +0000

Democracy is bikeshed.

That’s why I badly need your input on the Total Drupal Administration Revamp:

http://groups.drupal.org/node/19171

I created a Demonstration site for the new categories, and I’m willing to work hard to drive this new proposal and concept for administrative categories home.
It’s a monster patch for Drupal core. All I need is some additional insight from usability experts.

If you are in IRC, please ping me.

By: Caleb G

Caleb G — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:06:03 +0000

Heh – from the first day you started blogging about the redesign process I’ve been waiting for *this* article. I fully concur with your own conclusions, and I appreciate how hard earned they are. ;-)