Give me another chance, I wanna grow up once again... :-) goes the song from 3 Idiots!
Yea, that was exactly what I was listening to during the run today. Showed up earlier than our normal timing and got to run in the drizzling rain with just the right amount of sunshine, add the beautiful rainbow in the backdrop of the blue sky and pretty clouds!
And I danced my way through... :-) What a perfect run!
Until later, Happy running!
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Distributed in a centralized way
Some thoughts on designing approach:
I have worked bottoms up from distributed and have seen a lot of worthy contributions and I understand the importance of centralized approach at the same time. I also understand that “distributed” cannot scale and may miss out on the bigger picture but at the same time “centralized” can miss out on the "need-of-the-minute", if it makes things too generic in terms of patterns.
I have worked bottoms up from distributed and have seen a lot of worthy contributions and I understand the importance of centralized approach at the same time. I also understand that “distributed” cannot scale and may miss out on the bigger picture but at the same time “centralized” can miss out on the "need-of-the-minute", if it makes things too generic in terms of patterns.
Let’s see some of the pros and cons for both these approaches:
Ownership
Distributed
You are the dedicated designer for the product so you feel like a part of the team and thus have a sense of ownership of the product rather than being seen as an alien independent UX entity who polices around and preaches best practices.
Centralized
Designer belongs to the generic UX team and thus is not a dedicated designer for a particular product. This does not give a sense of ownership for a particular product since you act like a outsider consultant and talk at higher levels and make generic comments / patterns that the product team should follow. This may not necessarily be in the best benefit of the product because of many oversights (especially if the product is deep and complex)
Scalability
Distributed
You may not have the luxury of having dedicated set of designers for every product in your organization and thus may not scale with limited resources.
Centralized
This approach scales well even with limited resources
Consistency
Distributed
Consistency will not necessarily be enforced across products if the designers are not aligned in the same direction and don’t meet regularly to keep themselves updated on the unified vision of UX along with the recommended design patterns.
Centralized
Consistency across all products can be easily enforced with pattern library, best practices, guidelines, etc.
I think that for startup mode products that are more concerned about "proof-of-concept", a siloed distributed approach works best, allowing you to focus on the single product. But as your company grows, it needs to start thinking about a range of products/solutions and thus consistency across products and scalability of the approach become some of the important factors to consider.
So why can’t we have the best of both the worlds? Don’t we need a good combination of the two: distributed but in a centralized way! Especially in a domain where your products have great depth and complexity and there are almost always exceptions and trade-offs for every single point in the product workflow. Designers don’t need to be SMEs but need to be working very closely up from concept to design.
Ownership
Distributed
You are the dedicated designer for the product so you feel like a part of the team and thus have a sense of ownership of the product rather than being seen as an alien independent UX entity who polices around and preaches best practices.
Centralized
Designer belongs to the generic UX team and thus is not a dedicated designer for a particular product. This does not give a sense of ownership for a particular product since you act like a outsider consultant and talk at higher levels and make generic comments / patterns that the product team should follow. This may not necessarily be in the best benefit of the product because of many oversights (especially if the product is deep and complex)
Scalability
Distributed
You may not have the luxury of having dedicated set of designers for every product in your organization and thus may not scale with limited resources.
Centralized
This approach scales well even with limited resources
Consistency
Distributed
Consistency will not necessarily be enforced across products if the designers are not aligned in the same direction and don’t meet regularly to keep themselves updated on the unified vision of UX along with the recommended design patterns.
Centralized
Consistency across all products can be easily enforced with pattern library, best practices, guidelines, etc.
I think that for startup mode products that are more concerned about "proof-of-concept", a siloed distributed approach works best, allowing you to focus on the single product. But as your company grows, it needs to start thinking about a range of products/solutions and thus consistency across products and scalability of the approach become some of the important factors to consider.
So why can’t we have the best of both the worlds? Don’t we need a good combination of the two: distributed but in a centralized way! Especially in a domain where your products have great depth and complexity and there are almost always exceptions and trade-offs for every single point in the product workflow. Designers don’t need to be SMEs but need to be working very closely up from concept to design.
At this point, I am leaning to say that a dedicated UX team with a unified vision and strategy aligning with the company business goals and objectives, should be formed. Once everyone in the team is onboard and aligned on this vision, the designers are all set to rock on individual product teams while regularly syncing up with other product designers to keep each other informed.
Thoughts? What has worked well in your organization? What approach do you use for designing your products?
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