The provision of enabling tools for designers is a key part of Yahoo!’s design strategy. 'No-one wants a process, they want methods, fluid methods that enable them to be successful,' says O’Sullivan
In order to drive home the message about design’s ability to add value and enable success, O’Sullivan oversaw the development of an electronic case study library, where the outcomes of design and user research activities are documented using a wide variety of simple, accessible methods, such as online video clips. O’Sullivan emphasises that these are not seen as definitions of best practice, but as examples of good practice upon which designers are encouraged to build based on their experience.
In the future, O’Sullivan hopes to complement the case study library with a methods library. Drawing on the ‘proof of success with design’ illustrated in the case studies, the methods library could include a variety of techniques, such as rapid product prototyping, and, addressing an area that designers can find challenging, simple models for product scheduling. Tools and techniques used during the product definition phase, such as card sorting, videoing users, storytelling from user research, cartoons and storyboard production, could also be held in the methods library.
The overall objective with these tools, says O’Sullivan, is to balance process with creative freedom. This is thought to maximise the chance of a successful cost-effective project without overly constraining the design team.
In more depthRead more about the
tools of the trade other companies from our study use to manage design
Another key tool used in Yahoo! is the Pattern Library. The company experienced that different design solutions were being developed to address similar problems, potentially weakening the corporate brand. It was thought that this stemmed in part from the decentralisation of user experience teams in Yahoo!. One way of addressing this was to develop an accessible tool that would effectively capture the standards for interaction design within Yahoo!.
The Pattern Library serves as the basis of a body of standards for Yahoo! user experience design and contains information on a wide range of user experience elements. It is also searchable in different ways to enable designers to quickly access possible solutions for key problems. Each element in the library, for example the ‘narrowing history’ technique for browsing complex product categories, is given a single 'importance of adherence' score, which indicates to designers how important the use of particular patterns is to 'The Yahoo! way.'
While the Pattern Library was intended primarily for internal use at Yahoo!, web developers have drawn on the model of the Pattern Library and created the Yahoo User Interface Library. This will function as a site where code-sharing and best practice will be exchanged on an open-source basis.
Overall, Yahoo! believes that there is not one process that fits all projects, and therefore internal teams use a variety of methods and tools. However, there is an internal cultural shift towards using the Agile process for product development, and the corporation provides training and materials for its use internally. Indeed, designers and other experts often find that Agile principles are equivalent to their own ways of working, and have adopted the methodology over time.
Agile is a software engineering philosophy devised in the late 1990s. It is based on the assumption that project specifications are likely to change during the product development cycle. Therefore, rather than creating a comprehensive specification upfront and engineering a product to fulfil it, the Agile process treats product development as a series of short iterative loops, lasting only days or weeks. The process aims to deliver a functioning product at the end of each and every one of these loops, with additional functionality being added or modified as the result of the review processes that take place at the end of each iteration.
Agile processes help designers, software engineers, product managers and user representatives to work closely together, since the interests of all must be considered at each product iteration. In many cases these groups are co-located for the duration of the project in order to foster the maximum amount of cross-functional collaboration and communication.
A key element of the Agile process is that ongoing changes to the product specification are actively encouraged, with participants rapidly assimilating new ideas and incorporating them in the next iteration of the product. For designers, this environment demands an ability to work quickly and flexibly in order to change their ongoing work as a result of shifts in project requirements or inputs from other team members.
In more depthFind out more about how
user research can benefit the design process
The Agile process means that functional product prototypes are delivered continually and repeatedly during the design process. Yahoo! has, says O’Sullivan, a culture of 'demo or die' and prototype code is subject to acceptance testing at every review.
Advances in Internet technology are assisting this process, however, with modern development environments such as AJAX and Flash making the production of functional prototypes quicker and less costly than ever before.
Please note
Except where expressly stated to the contrary, all copyright and rights in this content is owned by or provided with permission from the copyright holder to the Design Council. All rights are hereby reserved by the Design Council and by other copyright holders where appropriate.