Are you a designer who checks Twitter incessantly (or at least occasionally) and also wants daily insights into the thoughts and desires of the people who use the products and services you design for? Then perhaps you should start following your users on Twitter.

As a still relatively new Nokia designer, and having little experience with Nokia products and services previously, that’s exactly what I’ve started doing. I found, Mark Guim, a 25-year-old, self-described Nokia fanboy who currently resides in New York as he pursues a second bachelor’s in nursing. He has a Twitter feed and also is the editor of The Nokia Blog. I started following him on Twitter about a month ago, and have really been tickled by how much I’m learning about his feelings about Nokia’s products, from technical features to experience.

“after a week with Nokia E71, I’m back to N85. Love the qwerty but damn pics and videos come out purple.” -thenokiablog, 9:07 AM Dec 31st, 2008

Seeking out your users online isn’t a new idea, even on Twitter. Increasingly, marketing folks from the products and services I use (and likely complain about: hi Comcast!) have started following their customers on Twitter, which is great I’m sure for spotting trends, damage control, and promotions. But if Comcast follows me, they get mostly nothing about how I feel about Comcast services (though it might be good if they paid attention to all the user-centered design stuff).

Conversely, Mark broadcasts his feelings and day-in-the-life interactions with the Nokia products he uses in a way that most designers only dream of when putting together journals and other reporting paraphrenia for design research. It also feels a lot like another design research activity: shadowing. Not only do I get Mark’s thoughts, but also his interactions with other Nokia users who interact with him.

“interesting points from commenter: ‘Nokia N97 is no where near revolutionary enough to wait 6 months for’ http://is.gd/dQFD“-thenokiablog, 10:14 AM Dec 28th, 2008

Could Twitter or blog shadowing become a new design method? I’m curious if other designers are using Twitter or other services as a means to gain user insights by following specific people’s online publishing and behavior. And while I haven’t done it, I wonder what it would be like to start mapping the insights and really using them in future projects.

Erik Stolterman has been visiting Carnegie Mellon for the past few days, during which he gave a lecture on “The Design Paradox – and the nature of design research.” The premise of the talk, aimed at HCI researchers, was that HCI research, which is mostly aimed at improving design practice (his assumption), does not seem to influence practice. Hence, the paradox.

But the design paradox was not what interested me most. I was more intrigued by his argument that HCI researchers need to understand the nature of design; and for that matter, that designers themselves need to better understand what they are doing. Why? It helps practitioners to make the case for what they do. A more developed theory and philosophy of design will help designers recognize what they do and help other people understand that. This happens to be the basic premise of my thesis paper.

So what is it that researchers and designers themselves don’t understand? The rigor, logic, and discipline of design. “A good designer understands the rigor and logic of doing design in a disciplined way,” Stolterman says. After the lecture, I asked how we can better understand the rigor, logic, and discipline. He did not have an answer.

Nevertheless, the co-author of The Design Way had some great points about the nature of design and how it is different than art and science. In fact, Stolterman said he puts design on the same plain as art and science.

“Design is not art, design is not science, it’s its own tradition. It’s a choice to use design. An approach to change the world.”

As an approach, he argued, design gives us results that the other approaches don’t deliver. Design is set up to deliver unexpected outcomes. If we knew what we wanted, we wouldn’t use design, he said. Further, in understanding design, you must accept the complexities of design practice: mind set, knowledge set, skill set, tool set. In addition, must accept that design is mind and hand: sensibility and judgment; craft and skill.

He also provided a simple definition for judgment, which was great for me because I have been struggling to understand what this means in the writing of my paper. He said judgment is being able to recognize good quality. Now if I could just explain simply how a designer develops judgment, I’d be set.

As for interaction design, he said it is one of the most important fields in our society today. I got goosebumps when he said this, then quickly turned skeptical, then appreciative.

One remark that I didn’t understand was that someone who has no knowledge of the nature of design can move through the design process successfully. I thought I misheard him because it seemed like he was saying the opposite of this: that you need to understand the nature of design to move through the process successfully. This is a question I have pondered in my thesis.

Fortunately, I had the opportunity today to ask him to clarify the remark when he dropped in on our thesis meeting. Yes, he said, you can go through the design process without understanding design and be quite successful. But his belief is that understanding the nature of design will make you a better designer. I think I both believe this and disagree, and presume it will be on my mind for a while.

Overall, I really enjoyed the talk, even though it was very familiar. If you’re interested in these ideas, I recommend both The Design Way and Thoughtful Interaction Design, both of which I am referencing in my thesis.

For the airport security service design project and for my current service design project, my team has defined design principles to shape the final solution and ensure a benchmark of success. For airport security example, saying goodbye was a design principle. In order for our solution to be considered a success, had to address providing a place for people to say goodbye.

But how do you come up with design principles?

First, you need to do research. The way I view design principles are a reflection of the needs and values that were witnessed during the research. My current service design team had a recent meeting where we began defining design principles and we talked about how the principles are similar to need and values, but not quite the same. Perhaps it can be articulated in terms of “our solution must address design principle X in order to fulfill need Y.” And it may be that a design principle addresses many needs.

Even with good research, coming up with the principles isn’t easy. It took us a couple weeks to come up with the design principles for the Charmr this summer at Adaptive Path. And starting out can be intimidating because your developing powerful statements that drive the product.

For the airport security project, my team found it helpful to phrase the principles in the voice of the primary stakeholders. We asked ourselves, if this person were to describe what the end thing should be, what would she say? We found ourselves beginning the phrase with “Help me…” For example, “Help me communicate to passengers,” and “Help me say goodbye.”

For my current service design project, we used this same technique, and it really helped get the ideas flowing. It seemed to be easier for team members to put themselves in the shoes of the stakeholders and say, “Help me…” than to ask people to shout out design principles. One is concrete, the other abstract, and hence more difficult to do. It also provides the sense that you already have something started, you just need to complete it, which can help overcome the blank slate.

So in your next attempt to begin synthesizing your research and develop design principles, consider using the “Help me…” statement. It may just help you.

The other day we had a lecture on design research. We were first asked what we thought design research was. There was silence.

“I know what research is,” I thought. But design research. Why did the posing of the question make it seem different?

I ventured a guess. “Methods,” I said. It went on the board. And eventually we came up with a list.

• methods
• literary review
• product research
• process
• case studies
• critical design
• theory
• design for knowledge

The last one really interested in me: designing to create knowledge. We also mentioned artifacts as knowledge. I had not really considered this before, but the idea of creating knowledge through design seemed intriguing.

Though after thinking about it for a bit, it certainly doesn’t seem like anything new, as throughout time artifacts have embodied knowledge.

Still, the lecture struck me. And as I consider thesis topics, I’m wondering if this could fit in with my unformed idea.

As the lecture continued, another point that stood out was that interaction design has yet to make an impact outside its community. Why is this? Is it simply a matter of industry not yet fully accepting the value of interaction designers?

What will happen when interaction design make an impact? Will the world become a better place? Will there be enough interaction designers?

Is the answer lots of interaction designers? Are lots of interaction designers desirable? Can we be mass produced?