Learning Reflections / 4

I zoomed through several chapters of Designing with the Mind in Mind this weekend -- playing a bit of catch up after a hectic week of travel followed by an even more hectic week of work. So much interesting stuff to learn about the mind and how so much of what we do is involuntary. System one and system two thinking was especially interesting to think about. I've heard of the concepts before and actually own (but haven't read) the book Thinking Fast and Slow that goes into all of this in great detail. We think we're being perfectly logical, but no, we're just making snap decisions so we can move on. Our brains have more important things to worry about.

Some of this information is a little harder for me to immediately apply to my work but I did find one section that is immediately applicable to my work and that is task analysis and conceptual models based on that analysis. There's a great list of questions to use when conducting a task analysis and then succinct advice on how to move forward with using the information learned to design what the user actually needs.

More and more I am seeing how important it is to spend a lot of time up front, researching and understand the user. And then it's equally important to keep remembering (and reminder others) what was learned during all of that research as you get further and further down the design and build path. A lot can be lost in translation. Feature creep takes over. Copy gets edited. Lessons learned get forgotten. I am trying to figure out how to better document things like task analysis so that when new designs are put forth, we can vet them against all the research we've done.