Case in point? My new photo ID for my recently acquired job at Tufts University. Wow, I look like I should be featured on The Smoking Gun

A compelling argument put forth by Colborne is that delight as defined by users is sticky in the Made to Stick sense because delight occurs when a user's anxiety is relieved. One example he gives is when someone drops their iPod and it becomes disconnected from their earphones. Upon plugging it in, the iPod user will be delighted to find that the song paused at the moment of disconnection. Delight!

This is not to say that we want to purposely create user anxiety, such as a bank website informing you that there is less money in your account than what actually exists. That's just bad customer service and, well... downright cruel. But can we look for one point of anxiety to solve?

It's a small sampling of the 100's of iterations we developed for the SARUP website since October.

It is interesting to revisit where things are today in relation to where the design started. This process is different than past projects for clientele because it was, as some may label it, a Design by Committee. I'd argue it was closer to the concept of Deep Dive. There is an inherent period of adjustment for any team as discussed in the well thought out book Starbuilding (Greenstreet 2005) where Greenstreet delineates the four stages of team growth:

• Forming: A period of getting to know each others strengths with a view to streamlining roles
• Storming: Raised expectations and more freedom in criticism
• Norming: Frequent collegial discussion and a focus on the sum over parts
• Performing: Appreciation and acceptance of team colleges and their roles

While an individual working with a client has the advantage of rapid implementation with unilateral decision authority, the individual lacks the advantage of feedback from qualified professionals within a team framework. Therefore the greater sum of effort can never be tapped into. Places such as NASA to IDEO encourage working in teams and have found empirically that the final product from a team effort will always beat the work of an individual. One exercise in this thought is Lost on Moon

The key in utilizing the full potential of your team is to have individuals breakout to generate ideas, then bring the team back together to discuss these ideas for refinement. If there is no individual breakout, then there is a danger of the strongest opinion running the group, squelching individual creativity. By operating a team with the individual breakout and team analysis, you reap the benefits of innovative thinking on an individual level filtered through the broader sampling of a group.

After reviewing the various iterations posted for the SARUP website, it confirms my preference of designing within the framework of a talented team because, in my experience, it produces a more satisfying and effective final product. No one gets exactly what they want, and that's a good thing. The sum is greater than the singular focus.

To get a better feel of this, you owe it to yourself to watch this 3 part video on YouTube documenting IDEO's teamwork design process, the Deep Dive.

The graphic designer in me can't help but love the subtle and understated elements used on an element that otherwise litters our landscapes, and is usually the attention whore of the advertising world. The architect in me can't stop wondering who decided mauve vinyl siding was a good idea.

~ gabriel