RAFFIAPALM

Resources for product teams from industry experts.

By considering design decisions hierarchically, exploration becomes a process of choosing which fork in the road to take as each decision is encountered. Typically, a sequential decision strategy is a heuristic approach—it is a rule of thumb that does not guarantee that the best alternative is found on the first pass. One cannot typically know that there is not a better design down some path that was not taken. As a result, most designers will explore several paths, may backtrack, and may explore several different sequences of decisions. Nevertheless, a collection of promising designs can usually be generated relatively efficiently by considering decisions hierarchically.

— Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl Ulrich

Source: Amazon Kindle

Related Stories and Excerpts:

  1. Mental Models: The SCAMPER Method The SCAMPER method is one of the easiest yet most effective strategies for finding solutions to problems and sparking creative thinking. Think of this mental model as akin to opening a faucet that introduces water to seven pipes, and each of those pipes channels to a unique pot of earth. Each pot has the potential to bring forth new growth once the seeds in it are watered. Note that the SCAMPER method doesn’t require that you move in a sequential flow of steps. You can use it in any order or sequence and jump among the different techniques. Substitute: […]
  2. Mental Model #1: Address “Important”; Ignore “Urgent.” These are entirely separate things that we often fuse together. Important is what truly matters, even if the payoff or deadline is not so immediate. Urgent only refers to the speed of response that is desired. You can easily use an Eisenhower Matrix to clarify your priorities and ignore urgent tasks, unless they so happen to also be important. Mental Model #2: Visualize All the Dominoes. We are a shortsighted species. We think only one step ahead in terms of consequences, and then we typically only limit it to our own consequences. […]
  3. The “what” of service design may seem like the job of managers, not designers. But the “how” is different. And further, the approaches, methods, and skills required to do it (the “how”) in fact turn the “what” into something different. The work that managers see as analytical and abstracted becomes generative and materialized. The disconnected stuff of organizational life becomes connected and a shared matter of concern. Organizations are revealed as dynamically constituted in the multiple interactions between people and things and other people, in many places, over time. — Service Design: From Insight to Implementation by Andy Polaine, […]
  4. Exploration almost never results in a single plan, but rather exposes several alternatives that are promising enough for serious consideration. Evaluation of alternatives typically occurs “on paper” before an artifact is produced. Once an artifact has been produced, there is almost always an evaluation through testing by the user. Users are clearly best at assessing, through their own experience, whether an artifact actually closes the sensed gap in their experience. — Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl Ulrich Source: Amazon Kindle […]
  5. In this world, design is less and less focused on the creation of a single perfect artifact and is increasingly a puzzle requiring creative problem-solving and analytical judgment about product architecture, production process technology, supply chain structure, and market strategy. — Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Karl Ulrich Source: Amazon Kindle […]

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