First Meeting with Startl + IDEO
Today marks the official beginning our my startup deep dive summer. Pocket Tales had the opportunity to meet with Duane Bray, partner at IDEO and Diana Rhoten, co-founder and managing director at Startl. I’m really excited to witness and be apart of the design process for an interactive web app. To have someone like Duane as an advisor, even if for a short time, is amazing. Though it was just a rough introduction into what we should expect in the next few months, Duane touched on several important considerations when designing for interactive media.
IDEO is critically known for it’s human factors approach to design. Duane explained that in observing people, people don’t often do what they say they do but great design relies heavily on human behavior. He touched on a few things to take into account when initiating user centered design. As is often the case in design, getting to the process involved asking a lot of questions:
Who are my target users?
When defining your users, it’s important to look at who will be the end user and what are their key attributes. In addition, one should identify who the other stakeholders are that will influence the adoption of my product and what their key attributes are.
Why would they engage?
Here is where we define the product problem. It’s critical to know exactly what problem or challenge that my user is facing that my product could potentially solve. Motivation for solving that problem, how they proritize this problem and how do they measure success are all questions relevant to getting at the core of a design problem.
What is the context?
Duane states that you then start to look at the environment. Are their other activities that might be engaging while using the product? Are their existing offerings out there today that do the same thing? This is often where I think designers become either defeated or inspired. You have to take a long hard look in the mirror and ask yourself how does yours differ or what makes it better? He goes on to state that if there is no existing solution, what workaround are people creating today to make up for the lack of a product in their lives? How successful has that been?
How do they react?
We are told to do this last. Here is where we take stock in the reaction of our users. What do they think it would help them to do? When and why do they think they might use it? What else would they want it to do ad what changes would make it better?
When it comes to Pocket Tales these questions are true tools for us to understand the mind of an avid child reader. I think there are a lot of assumptions that I’ve made about kids. For instance, I know not every child is currently buying into the empire that is Harry Potter. My favorite book as a child was Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends, a far cry from the wizardry of Harry and friends. This summer should be an eye-opening experience to say the least.