I listened to a superb podcast with Jesse James Garrett from Adaptive Path (http://www.brazenart.com/podcast_media/TwT_005.mp3) and it got me thinking about the starting point for any piece of design. In particular, it gave me an explanation as to why I always think it’s critical to start with the human story before starting any design.

Jesse Garrett explains “The basic principles of how a user interacts with a particular product doesn’t really change, we’re talking about people.” That understanding of human behaviour and how they behave when interacting with a given product, fundamentally doesn’t change quickly. In fact getting it right will outlast whimsicle design fads like Web 2.0 interfaces or this seasons colours.

At this point, I think it’s important to consider a major distinction between your goal as a designer, are you trying to change a classic design or are you making circumstantial design edits to move in line with what’s influencing the consumers seasonal desires?

CLASSIC DESIGN
For classic design improvements, you are looking at well established core human behaviours to understand what people really do with a classic design – “the dirty reality” as an old colleague once put it.

If your products, services and brand are an expression of your relationship with your customers, the dirty reality will show you the gaps in that relationship, so you can give customers the products, services and brand that really helps them and in turn, you may get them to love you more for it.

When you grasp the dirty reality, you can chose to look at the materials and technology you have with a view to improving the experience with new technology, ideas and materials.

Often the companies that make classic designs don’t appreciate that innovation happens through unknown (to them at least) agents of change such as aluminium over wood, HTML over paper, engines over horses. These agents of change are often embraced by people not in the industry able to take a fresh look at a classic design and seeing how it can improved.

However, a classic design is often something that can be improved incrementally where a brand that has a strong market prescence, and is willing to embrace the dirty reality of its’ existing relationship with its’ customers. Simply changing a training programme or the usability of a website can be a quick win for the customer and provides useful PR / social media content.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL DESIGN
So, if our goal is not to change the classic design of an experience, what else is there? Well, let’s consider this piece by Shannon Pogue:

“Watch your thoughts: thoughts become actions. Actions become habits. Habits become character. Character becomes destiny.”

The question that circumstantial design seeks to solve is what’s influencing people’s short-term thoughts, before they manifest into habitual “core” behaviour.

It’s worth noting that thoughts can be remarkably unreliable! In fact, marketers have a word for that sinking feeling you have, when you realise the thing you just bought isn’t as good as you thought it would be: “post purchase dissonance”.

So when we deal with circumstantial design, we accept that we don’t seek to make things better by influencing core behaviour, we’re just trying to sell more without really influencing the quality of what’s being sold. In which case insights based on trends that influence people’s short term thoughts (fashion, a desire to be sociable) will influence the design of digital solutions in these circumstantial ways:

• Delivery (packaging, new technology platforms, delivery methods)
• Aesthetic (colour, texture, imagery, font)
• Content (language, tone and maybe taxonomy)
  
• Social Platform (including Twitter, blogging, referring features)
• Payment/Basket (location and maybe process)
  

SOME KIND OF CONCLUSION
In the end, I think a user experience designer has to understand the psychology of the person they are trying to develop a relationship with through the product, service or brand they are designing for.

Circumstantial design requires less Information Architecture and UE because the changes are not founded in understanding human behaviour, they’re about understanding what’s influencing customers’ thoughts, simply accentuating aspects of the design to suit the seasonal tastes of the customer.

However, you simply won’t find the evidence you need to compel a brand into really believing the dirty reality of the customer experience in circumstantial designs, you’ll just be telling the brand owners what they want to hear – e.g. how their digital solution looks like on an iPhone, how to offer social media, how touch screen affects your brand in the future.  None of which improves the classic design’s ability to perform better around the behaviours of people, it will simply extend what may be a poor design in new directions, still leaving the brand open to competitors.

So, here’s where a User Experience Designer should start:

1. Is the classic design good enough to meet the core behaviours of cusomers?
2. What circumstantial design changes will enhance, not change, a good classic design?

If you begin with the human story, you’ll improve both classic and circumstantal design.  It’s simply a question of how far you want to go in uncovering behaviours that could revolutionise your client’s brand.  It’s much easier to know what’s going on circumstantially, so most half competent brands will be doing it, but you have to look at the dirty reality of customer core behaviour and agents of change to take a classic design and change the game.