Iterative design can be lazy design: June 10, 2002 issue of New Thinking

June 10, 2002 New Thinking:
Iterative design can be lazy design

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June 10, 2002

Iterative design can be lazy design

By Gerry McGovern

Iterative design is a popular approach to website design. It generally involves getting something up quickly, analyzing the results and making improvements based on that analysis. This can make sense in an environment that little is understood about. That is no longer the case with the Web.

Imagine the type of conversations that would occur if cars were designed iteratively:
Designer: So the steering wheel came off in your hands. Looks like we'll have to fix that one.
Designer: Your back tire blew out when you were going at sixty miles an hour. Hmm … We'll have to solve that one in the next iteration.
Designer: Your brakes failed as you were going down a hill (laughs). Isn't that the beauty of iterative design! You get the product out, get people to road test it, and then you find out real problems experienced by real drivers!

The reality is that if car designers were allowed the same freedom as software and web designers, they would literally be getting away with murder. Web designers often do – figuratively speaking -- murder their staff and customers.

In the late Nineties, planning became a dirty word. It was all about youth, energy and speed. We were operating in Internet time. Nobody could predict the future. I certainly got caught up in a lemming-like rush to do stuff and do it now!

The mantra was that the Internet was constantly changing. Therefore, you couldn't plan for it. It was like this fast-moving river. You had to push your boat out and deal with what came your way.

At some stage, it struck me that the Internet wasn't changing all that much at all. As time passed, it became clear that the Web was in fact becoming more uniform. It also became clear how much waste and bad design was occurring.

Is building a website more complex than landing on Mars? Than building an airplane? A skyscraper? A heart implant? I heard a great quote recently: "Fail to prepare. Prepare to fail."

I have seen some awful websites in my day. Websites that made fundamental mistakes. But the designers thought that was okay because it was iterative design and they could fix it in the next iteration.

'We can't predict how users will react,' they would say, with a shrug. In fact, they claimed their design approach was 'user-friendly.' (That awful word 'user' is theirs, not mine.) 'This is user-focused design, man. We see how the user reacts and then we react to the user.'

I know how I react when I find a badly designed website. I leave. And I don't come back. How does a designer react to that?

I have seen badly designed intranets that staff refuse to use. Even if you design a new, better intranet, you have a huge extra job in winning back the confidence of people. That is no easy task.

People behave conservatively on the Web. They select a few websites and they stick with them. When they visit your website they expect everything to work right first time. Approach website design like you are carrying out heart surgery. If you make too many mistakes, you lose the customer.

Gerry McGovern

Next issue: Your website should encourage people to act
Previous issue: J R R Tolkien was an information architect
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Approach website design like you are carrying out heart surgery. If you make too many mistakes, you lose the customer.

Gerry McGovern's books are recommended reading at the following universities

Augustana College, United States
Brandeis University, United States
Drury University, United States
Dublin Institute of Technology, Ireland
Indiana University, United States
Monash University, Australia
Northeastern University, United States
University of Applied Sciences, Germany
University of Regina, Canada
University of Teesside, UK
Manchester Metropolitan University

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