Hero and the outlaw

Develop a personality

A strong archetype can create an immediate and powerful emotional bond. An archetype is a group of characteristics and traits that are commonly seen in groups of people of any language, history, and size around the world. Every archetype has strengths, weaknesses, gifts, and fears. When you apply these aspects of personality without shame, people will identify emotionally with a design. This helps strengthen memory and build trust.

The Hero and the Outlaw, by Margaret Mark and Carol S. Pearson, powerfully captures 12 archetypes covering nearly every aspect of humanity.

The archetypes:

Innocent
Explorer
Sage
Hero
Outlaw
Magician
Regular Guy/Gal
Lover
Jester
Caregiver
Creator
Ruler

If you choose the outlaw (think Harley Davidson), start critiquing everything you do against the outlaw’s traits. You might be surprised at the amount of new and interesting ideas generated.

Outlaw traits:

Desires revenge and/or revolution
Wants to destroy what is not working
Hates being powerless or trivialized
Tries to disrupt or shock people
Hopes to give people radical freedom
Is often misunderstood as evil
Has a tendency to become a criminal

If you can keep this “personality” consistent through different designs, consider applying it to other areas where customer interaction happens, and pay close attention to customer reactions. You’ll build a very strong brand.

Bonus points: People often confuse their company’s personality with their own. Determine the archetype of the project owner and other key people involved to differentiate individual personalities from the company personality.

Define the fit and finish

Design traits directly support and reinforce content. Unfortunately, traits are very hard to boil down to a visual style that’s consistently understood across a large audience. It’s good to have groups of opposing traits to create boundaries. This helps you clarify the specific look of the design and gives you something to measure and critique against when the design is up for review.

insert from http://www.alistapart.com/articles/taking-the-guesswork-out-of-design/

Funny, but true enough.

Fast, Cheap or Easy!

When I worked at TNS there was a pretty young and fun staff. I remember fondly the people in the testing department, Anna, Ting, and Ashley.  All were really great at their jobs and brought a great and fun attitude to work with them every day.  I really enjoyed work thanks to them and I was constantly learning new things in the development department, things were good for me there.

I remember one thing specifically from those people that really stuck in my perspective about development. Ashley had a tin sign at her desk that said,

Development projects can be any 2 of these 3 things,

Fast, Cheap or Easy.

It can be Fast and Cheap, but it won’t be Easy.

It can be Cheap and Easy, but it won’t be Fast.

It can be Easy and Fast, but it won’t be Cheap.

Let me explain....no there is too much. Let me sum up, every project comes down to these 3 things, performance, ease of use, and cost.  An application with a proper design will usually perform better in a few ways, but if it is cut due to budget the final product will suffer and will most likely be difficult to use.  Applications that don’t have a proper budget but have a nice interface may be easy to use, but have often have cut corners which costs performance.  However, often seeming expensive initially, a well designed project full of features driven by a well made interface can perform and deliver all your goals efficiently with a proper timeline and budget, it will always be reflected in the final product.