Hi GK,
Thanks for your message.
My inquiries about web design workflows are for several purposes, mostly to
do with creating improved design theory but also one practical outcome. In
that sense, I'm not at this point looking much at the politics and social
dynamics in the way one usually would.
The practical reason is design liability and establishing legal protections.
Doing this is part and parcel of the bigger scheme of putting in place
institutional elements for the development of design activity into a
fully-professional practice. Currently, design activity in most realms is a
semi-professional job in which the relationships between customer's wants,
design briefs and outcomes are nebulous. Thus far designers (and clients)
are rarely held to account legally and financially - and the reason for that
nebulousness is partly to avoid prosecution. It is a business and employment
situation that is now wide open to predatorial litigation and financial
claim. There is currently very little good practice in legal contracts and
protection for designers and clients.
Web design is a particularly good paradigm to research and design well
structured contracts and terms and conditions. Most web design firms use
contracts and terms and conditions that echo web design practices of 15
years ago. This also applies to the templates for web design contracts
offered by online legal firms. I'm working with one of the international
legal template firms to redesign their template for web design contracts and
terms and conditions. Workflow is one of the core issues.
In parallel, this situation offers some interesting research opportunities
as it exposes bits that many designers try to hide or pretend don't exist.
An example, engineers who wish to practice are mostly tied to professional
ethics that insists that they only act beneficially to customers and society
at large. That is that as engineers the put the benefits and risks of
customers and society before the benefits to themselves and the businesses
they are employed by. If necessary this requires them to resign or
whistleblow as a matter of course as a core part of being a professional. AT
a more mundane level, it requires them to always act to use their expertise
for clients rather than to take advantage of clients. They can be held
legally and professionally responsible (loss of chartered status and right
to practice) for not doing so. This has interesting implications for
responsibility for designers to use their expertise to ensure that clients
get what is best for them rather than simply producing what they ask for. An
implication is the designer could be responsible financially for the
difference.
There are interesting research questions as to how all this might work in
areas of design where the purpose of design is to manipulate and persuade
users to purchase and use things that might not be in their overall best
interest or in the interest of society as a whole. These parallel but are
very different from the engineering design issues around the design of (say)
materiel of mass destruction, nuclear energy plants, mass production and
packaging machinery.
AT the heart of all of these issues is workflow. The participating
individuals make different kinds of decisions and have different
responsibilities. In rough terms, whoever leads the design process carries
most of the legal responsibility and the exposure to financial claims
against them. The reality, however, is the legal liability and
responsibility chain can drill down even to subcontractors.
Zebedee time.
All the best,
Terry
.
---Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of GK
VanPatter I NextD
Sent: Saturday, 23 January 2010 9:10 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Web Design workflow research
Terence & All: Doing a little catching up this sunny cold Saturday afternoon
in New York so thought you might find this useful:
In case you missed it: Recently posted to the Harvard Business Review blog:
-Why Design Thinking Won't Save You- by Peter Merholz is a great example of
the political market forces acting on your question regarding what you
describe as -Web Design workflow- and your broader inquiry regarding who
typically gets to do what and why in the UX industry. In pursuit of such
questions its often useful to have at least an inkling of the kind of turf
($) war that has not by accident been under way in the UX industry and the
broader design marketplace for numerous years.
http://tinyurl.com/ybneseb
Still pitching stereotypes from the 1990s Merholz goes about his work
typically with zero response from the design education community or the
academically intertwined design journals. That sleepy state, that
significant missing in action orientation is well known in the marketplace.
Across ten plus years that absence occurred and continues to occur not
without significant cost to design school graduates.
Seeing both sides of it in action for years it is useful to have a sense of
humor not only about the now transparent undermining pitching strategy but
also about the equally transparent response vacuum. What gets really
hilarious is when you see those pitching the stereotypes headlining design
conferences!
Oh my, what a fucked up industry!
Have a good weekend all.
GK VanPatter
Co-Founder
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Strategic Design Perspectives
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