A while ago I bought this video in which Ryan Singer of 37Signals gives a sort of UX design masterclass with Peepcode. I’ve only just got round to watching it. Basically, he’s given a design problem and has to solve it live on camera while a wonderful sycophant eggs him on. There’s some great hand-waving and Sharpie porn as Ryan demonstrates his genius at work (I think the sycophant actually calls him that – there are some hilarious moments).
What I found most interesting was how Ryan simply dives into a solution as soon as he’s given the problem. It’s quite a tricky one: how to design an interface to pick most likely winners in a cycle race and then submit these into a sweepstake or something. There’s a bit of mental scene setting, but pretty soon he’s looking hard at approaches and problems.
He asks almost no questions about the end users of the design (presumably people he’s unfamiliar with). Isn’t that rather odd given that he’s supposed to be a UX design genius? I would have asked a ton of questions about cycling, the fans, what’s important to them, etc. All very germaine to the solution.
Then I realised – he’s with 37Signals. They don’t do UCD. At all. I can’t help noticing that Ryan is also a developer (the second half of the video has him blasting away with Ruby and whatnot – didn’t watch that one myself). So does this mean that for him it’s totally natural to simply crash on with no real regard to who’s going to use the design? Just like Alan Cooper never existed? Seems like it. Perhaps that why I can’t stand using Basecamp.
