Challenge Packet
A few short minutes ago Chris Bernard gave
the PhizzPop Design Challenge teams
their problem to tackle over the next ~58 hours. Here is the challenge that
they have to create a solution for:
Your Challenge is to come up with recommendations for how digital technology can help
[An Airline] create unique experience on the Web and within the aircraft and take
into account how we can connect with the world and devices that we use to do it.
Your solution should demonstrate innovations in planning or preparation activities
or the personal activities that occur during travel. Your general concepts should
be inclusive and demonstrate ‘thinking’ if not functionality about both experiences.
Your solution may use any combination of web (ASP.NET, Silverlight) or application
(WPF) components.
There is a lot more information in the 9 page packet, including a list of 3 personas
that you are creating the solution for.
To go from the loosely defined problem to a concept to design to implementation in
that short amount of time is going to be the toughest part of the challenge. Kevin
Marshall the team captain from Clarity Consulting is
rumored to have brought in sleeping bags for his team. It will be interesting
to see the different trade-offs that the teams will be making over the next couple
of days.
A story about a (mini) design challenge
This past April I got to attend an ASP.NET AJAX class
put on by Fritz Onion of Pluralsight.
The class was about 2/3 designers and about 1/3 developers and all the stereotypes
applied, I think everyone could easily pick out who was the designer and who was the
developer (but everyone got along just famously). A quick note: I am using the
terms developer and designer as a broad stereotypes, there were lots of flavors of
people in the room (architects, web designers, creative directors, etc.). One
of the neatest things in the class was a free form hands-on lab / contest. Fritz
gave everyone a starter application (which was a Netflix style web site) and told
everyone to “go to town” on adding AJAX to the site. At the end of the 2 hour
lab anyone who wanted to submit their creation to the contest could. In true
American Idol style, Fritz and Dr. Joe narrowed it down to a few contestants and then
the class voted on the winners. 2 solutions rose to the top: One by a developer
and one by a designer.
The developer’s solution was the best technical implementation of AJAX that was possible
in 2 hours. Every page of the site was AJAXed up and he used several different
techniques (Panels, Web Services, Control Extensions). He spent his time focused
on making the site really flow, but really did not touch any elements of the User
Interface. The designer spent his time improving the look and feel of the site,
updating the CSS and adding DHTML animation effects (using the features of the AJAX
Control Toolkit). After 2 hours it did look very appealing. There
was only 1 problem: There was no AJAX on the site. When it came right down to
it the site itself was still using postbacks, there was no client side web service
calls and other than using the stock components of the toolkit, no control extension.
The designer won the contest “hands down”. Only a few people raised their hands
for the best technical implementation. This example shows the need for the PhizzPop
teams to strike a balance between creating a pleasing experience and a technically
accurate one and if you have to focus on just one on them, the pleasing experience
should be where you invest your time.
Jeff Atwood just posted a blog article
yesterday titled Presentation:
Be Vain that talks about the need to focus on the presentation of the software.
Jeff’s blog post focused on the shipping software, but I think it also applies to
the design challenge as well:
Avoid creating software that’s beautiful on the inside but ugly on the outside. Be
vain. Make something that looks as good as it works. If you pay attention to the
presentation of your software, you just may find the rest of the world is a lot more
willing to pay attention, too.
Chris Bernard summed this up in this advice to the design teams:
“Things that are beautiful and that work are what seals the deal”
