While researching literature and information that would help in my work and master’s thesis, I stumbled upon a blog post by Ashlesha Dhotey about how designers can foster long-term relationship between products and users. To my mind relationships between products and users cannot be overstated because they define the experience too.
What I liked about the blog post that I found was that it was written by a student after their internship with Microsoft. It is a showcase of thesis work, which shows the dates and steps that the student did. The interesting aspect that she had was the use of literature through the research, she was using knowledge from the resources and applied them to her research questions and ideas, with this she was also sharing her own insights from them. She mapped out product qualities (for example: responsive functioning, interaction, etc) and in the end created a data sheet out of it. The main idea that could be seen through her work was that every object and product can be evaluated and if possible reused in some way. She was aligning work and decisions with products’ values.
Additional aspect that I liked about that blog post was author’s honesty. This is something I don’t see that often when reviewing or reading other designers’ process and workflow. She was honest about sometimes having bad weeks and not being able to get the information she wanted and admitting that sometimes certain tasks took her longer time than expected.
In my opinion, it is important to see and research other people’s workflow as it gives a deeper understanding of how certain problems are addressed and gives ideas to solve them in a more innovative or creative way.
References:
- Blog Post by Ashlesha Dhotey
