An idea I always strive to keep in mind is that of Kaizen. I first heard about the concept of Kaizen from Whitney Hess’ presentation on Do It Yourself User Experience. Kaizen is Japanese for “continuous improvement” or “change for the better,” and was first coined by Masaaki Iami in his book Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success.

The original intent of the concept of Kaizen was to create an efficient and more humanized workflow in businesses. Kaizen is implemented in the workplace by asking all employees to continuously analyze their workflow, and to suggest any changes the company could enact to improve efficiency. This input is valuable because assembly line workers are the most knowledgeable about their work, and therefore the especially qualified to make suggestions on how to improve their performance. Their input is not only beneficial for the improvement of technical efficiency, but it also creates a heightened sense of community and involvement, by giving the workers a sense of participation and ownership within the company.

These principles of self-analysis and improvement don’t need to be restricted to inner-company workings. It can also be applied to the relationship between the company and its customers. In Whitney Hess’ talk, she mentions how companies should continuously attempt to improve their applications, based on feedback and usability testing. No application is perfect, and furthermore the needs of users are constantly changing. Kaizen can be implemented through small things, such as maintaining open communication with customers through a feedback form. By doing this the company will have a better understanding of the needs of its users, and they will feel like their input is valued, and the product will be improved.

Kaizen can also be applied to your own practices as a designer. Applying Kaizen to a design, be it is a website, logo, print ad, etc., can significantly improve the effectiveness of your creative process and the final result. Think about what you are working on at each moment – is it adding value to the design? Anything you add or subtract should improve the overall design of the project.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

This is not to say that all design should be minimal, rather, all design should serve a purpose. “Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.” This quote from William Strunk Jr.’s Elements of Style, applies to design as well as writing. As designers, we are not indiscriminate embellishers; we should constantly strive to create concise designs. Perfecting efficient design won’t happen overnight. It takes time, effort, and continuous self-analysis to become the best designers we can be, and this self-examination and improvement is the essence of Kaizen. The path to excellence lies along continuous evaluation and improvement of our methods and practices. Complacency is the death of a designer.

There are many ways a designer can adopt Kaizen practices in their life in order to improve his or her skills. Paying attention to yourself and your process will help you to become a more efficient and concise designer. What makes you most productive, what gets you past designer’s block, how do you handle certain problems? These are all things we should be asking ourselves to better our process, and ourselves as designers. Besides continuous self- assessment, a designer should try to improve his or her self, and their design practice, by always continuing to educate themselves. This doesn’t just mean reading the latest ‘Top 10 jQuery Effects’ article, but learning about typographic rhythm, color theory, Gestalt Principles, psychology, cognitive science, and so on. If you know your weakness is typography, work on learning a bit each day. The best designers are the ones who are constantly learning new things, and address those things they struggle with.

I try to think about Kaizen every day. How can I improve this design? How can I be a better designer? How can I be a better person? If what I’m doing isn’t improving me – then what is it doing?

I have recently noticed a disturbing trend in the field of design, both in personal and professional spheres. More and more I have noticed the application of ridiculous nomenclature and adjectives to the title of Designer. Rockstar Designer. Ninja Developer. Design Guru. CSS Wiz. Samurai Designer. Pixel Pusher. This needs to stop. As a designer, you are none of these things:

• Rockstar
• Ninja/Samurai
• Guru
• Wiz
• Magician
• Pixel Pusher
• Jedi
• User Experience Professional*
• User Interface Engineer*
• Information Architect*

To label yourself as such brings down the entire field of design.

Rockstar

This is probably the most common modifier designers and developers use to describe themselves. Nathan Ford has made some great points as to why it’s just plain silly to call yourself a Rockstar Designer:

Great rock stars would be lousy designers, lacking the discipline and respect that is needed to accomplish effective communication. I still have absolutely no idea what Kurt Cobain was trying to convey, specifically. Designers need method, objectivity and consistency: three things that would probably kill many of the albums I most revere.

It’s understandable why someone would want to call him or herself a Rockstar. Rockstars rock, they’re awesome, and you rock at design don’t you? Well I hate to break it to you, but if you call yourself a Rockstar Designer, you probably don’t actually rock at design. If you need to add this modifier to the title of Designer, then maybe you don’t deserve that title to begin with. When you call yourself a “rock star” you debase both yourself as a designer, and design as a legitimate field in itself.

Samurai/Ninja

Your code is so clean and nimble that any bugs lingering in the shadows stand no chance. You are a cunning assassin of code and design. Designers call themselves “samurais” or “ninjas” in an attempt to present themselves as dedicated and efficient. Well, these qualities do not set you apart; all good designers are dedicated and efficient. And thus, as with the term “rockstar,” you demean the field of design by using a term as if it were necessary to distinguish those characteristics of yours as different from all other designers. You are saying “I’m not just a designer – I am also efficient and dedicated!” Through your negative implications about all other designers, you bring down the entire field and whether you believe it or not, that debases YOU as a member of that field as well.

Guru

All praise the almighty Design Guru! His glorious designs and applications are divinely inspired! Anyone who styles themselves as a Guru, isn’t. First off, it’s arrogant – Guru is not a title you can just claim for yourself. It has a spiritual and almost infallible connotation. Even the most experienced designers can learn things from beginning designers or professionals in other fields, and if you have forgotten that, then you’re clearly NOT that great, and the title is negated anyways. There are no design gurus, only amateurs who call themselves such in a futile attempt to transcend and disguise their lack of skill.

UX Professional, UI Designer, IA

UX/UI/IA are cliché buzzwords now. Amateur freelance web designers have unrightfully claimed these phrases from the Cognitive Science world and tainted them. Without proper knowledge of what these terms mean, amateurs have passed watered-down and fallacious meanings to poor ignorant clients. User Experience, User Interface; these phrases have lost their original intent. Everyone is a UX/UI designer now. Nothing has actually changed in the field of UI; amateur web designers just like the title. The terms UX and UI have been abused into meaninglessness.

Ryan Carson wrote about the problem with UX. “‘UX Professional’ is a bullshit job title. It’s just a way to over-charge naïve clients. All web designers should be UX pros.” User Experience is an integral part of design. If you can’t create a productive experience for the user, then you aren’t competent in this field and so to call yourself a UX professional is redundant to the genuinely talented designer.

Using the title UX Designer is slightly different than using Rockstar/Ninja/Guru. People who call themselves Rockstars and Ninjas do it in order to elevate themselves above all other designers, while designers who call themselves UX Designers (as well as other titles like UI Engineer, and anything with a U) do so in an attempt to distinguish themselves from amateurs who call themselves designers.  In an age when anyone with Photoshop can be pretentious enough to call him or herself a designer, that title has to some extent lost its true meaning and value. It is increasingly misunderstood as an easy, simple, frivolous profession. It is understandable why a designer might wish to remove and elevate their self from that stigma – but taking on some silly label is a completely ineffective and even a detrimental approach.

You Are A Designer

It is natural to want to stand out. This is especially true when your field and title is misunderstood, and you’ve somehow come to believe that standing out via a new title means distinguishing yourself from amateurs. In the first episode of the ‘Let’s Make Mistakes’ podcast, Mike Montiero talks about when comics tried to rename themselves ‘graphic novels’. ‘Maus’ wanted to re-title itself as such because of the stigma against comics as a respected medium. By definition though, Maus was a comic book, though longer and more serious than most. Rather than using a different name for the medium, he should just prove through his work that the medium is worthwhile. As with comic book artists, designers have wanted to change their title because of the negative implications. Designers face negative stereotypes in part because of the amateurs who call themselves “designers”. We don’t want to be lumped in with those laymen; we are different – professional! And so designers adopt titles like “User Experience Professional” in an attempt validate our profession and separate ourselves from the phonies.

Forget that. Be proud to call yourself a designer. There will always be amateurs in any field who do not deserve certain titles. Do acclaimed authors call themselves “Guru authors” in order to separate themselves from the other terrible authors out there? Do talented doctors call themselves “Ninja Surgeons” or “Samurai Pediatricians” to distinguish themselves from doctors of poor caliber? No – and if such distinctions were used, it would delegitimize those entire fields. It says “to be a doctor means nothing in itself – I am diligent though, so I’m a samurai doctor!” Don’t be afraid to call yourself a designer and just that. Own the title. I am not a guru, a samurai, a jedi, or a rock star: I am a designer. That’s it; I need no other title. Let your work speak for itself. Shit by any other name, well, is still shit. So don’t try to hide your (lack of) talent with a fancy name. Distinguish yourself through your work, not your title.

1. Please Don’t Call Me A Rockstar
2. ‘UX Professional’ Isn’t A Real Job

If you are a beginning designer you may not have the experience to identify the exact nuances that perfect a design (and even if you’ve been a designer for many years, you probably still have room to grow!) That is fine. “Perfection” is relative to your aesthetic tastes as well as your skill level. As you learn and progress as a designer, you will get better at articulating problems and identifying dissonance in a design. The only thing to worry about is that this work is the best you can do at this time, and learning to recognize the details that add or subtract to a design. If you think you can do better, do better. If it seems a little off, make it right.

Compromising your skill and professionalism does nothing but beget more compromise.

Want some examples of little details that make big impacts? Try Little Big Details.

Technology for the sake of technology, created without full consideration creates more problems than it aims to solve. This point can be illustrated by two stories about cars. My girlfriend drives a 2000 Honda Odyssey van (fig. 1), and another friend drives a 2011 Cadillac CTS (fig. 2). Both cars have a version of electronically latching doors, but with different designs and results.

In addition to the electronic latching problem (more on that in a second), the exterior door handle is just poor design. On the electronic door, the outside handle requires pulling only towards yourself, in a direction perpendicular to the way the door is supposed to go. Its counterintuitive, pulling in a direction totally unrelated to the way the door functions. The inside door handle is at least shaped in such a way that you can only pull it in the direction the door operates, laterally forwards and backwards in relation to the car. (Don Norman discusses door handles more in depth in his book The Design of Everyday Things, which I highly recommend.)

Besides the poor design of the handle in terms of understanding, there is the functionality issue of the electronic latching. The Honda’s doors are automatic, but the design does not convey this. It looks exactly the same as any manual van door. To properly open and close the door, the passenger needs to give a quick pull of the handle towards the him/herself, and then let go. The door then automatically (but slowly) slides back into place and latches. The most likely motivations for this type of door are for safety, most likely to prevent children from using the door recklessly, and perhaps because of the prevalent contemporary allure to consumers of modern and electronic things vs. old and manual. Fair reasons, but the implementation of the idea doesn’t provide proper cues to the passenger that the door is automatic; it looks exactly like any other (non-automatic) minivan door handle, and this causes people to misuse it all the time. Technology without consideration causes more problems than it solves. Maybe the automatic latch does solve some “issues,” but it creates a host of new ones.

Most people are familiar with how manual sliding doors on a van work. Besides being familiar, the shape of the door and handle gives passengers cues as to how to operate the door without any previous knowledge. Someone with no previous experience should understand how to open the door. By making the sliding door automatic without changing any visual cues, passengers have no idea that the door is automatic. They constantly try to pull the door both open and shut, but it feels stuck because the motor won’t let the door slide freely. The result is that they just continue to pull harder on the door thinking that it’s stuck or broken and not realizing that they’re just misusing it. Sometimes this results with the door jamming and beeping, stuck in some position neither open nor closed until the driver automatically opens or shuts it using the driver’s controls (a seriously irritating result). I don’t have any firsthand experience with doors like this being permanently broken because passengers continually try to pull it closed, but I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were out there (try googling ‘honda odyssey door’). On multiple occasions my girlfriend has had to shut the door using the driver controls when it jams because of people trying to pull it shut, and she has to explain to passengers all the time that they need to just let go of the door.

Doors should not need an explanation.

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The door handles on my friend’s CTS are much different. The exterior door handle appears to be the door itself, and there is a cut out of the body of the car at the top of the door so you can put your hand in and pull the door out (fig. 2). The interior door handle is a similar shape to the outside handle of the Honda Odyssey, like a luggage handle at the end of the armrest (fig. 3). These doors are not automatic like the Honda, but they do latch electronically like the Honda. To open the CTS’s door, you have to press a button that unlatches the door, then pull or push to open it. The implementation on the CTS is only marginally better than the Odyssey though. When your hand grasps the handle (on both interior and exterior) you can feel a physical button that unlatches the door. If you were to grasp the outside handle and pull (not knowing there was a button) the pressure of your hand would press the button anyways. This door handle design is fine, the only problem may be if a passenger overlooks it and searches for something more recognizable as a door handle. Aesthetically though it is quite nice as it doesn’t compromise the slick angles of the car.

Some of the ideas found in the CTS’s implementation of the electronic door could be used to help the Honda Odyssey. By using a button in the familiar place of the door handle, passengers would be more likely to assume the function of the button and also to prevent unnecessary pulling or pushing of the door. The buttons would help passengers to not improperly use the door, but may still confuse them if having never used electronic doors before.

These anecdotes hopefully show that cultural context, visual cues, ergonomic affordances, and especially functionality must be taken into account when designing anything. Honda changed the functionality of the door handle without making it apparent to users, which caused problems. While ergonomically appropriate, lack of visual cues caused passengers to ask how to open the door of the CTS.

Proper implementation of a feature is as important as the feature itself.

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Pagination is a staple component of most web sites and applications. We deal with it on a daily basis – on blogs, photo galleries, inspiration sites, image searches, etc. Every time I see page 1 at the bottom and links for page 2, 3, 4, … 1234 on a blog, I feel uneasy.

I first realized a problem with pagination while observing my girlfriend browse through images on weheartit.com. For those unfamiliar, it is a site where users can ‘heart’ (similar to Facebook’s ‘like’) images and they get put in the site’s feed. My girlfriend likes to browse through the images and sometimes points out cool ones to me. One day while I was watching her, I saw her go to page 100 and then move forward in the pages (going to 99 then 98 and so on). I asked her why she did this, and she said that because images get added so quickly to the site if she were to go the other direction (page 1 to 2 to 3 etc) she would see the same pictures on each page because they would get pushed back while she was browsing. The problem is when anyone hearts an image it gets put first on the first page (page 1) and pushes all hundreds of thousands of images back. Images are always moving and will never stay on the same page. This forces users to come up with novel ways just to get basic functionality (browsing) out of the site!

I feel this example shows and underlying flaw of this type of pagination. I am referring to reverse-chronological pagination for blogs and blog-type sites (like inspiration sites, showcase sites, etc). Blogs present information in reverse-chronological order because users want to see the newest information first. It would be annoying to list posts in chronological order and have to scroll or click through every time to see the most recent post. This is perfectly fine and normal, the problem lies in calling the home page ‘page 1’.

When I imagine a ‘page 1’, any page 1, I think of it as synonymous with ‘the first page’. Now when I talk about my blog posts, my first blog post is the one I wrote first; my oldest post. It will always be my first and nothing can change that. So why doesn’t my first blog post go on my first page? Instead, it lives somewhere on page 4 or 13 or 27 depending on how many other posts I’ve written.

Now I’m not saying that my first blog post should be displayed first on my homepage. I’m saying that my homepage should be page 4 or 13 or 27, depending on how many posts I’ve written. On page 1 would be my first blog posts and newer posts would get added to higher pages. Now my blog would be truly reverse-chronological order, as the page numbers would also go in reverse. I find it weird that the posts go in reverse-chronological order but the page numbers don’t. The counter-argument to this is most people refer to the homepage of a blog as the ‘first page’ so calling it ‘page 1′ would make sense in the fact that it is the user’s first page. So in this sense page 1 works because it is the first page the user interacts with. The first page is relative to the person, the reader of a blog would consider the homepage the first page, whereas the writer would consider the page of his oldest posts the first page. I think the writer should win in this sense because I don’t feel calling the homepage page 27 would hinder usability as long as it still shows the most recent blog posts.

Back to the original example of weheartit.com, if that site were to implement my pagination suggestion, there would be no more browsing troubles. New images would get added on to higher pages so if you started on the homepage, which lets say is page 100, and you browsed back in time you would go 100 to 99 to 98 and get different images on each page because images would always be on the same page. Every time you or anyone went to page 100, it would be the same images, but maybe a month from now the homepage might be page 200.

An added benefit of this is that I could send someone a link to page 98 and they would see exactly what I see, no matter what. In the example of weheartit.com, the homepage might be something ridiculous like page 123,821 in which case having individual links to pages would not work, but still being able to go to page 100 and always see the same thing is important.

One problem though is that the wrong pagination has become the standard for every blog and every blogging platform. Even if I could write plugin for WordPress or write a completely new blogging platform to accommodate this new pagination, would it be worth it? People have already become accustomed to the wrong way; it may hinder usability just doing it differently. Just like America will never adopt the metric system although it is much easier to use, to use this new pagination schema might be too costly. Although this may be a very minor change and users might not even notice. I would guess that using pagination is a very low use function in most cases. Therefore this will most likely not affect the majority of users, however might help a small number.

Even though it may be marginally useful, I think it’s worth a shot; pagination can be saved.