{"rowid": 236, "title": "Extreme Design", "contents": "Recently, I set out with twelve other designers and developers for a 19th century fortress on the Channel Island of Alderney. We were going to /dev/fort, a sort of band camp for geeks. Our cohort\u2019s mission: to think up, build and finish something \u2013 without readily available internet access.\n\n Alderney runway, photo by Chris Govias\n\n\n\nWait, no internet?\n\nWell, pretty much. As the creators of /dev/fort James Aylett and Mark Norman Francis put it: \u201cImagine a place with no distractions \u2013 no IM, no Twitter\u201d. But also no way to quickly look up a design pattern, code sample or source material. Like packing for camping, /dev/fort means bringing everything you\u2019ll need on your back or your hard drive: from long johns to your favourite icon set.\n\nWe got to work the first night discussing ideas for what we wanted to build. By the time breakfast was cleared up the next morning, we\u2019d settled on Russ\u2019s idea to make the Apollo 13 (PDF) transcript accessible. Days two and three were spent collaboratively planning (KJ style) what features we wanted to build, and unravelling the larger UX challenges of the project. The next five days were spent building it. Within 36 hours of touchdown at Southampton Airport, we launched our creation: spacelog.org\n\nThe weather was cold, the coal fire less than ideal, food and supplies a hike away, and the process lightning-fast. A week of designing under extreme circumstances called for an extreme process. Some of this was driven by James\u2019s and Norm\u2019s experience running these things, but a lot of it materialised while we were there \u2013 especially for our three-strong design team (myself, Gavin O\u2019 Carroll and Chris Govias) who, though we knew each other, had never worked together as a group in this kind of scenario before.\n\nThe outcome was a pretty spectacular process, with a some key takeaways useful for any small group trying to build something quickly.\n\nWhat it\u2019s like inside the fort\n\n/dev/fort has the pressure and pace of a hack day without being a hack day \u2013 primarily, no workshops or interruptions\u201a but also a different mentality. While hack days are typically developer-driven with a \u2018hack first, design later (if at all)\u2019 attitude, James was quick to tell the team to hold off from writing any code until we had a plan. This put a healthy pressure on the design and product folks to slash through the UX problems before we started building.\n\nWhile the fort had definitely more of a hack day feel, all of us were familiar with Agile methods, so we borrowed a few useful techniques such as morning stand-ups and an emphasis on teamwork. We cut some really good features to make our launch date, and chunked the work based on user goals, iterating as we went.\n\nWhat made this design process work?\n\nA golden ratio of teams\n\nMy personal experience both professionally and in free-form situations like this, is a tendency to get/hire a designer. Leaders of businesses, founders of start-ups, organisers of events: one designer is not enough! Finding one ace-blooded designer who can \u2018do everything\u2019 will always result in bottleneck and burnout. Like the nuances between different development languages, design is a multifaceted discipline, and very few can claim to be equally strong in every aspect. Overlap in skill set will result in a stronger, more robust interface.\n\nMore importantly, however, having lots of designers to go around meant that we all had the opportunity to pair with developers, polishing the details that don\u2019t usually get polished. As soon as we launched, the public reception of the design and UX was overwhelmingly positive (proof!). But also, a lot of people asked us who the designer was, attributing it to one person.\n\nWhile it\u2019s important to note that everyone in our team was multitalented (and could easily shift between roles, helping us all stay unblocked), the golden ratio James and Norm devised was two product/developer folks, three interaction designers and eight developers.\n\n photo by Ben Firshman\n\nEquality inside the fortress walls\n\nSomething magical about the fort is how everyone leaves the outside world on the drawbridge. Job titles, professional status, Twitter followers, and so on. Like scout camp, a mutual respect and trust is expected of all the participants. Like extreme programming, extreme design requires us all to be equal partners in a collaborative team. I think this is especially worth noting for designers; our past is filled with the clear hierarchy of the traditional studio system which, however important for taste and style, seems less compatible with modern web/software development methods.\n\nBeing equal doesn\u2019t mean being the same, however. We established clear roles and teams for ourselves on the second day, deferring to that person when a decision needed to be made. As the interface coalesced, the designers and developers took ownership over certain parts to ensure the details got looked after, while staying open to ideas and revisions from the rest of the cohort.\n\nCreate a space where everyone who enters is equal, but be sure to establish clear roles. Even if it\u2019s just for a short while, the environment will be beneficial.\n\n photo by Ben Firshman\n\nHang your heraldry from the rafters\n\nForts and castles are full of lore: coats of arms; paintings of battles; suits of armour. It\u2019s impossible not to be surrounded by these stories, words and ways of thinking. Like the whiteboards on the walls, putting organisational lore in your physical surroundings makes it impossible not to see.\n\nRyan Alexander brought some of those static-cling whiteboard sheets which were quickly filled with use cases; IA; team roles; and, most importantly, a glossary. As soon as we started working on the project, we realised we needed to get clear on what certain words meant: what was a logline, a range, a phase, a key moment? Were the back-end people using these words in the same way design and product was? Quickly writing up a glossary of terms meant everyone was instantly speaking the same language. There was no \u201cAh, I misunderstood because in the data structure x means y\u201d or, even worse, accidental seepage of technical language into the user interface copy.\n\nPut a glossary of your internal terminology somewhere big and fat on the wall. Stand around it and argue until you agree on what it says. Leave it up; don\u2019t underestimate the power of ambient communication and physical reference.\n\nPlan more, download less\n\nWhile internet is forbidden inside the fort, we did go on downloading expeditions: NASA photography; code documentation; and so on. The project wouldn\u2019t have been possible without a few trips to the web. We had two lists on the wall: groceries and supplies; internets \u2013 \u201cloo roll; Tom Stafford photo\u201c.\n\nThis changed our usual design process, forcing us to plan carefully and think of what we needed ahead of time. Getting to the internet was a thirty-minute hike up a snow covered cliff to the town airport, so you really had to need it, too. \n\n The path to the internet\n\nFor the visual design, especially, this resulted in more focus up front, and communication between the designers on what assets we required. It made us make decisions earlier and stick with them, creating less distraction and churn later in the process. \n\nTry it at home: unplug once you\u2019ve got the things you need. As an artist, it\u2019s easier to let your inner voice shine through if you\u2019re not looking at other people\u2019s work while creating.\n\nSocial design\n\nFinally, our design team experimented with a collaborative approach to wireframing. Once we had collectively nailed down use cases, IA, user journeys and other critical artefacts, we tried a pairing approach. One person drew in Illustrator in real time as the other two articulated what to draw. (This would work equally well with two people, but with three it meant that one of us could jump up and consult the lore on the walls or clarify a technical detail.) The result: we ended up considering more alternatives and quickly rallying around one solution, and resolved difficult problems more quickly.\n\nAt a certain stage we discovered it was more efficient for one person to take over \u2013 this happened around the time when the basic wireframes existed in Illustrator and we\u2019d collectively run through the use cases, making sure that everything was accounted for in a broad sense. At this point, take a break, go have a beer, and give yourself a pat on the back.\n\nPut the files somewhere accessible so everyone can use them as their base, and divide up the more detailed UI problems, screens or journeys. At this level of detail it\u2019s better to have your personal headspace.\n\nGavin called this \u2018social design\u2019. Chatting and drawing in real time turned what was normally a rather solitary act into a very social process, with some really promising results. I\u2019d tried something like this before with product or developer folks, and it can work \u2013 but there\u2019s something really beautiful about switching places and everyone involved being equally quick at drawing. That\u2019s not something you get with non-designers, and frequent swapping of the \u2018driver\u2019 and \u2018observer\u2019 roles is a key aspect to pairing.\n\nTackle the forest collectively and the trees individually \u2013 it will make your framework more robust and your details more polished. Win/win. \n\nThe return home\n\nGrateful to see a 3G signal on our phones again, our flight off the island was delayed, allowing for a flurry of domain name look-ups, Twitter catch-up, and e-mails to loved ones. A week in an isolated fort really made me appreciate continuous connectivity, but also just how unique some of these processes might be. \n\nYou just never know what crazy place you might be designing from next.", "year": "2010", "author": "Hannah Donovan", "author_slug": "hannahdonovan", "published": "2010-12-09T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2010/extreme-design/", "topic": "process"}