Simple insight infusion wireframe kit
Jesse Jame's Garrett's The Elements of User Experience Framework has been foundational in shaping my professional practice and has long been required reading for my direct reports. Since June, I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on his recent article "I helped pioneer UX design. What I see today disturbs me".
"Instead of challenging teams to stretch their thinking to address deeper and subtler user needs, product design practices have become increasingly less insight-driven."
My experience echos Jesse's account of a growing restlessness in UX leaders as I have seen the orbit of the field move away from the abstract end of Garrett's Elements Framework in favor of the polished wires associated with the concrete Surface Plane.
Toolkit inspiration from Jesse Jame's Garrett's article: "I helped pioneer UX design..."
Those familiar with the Elements Framework recognize that while skipping ahead to the wires might allow an Agile team to keep its iteration on track, it misses the opportunity to infuse them with the invaluable insights generated via the Design Research process. It also ignores the point made by the late L. Bruce Archer, Professor of Design Research at the Royal College of Art,'‘ there exists a designerly way of thinking and communicating that is both different from scientific and scholarly ways of thinking and communicating, and as powerful as scientific and scholarly methods of inquiry when applied to its kind of problems.".
Contributing to this trend, I have observed academic, and other UX training venues fail to teach Designers and Design Researchers how to work together. For years I have been using Garrett's framework to help guide this necessary collaboration. Now Jesse has further inspired me to push for this collaboration in the UX field beyond my team and organization.
My initial public response to Jesse's encouragement to those of us still fighting the good fight is this Insight Infused Wireframe Kit. The idea is to infuse the insights being used to drive design decisions into the wireframes themselves.
Did you come out of a Design Thinking workshop with an excellent to-be journey map?
Great, use this toolkit to tie it right to your wires. If something is then cut from scope, this will remind the team that they are undoing the great thinking from the workshop.
Is there an element in the design that users told you was a must-have?
Perfect, call that out with the insight overlay right in the wireframes.
Admittedly this kit won't end the UX leadership hand wringing that Jesse describes. Still, it can serve as an initial provocation regarding how we generate and use insight within the field.
Adobe XD users can download the kit for free below. For non-XD users, you can walk through the concepts here and feel free to leverage ideas in your design tool of choice HERE.