That Pesky Design Process

Jennifer Boriss on making non-arbitrary design decisions:

However, there’s no excuse for design decisions, in open source or elsewhere, to be arbitrary. While good user experience design does involve creativity and risk-taking, it is not art: it is not left up to the particular tastes of the creator. The goal of user experience design is to solve problems and improve how people interact with technology. The path from a design problem to a solution is one that designers handle differently, but at its core should always resemble the scientific method: a deliberate process that improves and changes based on data.

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