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Tedde van Gelderen
Tedde van Gelderen

Founder & President

53 Minutes for the UX Solution

That’s the amount of time I had for writing this blog post. It meant I had to be creative, focused and not be distracted for this period if I had any hope of finishing the post. As for me (and I assume others) the writing of these things are done in several takes, I write some, re-read it, edit, change and write some more. All until I have formulated the full thought(s) for the post. It takes time, and ideally more time than I have right now.

All of this sound familiar? In visual design concept creation, interaction design wire-frames or the key insights in a research study. We end up not having enough time while knowing that the solution is in your head. You think it is there for the taking, that solution, that idea and it ‘only’ will take a half day to get it all out there, on paper, on screen or in bullet points. But then you get stuck, you start to doubt your thinking, ponder if there is a better way, even more, elegant solution while full well knowing that what you thought of is at least good enough and most likely the best you can do. But you don’t want to commit to it just yet. Then as the deadline looms closer, you get more anxious about not meeting the deadline, finally, you decide to get on with it and do what you can to keep the deadline. (Or still miss it. Yes, that happens too).

If only

I often say to myself afterwards that if only I had some extra time to let it sit, not actually more time to think about the solution but just a bit more time to let it stew. That way I’d give myself enough opportunity to really come up with an even more brilliant solution. And when I don’t, I’m happy that I gave it my all and what I came up with in the first place is indeed the ‘best’ version. So not more time to do work, more time to ponder, test, iterate, evaluate, however you’d like to call it.

And it’s often time we don’t get in my line of consulting work -“ and many other environments -“ where the timelines are often dictated by the estimates of the work, not the work plus reflecting on your work, revising, etc.

Doing this would be like following a User Centered Design process for the individual, where we get enough elapsed time to iterate and test our assumptions and thought process and get to a reassuring place where we know we produce quality work and only then share it with the users of our work (our co-workers and managers). I’d like that.

Tedde van Gelderen
Tedde van Gelderen

Founder & President

Continually looking for ways to improve the experiences of others, Tedde has dedicated his professional life to experience design, research and strategy. He derives energy, motivation, and purpose from improving the experiences of others and believes that every organization — and every industry — can benefit from Experience Thinking.

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