Case Study: Comparing Design Alternatives

Last week, I spoke at the Boston IxDA night of Short Talks, where I gave a 10-minute (!) presentation called Case Study: A Discount Approach to Comparing Multiple Design Alternatives.

Here’s what the session was described as:

What’s the Best Way to Compare Multiple Design Alternatives?

Good design practice suggests you create multiple sketches, which eventually evolve into full-out design alternatives. However, once you have those alternatives, what’s the best way to decide which one wins?

I will review one approach and talk about the pitfalls and advantages to evaluating multiple designs at once.

Because of An Event Apart and our Virtual Seminar, I didn’t have as much time to prepare as I would’ve liked. So, I ended up creating the entire presentation while sitting in the back of the room, waiting my turn to present.

Here’s how it turned out:

I should mention that the subject of this talk was inspired by the UIEtips article, A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Evaluating Design Alternatives, published on May 19. Thanks to Pauric for inviting me to the meeting to present the idea.