The document discusses the concept of presumptive design, which involves rapidly building prototypes based on assumptions to test with users, analyze feedback, and iterate quickly. It outlines the typical user experience design process versus the presumptive design cycle. A variety of design research tools are presented, and the top principles and risks of presumptive design are summarized. The presentation argues that presumptive design can provide valuable user feedback faster than traditional research-first approaches.

1. Presumptive Design or
Cutting the Looking-glass Cake:
Capturing User Requirements
Through Rapid Prototyping
Leo Frishberg
Product Design Manager
Intel Corporation
SAO TechIgnite 2.0
March 2012

2. “Youdon’tknowhowtomanageLooking-glasscakes,”theUnicornremarked. “Handitroundfirst,andcutitafterwards.”

3. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Crafting World Class User Experiences
 Imagine you are a carpenter at SeaTac…
– … and you are now responsible for testing counter-terrorism plans
 Imagine you are a telephone sub-station technician…
– …and you are now responsible for managing 500 television channels
 Imagine you are an 85 year old planning a world cruise…
– …and your browser is your booking agent
 Imagine you need to ship 15 truck loads of parts…
– …in the next ten minutes and you don’t have a shipping department
 Imagine you are an electronic engineer debugging a circuit...
– ...and you need to find the one wrong bit out of 8GB of data
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 3March 2012

4. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
The Typical User Experience Design Cycle
 Research to find out what users need
 Analyze the research to determine what you learned
 Build the product from your analysis
 Rinse, Repeat
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 4March 2012

5. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
The Presumptive Design Cycle
 Build your best guess of what users want
 Find out what they think about it
 Analyze what you learned
 Rinse, Repeat
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 5March 2012

6. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
A Constellation of Design Research Tools
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 6March 2012
1 day > 1 Month
Intimate User Engagement
No User Engagement
Activity Analysis
Affinity Diagrams
Competitive Product Survey
Historical Analysis
A Day in the Life
Behavioral Archaeology
Personal Inventory
Fly on the Wall
Guided Tours
Time-lapse Video
Card Sort
Paper Prototyping
Scenarios
Long-range Forecasts
Extreme User Interviews
Contextual Inquiry
In Situ Observation
Shadowing
Business Analysis
Rapid Prototyping

7. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
A Constellation of Design Research Tools
7March 2012 Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0
1 day > 1 Month
Intimate User Engagement
No User Engagement
Activity Analysis
Affinity Diagrams
Competitive Product Survey
Historical Analysis
A Day in the Life
Behavioral Archaeology
Personal Inventory
Fly on the Wall
Guided Tours
Time-lapse Video
Card Sort
Paper Prototyping
Scenarios
Long-range Forecasts
Extreme User Interviews
Contextual Inquiry
In Situ Observation
Shadowing
Business Analysis
Rapid Prototyping
Presumptive Design

8. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Top 5 Principles of Presumptive Design
 Design for failure
 Create, discover, analyze
 Make assumptions explicit
 Iterate, iterate, iterate
 The faster you go, the sooner you know
 Have fun!
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 8March 2012

9. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Design for Failure
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 9March 2012

10. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Create, discover, analyze
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 10March 2012

11. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Make assumptions explicit
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 11March 2012

12. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 12March 2012
Iterate, iterate, iterate

13. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
The faster you go, the sooner you know
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 13March 2012

14. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Top 5 Risks of Presumptive Design
 Believing in our prototype solutions
 Investing too much in the wrong solution
 Designing the wrong prototype
 Failing to cover the solution space
 Losing the user’s attention
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 14March 2012

15. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Believing in our prototype solutions
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 15March 2012
Used by permission under Creative Commons license by
Katy Stoddard
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0093009/photos/katy_bird/4663369797/

16. Investing too much in the wrong solution
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 16March 2012
Used by permission under Creative Commons license by Emily Leahy-
Thieler
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0093009/photos/empics/2846078511/

17. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Designing the wrong prototype
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 17March 2012
Used by permission under Creative Commons license by Jason Sweeney
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0097009/photos/sween/4312163948/

18. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Failing to cover the solution space
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 18March 2012
Used by permission under Creative Commons license by Deborah Lee
Soltesz
http://www.flickr.com/x/t/0092009/photos/dsoltesz/3299620076/

19. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
Losing the user’s attention
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 19March 2012
Used by permission under Creative Commons license by Fantail Media
http://www.flickr.com/photos/fantailmedia/282618543/

20. March 2007 UCLA Information Studies 279,
Information Architecture: Theory and Practice
“The best way to predict the future is to invent it”
-- Alan Kaye, Xerox PARC ~1970s
 Buxton, Bill, Sketching User Experiences, Morgan Kaufmann /
Elsevier, San Francisco 2007
 Carroll, Lewis, Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice
Found There, The MacMilllan Company, New York, London,
1899, p152
 Frishberg, Leo, Presumptive Design, or Cutting the Looking-
Glass Cake, interactions, Jan/Feb 2006, p18-20
 Koskinen, Ilpo, Design Research Through Practice: From the
Lab, Field, and Showroom, Morgan Kaufmann, 2011
 Snyder, Carolyn, Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to
Design and Refine User Interfaces, Morgan Kaufmann /
Elsevier, 2003
Frishberg SAO TechIgnite 2.0 20March 2012