Tony Moura on Design craft, writing meaningful content, and designing for your grandmother
Product State Q&A
Tony Moura is Federal Garage Lead / Sr UX Architect at IBM. With 30 years of experience in UX, he’s been a Design leader at 10Pearls, Cambria Solutions, AOL, Verisign, Wyndham, Clear Channel, Siemens and more.
LinkedIn
EC: When talking to users and gaining insights, you’ve stated that you don’t have a single or specific process. How do you advise new Designers to think about craft vs process?
TM: Processes exist, yes. Methodologies exist, yes. Tools exist, yes.
Know what each one of these is going to give you as an output, then weigh that output against the needs of the project.
Many dedicated researchers would say you need to do a lot of X, or Y in order to gain any meaningful insight.
No, you don't.
You can gain a ton of insight from a simple conversation.
Knowing what insight you want to get during the conversation is key. Knowing the outcomes of processes, methods and tools. This allows you to know when, and when not to use them.
EC: We sometimes hear references for ‘designing as if for your mom.’ With so much human-centered and customer-obsessed thinking these days, how are B2B products still struggling with UX?
TM: It's true, but more so... Your grandmother.
Yet, they're not the ones that are leading the initiative either.
On any project there are constraints placed on those doing the work.
There's never enough time, and/or budget to really do the things you want to do — in the given time frame.
If you can design something that a grandmother could use. Well, you've done pretty well.
EC: What is a good way for Product Designers to ‘put themselves out there’ online publicly?
TM: Write meaningful content.
Just creating content for the sake of creating content that provides little value overall — Why bother? People will see right through that.
When I write, I try and talk to the reader. I try to give them something to think about. I honestly don't do this intentionally. It's just the way I write.
I hope that when someone reads what I've posted that they can take something away — something that will overall help them. To think about something differently. To encourage them in taking bold steps, etc.
Make the content mean something.
If you can design something that a grandmother could use. Well, you've done pretty well.
"If you can design something that a grandmother could use. Well, you've done pretty well."
There's a great book called The Mom Test that hits on this idea. I think about it every time I am playing tier 1 help desk support for my grandmother or my mom.