Wax on Wax off, The Karate Kid approach to designing web applications

As a 7 year old, Mr Miyagi was my hero. How cool would it be to have a next door neighbour like Mr Miyagi who would refer to me as “Colinson”? I was determined to be a karate master: I ceremoniously placed my bathrobe over my school uniform, nobly bowed to my imaginary opponent and meticulously practiced the famous crane kick. I reached a grand total of 3 kicks when the call for dinner was heard and the principles of discipline and dedication were left in a pile under the discarded bathrobe.

Disciplined Design

If there’s one message that shines through Designing the Obvious, it is the Karate-like dedication to consistently improving design work. Hoekman stresses that any first iteration of design is likely to have about the same quality as my 7-year-old crane kick. A possible outline could be a good idea, it could have the potential of good design, but it won’t work without the rigour and discipline. The message? Make your design ideas sweat, put them through a training regime, make them lean and mean by consistently reviewing them, improving them, and honing them to enhance the user experience. For these insights alone the book was worth a read.

Minimalism

Another one of Hoekman’s cornerstone principles is “build only what’s absolutely necessary,” a philosophy that has been the basis of many successful web applications like Basecamp and box.net. I’ve always been a little doubtful about this approach. I believe that as web applications mature and develop, users will demand the range of functionality provided by standard desktop applications. However, Designing the Obvious does a good job framing this approach as a process rather than a  goal.

So, is Hoekman right?

Firstly, good design takes time and a lot of effort. Hoekman’s approach focuses the majority of that time and effort into the most frequently used and absolutely necessary functions.

Secondly, as the application designer, you may not know what secondary support functions your users actually need or want. Getting the application “out there” with well-designed primary functions and providing a user feedback loop can be an effective approach to creating the product development roadmap. The philosophy has its merits, but as a path rather than a destination.

Hey Man!

One thing that grates a little while reading the book is the over familiar “I’m your best buddy” language.

“This record of your searches is a great way to avoid having to actually remember anything. Isn’t technology great?”

While it’s imperative to have clear and accessible content, I find the tone too sugared.  I read this book for Hoekman’s ideas and advice, not to become best friends with the guy.

Back to it

And so it’s karate training for me and my design ideas: a renewed focus on primary functions and devoted time for design refinement built into the project plan.  Time to pick up those ethics of discipline and dedication from beneath the bathrobe and make them guiding principles of my future design work.