UPOD Matrix
1. INTRODUCTION
Over time both the quantity and complexity of accumulated knowledge has led to increased specialization amongst designers, by result breadth of knowledge has increasingly been traded for depth of knowledge.
As designers have become more specialized, awareness of advances in areas of other areas of specialization diminishes. This is both inevitable and unfortunate, since much can be learned from progress within other design principals.
Universal Principals of Design (UPOD, Lidwell, Holden and Butler) is a excellent design resource which provides convenient access to cross-disciplinary design knowledge. The concepts (100 exemplar) presented within UPOD consist of Laws, guidelines, human biases and general design considerations.
The ISRG use UPOD as a resource to increase cross-disciplinary design knowledge and understanding, promote brainstorming and idea generation and for the evaluation of related data, concepts and solutions at each stage of the design life cycle.
This usage acts to strongly enhance and reinforce ISRG’s evolving User Centered Design (UCD) methodology as the use of well established design principals increases the probability that a design will be successful.
2. WHAT IS THE UPOD MATRIX
The UPOD Matrix is a design tool developed by the ISRG to aid the application and evaluation of UPOD within the design process. Within the Matrix comparative weightings are applied across individually comparable principals, contained within the categorical devisions as detailed within UPOD:
- How can I influence the way a design is perceived?
- How can I help people learn from a design?
- How can I enhance the usability of a design?
- How can I increase the appeal of a design?
- How can I make better design decisions?
Upon selection of a principal, comparable weightings are adjusted to reflect an overarching view of a particular design against the detailed categories, thus indicating design focus and or design related bias.
Application is indicated via the neutral consideration (+ or -) of a principal within a project.
The matrix enables principals to be selected and or removed, in turn indicating the effect of each application of a principal has on the balance of a design.
3. USING UPOD FOR GUIDELINE DEVELOPMENT
Bespoke design guidelines for individual design project’s can easily be developed via application of the matrix against data acquired via User Context Analysis (UCA). In addition the matrix provides facility to easily evaluate UCD data in order to indicate factors such as UCA design bias.
The simplest application (principal consideration evaluation) highlights headings for guideline inclusion. These headings can the be expanded upon to reflect the data obtained. More advanced applications involve the in depth evaluation of data obtained against each of the suggested principals.
4. CURRENTLY IMPLEMENTED PRINCIPALS
Currently the UPOD Matrix caters for 100 design principals. For a full listing please visit the currently implemented principals page here.
