Empathy is our ability to see the world through other people’s eyes, to see what they see, feel what they feel, and experience things as they do. Of course, none of us can fully experience things the way someone else does, but we can try to get as close as possible. We achieve this empathic state by setting aside our own preconceived ideas about the world and choosing to understand the ideas, thoughts, and needs of others instead.

According to IDEO’s Human-Centered Design Toolkit, empathy is a “deep understanding of the problems and realities of the people you are designing for.” In other words, empathy requires us to learn about the difficulties people face and uncover their latent needs and desires to explain their behaviors. To truly empathize with them, we need to gain an understanding of their environment, as well as their roles and interactions within it.

When we empathize with people, we can transform even the most stressful situations into delightful ones for end-users. In this video, you will see examples of well-designed and poorly-designed airports and the power of empathy in design.

Empathy Helps You:

• Appreciate people’s emotional and physical needs.
• Gain insight into the way people see, understand, and interact with the world around them.
• Realize how lives are impacted within the contexts being investigated.
• Find out what people mean rather than just what they say-empathic research is inherently subjective and is concerned with motivations and thoughts, rather than facts.

Don’t Confuse Empathy With Sympathy

Empathy is often confused with sympathy, a mistake you definitely don’t want to make in the world of design thinking! Sympathy is about showing concern for the well-being of another, but does not necessarily require you to experience what others do. Now that you understand what empathy means, you can see there is a clear difference!

Sympathy often involves a sense of detachment and superiority. When we sympathize, we tend to project feelings of pity and sorrow onto another person. These feelings have the potential to rub people the wrong way and prove useless in the design thinking process. In design thinking, your goal is to understand the people for whom you design, not react to their current predicament in an emotional way. The Empathize stage of design thinking requires you to visit your users in their natural environments, learn about how they behave, and conduct interviews with them — all so you can create a solution which helps solve a problem they face. You need empathy to achieve that, not sympathy.

In this RSA Short, research professor and author Brené Brown explains the difference between empathy and sympathy. She reminds us that we can only create a genuine empathic connection if we are brave enough to really get in touch with our own vulnerabilities.

Empathize

Empathize is the first of five stages in the design thinking process. The other four are Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

“Empathize” is actually the first stage of the design thinking process, and it’s easy to understand why. Your goal, as a designer, is to gain an empathic understanding of the people you design for! You should have a burning desire to observe, engage, and empathize with the people you design for to understand their experiences and motivations. What’s more, you’ll need to immerse yourself in their physical environment if you want to have any chance at gaining a deeper personal understanding of the issues, needs, and challenges involved in their day-to-day lives.

When you immerse yourself in the environment and context of the people you design for, you can often get a completely different perspective than what you might expect. What might seem like good weather for you (say, warm and sunny) may well be a not-so-nice day for someone else. HCI expert Alan Dix explains this.

Empathy is simply crucial to a human-centered design process such as design thinking, as it helps you set aside your own assumptions about the world to gain insight into your users and their needs instead. The Empathize stage of the design thinking process is a time for you to collect as many experiences, insights, and observations as possible, so you can build a solid foundation for the rest of your design project.

We cannot stress enough how important it is for you as a designer to develop the best possible understanding of your users, their needs, and the problems that your product or service is trying to solve! You and your team can gain huge insight via the practical Empathize methods below, and, if time and money allow for it, it may also be worth getting some experts on board to help you fully understand the people you want to design for.

What’s good to note is this empathic phase of design thinking is named differently depending on which version of the methodology you follow. Different schools and companies which use design thinking have called empathic research “the Empathize stage” (as we do), “the understand phase,” “the hear phase,” and simply “looking,” as well as a number of other terms. Regardless of which phrase you’re familiar with, the core is essentially the same — empathy is deeply human-centric and is essential at the start of any design process.

In this short film, the director Jason Headley explains his perspective on relationship communication using metaphors and hyperbole to drive the point home.

Empathy is Crucial to Business Success

Empathy can also be deemed an essential component of business solutions when you look at things from the perspective of profit. You may create solutions that completely miss the mark if you develop solutions in isolation. You need to gain essential insights about your users if you want to remain relevant in the market.

People ignore design that ignores people.

—Frank Chimero, author of The Shape of Design

Many leaders within the fields of innovation, learning, and entrepreneurship have pointed to three key parameters which define a successful product or service: desirability, feasibility, and viability.

It’s not enough that the technology exists (i.e., feasibility is present) and that profits or business benefits may be derived (i.e., it is viable). Users need to feel a sense of desirability towards a solution. We can only design a desirable product or service when people’s needs, experiences, wants, and preferences are properly understood.

One clear example of this is the iPod. Many MP3 players came and went throughout the late 1990s and didn’t create much of an impact. Then, along came the iPod in 2001. It not only provided a technological solution but also delivered a completely desirable and viable experience. This meant Apple took the lead in the market and continued to hold it for many years to come, generating huge profits along the way.

Empathy Helps You Read Between the Lines

Empathy is also the only way to thoroughly understand what people mean, rather than just absorb what they say. People do not necessarily always cover the details when they share stories and other information. They may withhold information out of fear, distrust, or another inhibiting factor — be it internal or based on those with whom they engage — and they may express themselves in a less than articulate way. As a designer, you need to:

• Make sense of what is not being said or what is being hinted at beneath the external expressions and words.
• Develop intuition, imagination, emotional sensitivity, and creativity so you can dig deeper into people’s experiences.
• Extract the right kinds of insight to ensure you make a meaningful difference.

Empathy is the difference between what your users say at face value and what IDEO Executive Design Director Jane Fulton Suri describes as “thoughtless acts.” Thoughtless acts are small, subtle acts people exhibit that reveals how their behaviors are shaped by their environment. Empathy can help us find opportunities for new insights and new solutions to help people with these suboptimal, unconscious acts.

Become Conscious of Your Empathy

If you’re worried you’re unable to master being fully empathic toward the people you design for, there’s good news! Neuroscientists have recently discovered empathy is hard-wired into the way humans are made and is, therefore, an integral part of our physiology. Humans who observe others show brain activity that resembles someone actually engaged in the activity being observed. In other words, empathy is an innate quality we can all make use of to design for the people around us!

Empathy is a skill that needs to be constantly practiced and honed. Not everyone can grasp empathy easily. For some people, it is harder than it is for others. Neurodiversity, which is the range of differences in individual brain function and behavioral traits, can affect how readily empathy is learned and understood. This is regarded as part of normal variation in the human population.

So, practice, practice, practice upping your empathy skills game. Empathy isn’t just for users; it’s also for stakeholders and teammates.

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With usability testing, you will find real problems, in the sense that at least one user encountered each problem. On the other hand, with the heuristic evaluation, the problems are potential. In this case, you suspect that something may be a problem for users.

How You Can Do

This technique can be made in many ways.

• First, you can have the usability specialists review the screens, or you can assist the developers in reviewing them.
• Each evaluator may provide their own list of errors. Alternatively, you can ask all of them to come to an agreement and create a common list of these errors.
• You can utilize their sound findings and past experiences. Additionally, you can use a list of heuristic guidelines. For example, these guidelines can include error messages that tell the user what to do.

Common Heuristic Evaluation Rules

• The system should always keep users abreast of what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time.
• The system should use the users’ language, with words and phrases that are familiar to them, rather than system-oriented terms.
• Also, the system should use concepts that are familiar to the user.
• The error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), as well as indicate the problem.
• At the same time, the error messages should kindly suggest a specific solution.

Rules And Guidelines Of Heuristic Evaluation

In this method, the rules can serve several purposes:

• Handle the designer during the design process.
• Assist the evaluators in identifying problems with the UI.
• Explain any usability issues that are observed.

There are many recommended sets of usability heuristic techniques. Keep in mind that not all of them may be appropriate for each project. Some common heuristics include:

• 8 golden rules of dialogue design (Shneiderman 1986)
• 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design (Molich and Nielsen 1990).
• Bruce Tognazzini’s First Principles of Interaction Design

The rules of Shneiderman’s method are still valid. Shneiderman believed that these rules can be applied as design guidelines and can be used by developers at every level while designing the UI. These rules can also be used by heuristic evaluators to identify any usability problems.

Around 1990, Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich developed a list of heuristic rules specifically aimed at heuristic evaluation. This method is rather similar to Shneiderman’s.

The common rules of Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molish are :

• Visibility of system status.
• User-friendly language and conventions.
• User control and freedom.
• Consistency and standards.
• Error preventions.
• Memory recognition rather than recall.
• Aesthetic and minimalist design.
• Help users recognize errors.
• Help and documentation.
• Flexibility and efficiency of use.

The heuristic evaluation identifies usability problems through a review.

How To Do Heuristic Evaluation

• First, it is important to create a list of the task scenarios that you are going to test.
• Create a checklist for the heuristic terms that you are going to use.
• You should justify each of these problems and then list them according to the heuristic.
• You should explain how the heuristic is violated.

You can use the method of severity rating.

[1] Cosmetic Problem.
[2] Minor Problem.
[3] Major Problem.
[4] Catastrophe.

Best Practices

When conducting an analysis of this technique, you cannot say “That’s an ugly orange color”. Instead, you have to justify why this is a common usability problem that is likely to affect the usability for other people.

For instance, if a button has several problems, such as a bad color combination or poor presentation of information, then you should identify each of those problems. Keep in mind that some of these problems may be more serious than others, and some may be easier to fix than others. It is best to bring all problems to the table to address them.

• Justify every problem with a heuristic rule
  • Too many choices on the front page. (Aesthetic and minimalist design)
  • You can’t say just “I don’t like the colors”
• List every specific problem.
  • Even if any of the interface elements have more than one problem.
• Get through the interface at least twice times.
  • By doing this you will focus to feel out of the system.
  • Focus again and again on particular interface elements.
• Decide what method you will follow to implement the heuristic evaluation.

In Conclusion

In many cases, heuristic evaluation uncovers a lot of problems, but keep in mind that half of them may be false positives, meaning they do not actually cause any issues for real users. If you want to evaluate this technique, you can review it with some expert users to identify any missing functionality. Use it with caution and only correct problems that you believe are real. On the other hand, let usability tests determine the final verdict. At the very least, always conduct usability tests to identify true problems.

Images

Author/Copyright holder: Canvas Studio. Pexels Licence

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Design thinking in contrast to business-centered processes is a human-centered process. It starts with a focus on people rather than the business’s desire for profit. It originated in the late 1950s as a problem-solving technique. This technique was quickly morphed into a product development technique. Companies realized that if they wanted to create products that people would buy, then they really needed to start with the target user rather than the company’s goal of making money. Profit would come from a solid understanding of what people wanted, needed, and what their pain points were.

Design thinking provides a terrific overlay to existing training design processes. It also gives practitioners great tools and techniques to add to their toolbox for training and development.

Why Do We Need Design Thinking?

The design thinking approach provides a specific method for defining any kind of problem. It involves considering problems from multiple and different perspectives, brainstorming possible solutions, prototyping these solutions, and then testing and iterating to optimize the best approach. People can use this method to solve human problems or difficulties encountered in daily life.

For instance, we face issues such as overcrowding at metro or bus stations and traffic jams. These situations can lead to frustration and, on the other hand, social problems. By applying design thinking principles, we can identify the best possible options to simplify and improve these experiences, making them faster, smoother, and better.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop services as well as products on the front end. It can also improve the strategy and process on the backend. You can apply these principles to a new service or product, but you can also use them to handle a problem that plagues a city or nation.

With this in mind, the ideation process is a way to think and generate solutions for handling a problem or better meeting the needs of customers. It is a process focused on finding solutions, rather than dwelling on the problems themselves.

Design thinking is a practical tool and an innovative mindset for projects.

Activity

Once we understand why we need design thinking, we should then reflect on some key points.

• What are the key innovations that inspire you?
• How could you make some things better?
• What are some human problems that you face every day?
• How do you solve them?
• What will design thinking help you compete in?

Design Thinking Approach On My Academic Life

During the last two years of my academic life, I was quite anxious because I had to prioritize in order to successfully pass my courses and obtain my degree.
In academic life, applying design thinking is all about creating a sense of balance and harmony. At a very broad level, I found answers to these questions that made a positive difference in my academic life.

• What components make up my academic life (personal, ambition, achievements)?
• What components do I want to add, subtract, replace, or keep?
• How can I change my daily routine to have a better impact on my academic life?
• How can I reinvent my life?

In order to understand what I need to retain, add or replace among the different components in my life, I really needed to know what components comprise my life. So, I maintained my notes that contain details on activities.

• Make me stressed.
• Make me content.
• am happy to be involved 100%.
• Pump me up.
• Drain my energy.

Define the problem

In the previous stage, I collected information and gained insight into how my current life is structured. Now, I need to define the problem while factoring in these dynamics.

• How can I add a harmonious stream to my life?
• How can I make a plan to pass all my courses?
• What skills do I need to embrace to have a rewarding career?
• Similarly, how can I maintain my energy levels and positive thinking throughout the day?

Ideate

As opposed to knowing predefined outcomes with known variables, life is a bit different. I don’t know what will come up in the future, and hence I need to find my way with the unknown variables of my future. Maybe I know what I like or dislike, or what saps my energy, but not much more than that. I can ideate on the possible ways that I can take to achieve a larger objective (i.e., resolving the problem statement). It was not necessary that the first idea lead me to accomplish my larger objective.

Prototype and Test

I took my ideas one step further and, on the other hand, I developed real-world solutions to address the problems.

• First, I decided to drink less coffee. I realized that while coffee gave me energy, excessive consumption caused overexertion during the day.
• Whether I had classes early in the morning or late at night, I always woke up at a set time. This helped my body learn to wake up early and complete my daily routine.
• Even though my academic courses ended early in the summer, I continued attending private lessons throughout the season.
• Additionally, every Sunday, I took a walk with my camera. Photography was a part of my relaxation routine.

The main key was to keep re-engineering, fine-tuning, testing, and assessing the outcomes until I was satisfied.

Design Thinking Approach On My Working Life

I worked on a project where the user must be able to quickly find the ports served by the company.

After the testing process, I realized that it was difficult for the user to find a port if they did not know which country the port was from. The solution was to include a search option.

In Conclusion

In psychology, it is believed that the left brain controls more logical and analytical functions, whereas the right hemisphere processes imagination, emotions, and creativity. Design thinking is probably one of the few disciplines that utilizes both equally. Keep in mind that everyone can use a design thinking approach. It involves methods that enable empathy with people and seeks to define the problem as actively as finding the solution. Design thinking ideates and explores solutions. Additionally, it is collaborative and involves iterative prototyping. It solves many different types of problems and is fun.

Images

Author/Copyright holder: Rafael Barros, Pexels Licence / Cameron Casey, Pexels Licence / Andrea Piacquadio, Pexels Licence / Vasilis Baimas. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

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What is a Navigation Menu?

The navigation menu is typically found at the top of each website, or both at the top and bottom of the screen. Clicking on a menu item brings up a list of related items. Users can make a selection by moving the cursor over the items and clicking on the desired choice.

Generally, global navigation represents the top-level pages of a site structure, or the pages below the home page.

• The main navigation provides an overview and answers important questions users may have when they first come to a site.
• It allows users to switch topics, helping visitors get to other sections of a site efficiently.
• Global navigation aids in orientation, helping users to understand where they are on a site.
• It also helps when users get interrupted while navigating and reminds visitors when they are on a site.

Make the Navigation Menu Usable.

Menus are a navigation method that allows users to go directly to specific parts of a website. Almost every good website has at least one menu. A useful feature is search, which helps users find further information not found in the main menu.

Usability refers to how easily and quickly a device can be learned and put to work. If it takes two minutes to figure out a menu, then it probably suffers from poor usability. However, if its purpose and use are immediately clear, then the menu has good usability.

It’s important to note that our definition of usability emphasizes “quickly” instead of “beautifully”.

One of the first things you learn in usability testing is that a system should be simple to use and fast.

Usability is more important than aesthetic splendor, as design and corporate branding can often conflict with usability. Time savings are also a more quantifiable measure of a design’s success compared to its alternatives.

Usability Problems

For example, if you give a user the task of finding a particular piece of information with your menu, you may discover that it takes extra time when the menu includes branding or other overhead.

However, we also aim to make the menu easy for users to use. If your menu is immediately readable and understandable, but the user has to position their mouse pointer in tiny squares to operate it, the menu is still not usable. This is illustrated in the example opposite, which has many problems, including mysterious wording and bad contrast. The biggest usability problem is that you have to click on the title to navigate to any subsection.

When we establish guidelines for good usability in web menus, we aim to make it easy and quick for users, who are often but not always customers, to navigate your website and complete their tasks.

Rules To Improve the Usability of Navigation Menus

This is not an exhaustive list of rules for designing a navigation menu, but they are certainly all factors you need to keep in mind when creating one.

Navigation Menus Should Take Into Consideration the User’s Primary Task

1. Navigation menus should consider the user’s main task.
2. They must be distinct from the content.
3. The user should be able to easily scan the navigation menu for information.
4. Navigation menus must be clearly readable.
5. They should also be easy to operate.
6. Navigation menus should load as quickly as possible.
7. They must behave as the target user would expect.
8. They must work on multiple browsers, just like the overall website.
9. Navigation menus must be logical across the site.
10. Usability should be prioritized over branding.
11. They should show the user’s location within the site.
12. Another important point is that they must be easily accessible.

Good Examples Of Global Navigation

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is a popular website platform that allows users to use it as a CMS. You can find more information about it at its official website.

The global navigation of WordPress displays the location of the current page. This is achieved by changing the color of the selected page label. To draw extra attention to the user, WordPress uses an arrow to point out the selected label.

A-List Apart

A list Apart is a prominent online magazine for web design and web development.

The navigation is kept to a minimum and unnecessary graphics are avoided. This feature allows readers to engage with the text without becoming distracted.

Amazon

Another example is Amazon, an American multinational technology company and one of the world’s largest online retailers.

Amazon utilizes a vertical/sidebar navigation, which arranges items in a single column on top of each other. This type of navigation is a versatile pattern that can be found on virtually every kind of website. It can accommodate a long list of links and can be used alongside sub-navigation menus or on its own. It is easily applied to primary site navigation that contains a lot of links.

In Conclusion

It’s important to keep in mind that everything you publish on the web is intended for a user, and each user has unique background and real-world demands. Any efforts to make their web experience faster and easier is valuable to them, and ultimately to you.

By ensuring that the navigational structure is easy-to-use and clear, you can encourage visitors to spend time on your site. This also helps direct them to the content or features that are important to them and your business.

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A “Wicked Problem” is a social, environmental, economic, or political problem. They are also referred to as “complex” or “tricky” problems. These issues are typically difficult, if not impossible, to solve. However, they require a deep understanding in order to come up with an innovative solution.

Planners deal with – societal problems – are inherently different from the problems that scientists and perhaps some classes of engineers deal with. Planning problems are inherently wicked.

Designing external representations to support
(Rittel & Webber, 1984, p. 135-136)

Rittel and Webber list several characteristics of these complex “Wicked Problems.”

1. There is no definitive formula for solving a wicked problem.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule, as there is no way to know if your solution is final.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false; they can only be good-or-bad.
4. There is no immediate way to test a solution to a wicked problem.
5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”. Because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.
6. Wicked problems do not have a set number of potential solutions.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered a symptom of another problem.
9. There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on individual perspectives.
10. The planner/designer has no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for their actions.

The Problem With Natural Water Resources

Water resources are affected by environmental, social, and economic factors. While some experts believe that the water crisis in the 21st century is primarily a management issue rather than a stress and scarcity crisis, the lack of straightforward solutions has led to water resource management being described as a “wicked problem.” This problem is compounded by unknown scientific dimensions.

Climate change has had a significant impact on the frequency and intensity of droughts in many European countries. According to global climatic models, severe droughts that previously occurred once every 100 years may now occur every 10-50 years in southern and southeastern Europe.

The Wicked Problem of Crete

Crete is known for being one of the high-risk areas for droughts due to climate change. Unfortunately, the island’s water reserves have been managed inefficiently for the past 10-50 years. Southern Crete is a warm area that typically experiences only two seasons: winter and summer. Winter brings heavy rainfall, while summer can be plagued by droughts caused by high temperatures. In severe cases, rain mixed with dust from Africa.

Given these challenging weather conditions, farmers require significant amounts of water to care for their crops and rural areas. However, most of the time, the available water is insufficient not only for irrigation but also for drinking. This is a serious problem in rural areas where water is scarce.

To address this issue, the rational use of water resources is necessary. While increasing the amount of irrigation water can increase crop production to a point, excessive water usage does not enhance production. This is a complex problem that requires a sustainable solution.

Open Questions to Ask

• What is the amount of available water?
• What is the water source?
• How is the availability of water changing over time?
• What are the causes of these changes?

In addition, there are almost always multiple stakeholders involved in the management of water resources. This can make decision-making difficult, and sometimes even impossible.

Wicked Problem. Some questions to ask.

• At what point does a flood become a nuisance?
• Does the water level need to reach ankle, knee, or hip-high?
• What is water scarcity?
• How do we address water availability, demand, and allocation?
• What are the critical moments in time and space?
• Are they changing with climate change?

Related to above :

• What are the windows of opportunity available to us?
• How much information do we need to make informed decisions?
• What are our different perspectives and perceptions, and how can we bring them together to prioritize actions?
• How can we ensure equity in our decision-making?
• Is migration driven by imbalances in equity?
• Is migration driven by equity imbalance?
• Are these imbalances and migration related to water issues?
• Are smallholder farmers seeking a sustainable and acceptable quality of life?
• Or is it a dead-end road, and should we expedite the search for alternative solutions?

Characteristics of This Wicked Problem

Now, let’s analyze the characteristics of a wicked problem from the example above:

1. There is no definitive formula for a wicked problem. The production relationship of a crop and the amount of water from the treatment depends on various factors. Such as climatic conditions, soil, and applied crop cultivation.
2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. As there’s no way to know that the solution is final. Due to the lack of irrigation planning, farmers began to experiment and to feel safe tend to increase the amount of water irrigation, especially when its price is very low.
3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, they can only be good-or-bad. One solution is to come to a common agreement on the amount of water each may use, but an unpredictable factor is the extreme weather conditions.
4. There is no immediate test of a solution to a wicked problem. Besides other problems related to environmental changes, In Greece, we have a big bureaucracy problem, so making decisions have enough time
5. The solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is no opportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly. In this case, it is important to implement effective planning. This can happen, with the co-operation of ministries and agencies. So, they can implement some actions of direct return by setting up scientific working groups on the impact on each crop.
6. Wicked problems don’t have a set number of potential solutions. Reduce water evaporation from the ground and also reduce perspiration losses and increase water storage.
7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. Even if water resource management is a global “wicked problem”, there are some unfortunate factors that make it unique. Such as soil morphology, weather conditions, the policies implemented in each country and region, etc.
8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. The production relationship of a crop and the quantity of irrigation water depends on various factors. Such as climatic conditions, soil, and applied cultivation techniques. Because of the lack of irrigation design to put to feel safe tend to increase the amount of irrigation water, especially when its price is low.
9. There is always more than one explanation for a wicked problem because the explanations vary greatly depending on the individual perspective. Crete is one of risk areas of dryness. As a result of climate change and the inefficient use of water reserves. A typical example that verifies it, is the reduced rainfall recorded in the current hydro-logical year throughout the region of Crete.
10. The planner/designer has no right to be wrong and must be fully responsible for his/her actions. Optimization of the use of irrigation water through. a) The annual maintenance of the irrigation network. b) The calculation of the irrigation dose based on the meteorological information, the type of the soil, the type and age of the crop, and also the time of the previous irrigation. In the case of reduced water availability (periods of dry), the water needs to follow a strict process of calculating at critical stages of plant growth.

At this point, I recommend watching the talk by Tom Wujec. His talk provides an approach to practicing systems thinking and collaborative visualization

How Can Design Thinking Help Us Solve Wicked Problems?

Design thinking is a methodology that can help us understand any kind of problem and produce innovative and complete solutions. It is particularly useful for addressing “Wicked Problems”. Combining systems thinking with the agile methodology enables you to iterate and test your solution, leading to the most valuable outcome.

In Conclusion

When dealing with a wicked problem, a significant part of the solution is defining the problem itself. Keep in mind that “wicked problems” are not inherently evil; they are challenging because there is no apparent single cause. As designers, we bear the responsibility of finding and generating the best possible solution, even if the wicked problem is vague and imprecise, and the best solution has not yet been discovered.

Images

Hero Image: Copyright holder: Sergei Gussev. Copyright terms and license: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

Giuseppe Milo – Corvara, Alta Badia – Landscape photography. Copyright terms and license: Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

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On the first day of WordCamp Europe 2018 Contributor Day, I had an amazing morning collaborating with some designers from the WordPress community. The team was composed of Tim Hengeveld (Lead UX Designer at Yoast), Rich Copping (Creative Director at Pragmatic Agency), Jasper Cheyne (Web Designer at Pragmatic Agency), Jayman Pandya (Freelance UI Designer, Front-end Developer), and myself.

We explored several different solutions and settled on one that allowed for consistent placement of the notification dot, as shown in the picture below. Adrian Roselli, who was frequently evaluating our suggestions, ultimately approved this improvement. Adrian preferred design options 3 and 4 (with 1 being the current situation).

It will be exciting to see if this can evolve into a real-world solution. Day by day, I believe that it is possible. However, what is most important is that it was great to have the chance to meet and work with new people. To this end, we have created a ticket to improve the notification badges in the admin menu, and the process of deepening our contributions has already begun. If you have a creative spirit and want to contribute, feel free to join us. The ticket can be found here: Improving the notification badges in admin menu.

In Conclusion

WordPress relies on people like you to bring ideas to life. Just remember that WordPress is a user- and volunteer-driven project; every enhancement and improvement depends on the community. It is essential to give back to WordPress, and Contributor Day is a great opportunity to do so.

WordCamp Europe 2018 (Contributors Day) gave me the opportunity to meet new people and discuss user experience, focusing on the tiny details of a user interface.

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Plenty of Reasons To Enjoy an Open Source Community

Improve the Software That You Rely On

Before contributing to a project, it’s important to use the software or product and become an active user. This will allow you to develop empathy. If you find a bug in an open-source software you use, take a look at the source to see if you can fix it. If you can, contributing your fix back to the project is the best way to ensure that you and other contributors benefit from it when you update to the next release.

Improve Your Existing Skills

Whether it’s user interface design, writing, translation, coding, or organizing, you can get involved in an open source project to enhance your skills.

Meet People With Similar Interests.

Almost all open source projects have welcoming communities. You will meet people from different cultures who share similar interests. There are many cases of people forming lifelong friendships through their participation in open source.

Learn From Others, Teach Others, and Find Mentors.

When contributing and collaborating with others on a shared software or product, it is important to be able to explain your processes to others. At the same time, you may need to ask for help and share your knowledge and skills with others. The acts of learning and sharing your experience can be satisfying for everyone involved.

Create Public artifacts.

When contributing to an open source project, all of your work related to open source is public. This means that you have free examples that you can take anywhere to demonstrate what you can do. This relationship fosters empathy and helps you build emotional connections that can grow your career path.

How Can You Be Involved?

There are many ways to become involved in an open-source project.

Planning Events

You can organize meetups, workshops, or conferences related to the project you contribute to.

Designing

• Conduct user research to refine the product.
• Improve the project’s usability.
• Create a style guide to help ensure a harmonious visual design for the project.
• Additionally, create graphics and other art related to the project’s graphic design.

Writing

• You can write and improve the project’s documentation.
• You can create translations and tutorials for the project.
• You can write tutorials on how to use the product.

Coding

• You can find an open issue to work on.
• You can help improve the tools and testing.
• You can review the code of other contributors’ submissions.

Support

• In this case, you can blog, answer questions online, or tweet.
• Also, address and support any bugs related to the issue tracking system.

Attending a Meetup

Since the onset of COVID-19, there have been many virtual meetups.

• Don’t hesitate to introduce yourself to the project’s contributors.
• Posting messages online can be effective.

Respect the Code of Conduct

As a contributor, it is important to respect the working conditions of others. Many projects provide documents such as CONTRIBUTORS.md or README.md that outline the rules of the community. It is crucial to read and understand these guidelines, and to follow them accordingly. The main purpose of these guidelines and conditions is to protect the time of the maintainers and the community as a whole. If you are unable to follow these rules, the maintainers may assume that you are careless with your work in general.

Don’t Be Discouraged

Keep in mind that every time you post something online and make it public, you open yourself up to criticism. Whether it’s a photo, an article, or a comment, you are now unprotected. You should welcome some criticism, as it can help you grow. Don’t be afraid to express your opinion.

In our daily lives, we encounter many types of criticism, including unwarranted and toxic criticism that can be found in online communities. Before you start sharing your contributions online, it is highly recommended that you learn how to deal with different types of criticism. This way, you can be better prepared for what awaits you. Try not to take everything personally. In some cases, it’s easy to misunderstand what someone writes in their comments. Take a deep breath and keep smiling!

Get Motivated and Respect the Ideas of Others

Initially, our best ideas may not be the best ideas for everyone. Please keep this in mind. There is no reason to be offended if someone tells you that your ideas do not suit their needs. It’s important to respect every opinion. This can serve as a lesson if you are involved in a similar project in the future. I believe that if you explain your point of view clearly and have patience, you will have more opportunities to incorporate your ideas into the community in the future.

Finding Your Project To Contribute

Contributing to open source can happen at all levels and across all projects. Don’t overthink what your first contribution will be or what it will look like.

You don’t have to limit yourself to well-known communities either. There are many open-source projects available on websites like GitHub, Google Code, Bitbucket, SourceForge, and Firefox.

However, I also believe that open source contribution alone is not enough. As a creative person, it’s important to work on side projects or ideas to keep your emotions and ideas flowing.

List Of Resources

• Awesome for Open Source Beginners
• Code Triage
• Bugzilla
• First Contributions
• Gauger.io
• Open Source Handbook
• Hacktoberfest

Communities

• WordPress
• Drupal
• Python
• django
• Open Source Design

Also, you can check out this list, on GitHub.

In Conclusion

Working on an open-source project is a worthwhile use of your time. It can also improve your skills. When selecting a project, make sure it is one that you are truly interested in. It’s recommended that you choose a project that solves one of your own problems. You can start by making a small contribution to get the hang of it. If you encounter any issues, don’t hesitate to ask for help. Keep in mind that this is a community of like-minded individuals, most of whom share your passion, and many will be happy to assist you.

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