Well said. P
-----Original Message----- From: Wikimedia-l [mailto:wikimedia-l-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] On Behalf Of Isarra Yos Sent: Thursday, 17 November 2016 2:16 AM To: Wikimedia Mailing List Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-l] Invitation to review: Design Statement of Purpose
Okay, so you want to clarify... something, and build trust. What needs clarifying? What has been unclear? For whom, and building trust with whom? Are these even the right questions?
A problem here, from what you're saying, seems to be that things with Design have been historically overly complicated/confused, and there hasn't been good communication with other teams, with the community, even within Design itself. Though a step in the right direction, this seems to me like a continuation of that pattern, frankly. The more big words you use, the more passive voice, the more overarching 'themes' and less direct problem statements, the more you distance yourselves from what you're doing and who you're working with, and I would if anything strongly recommend the opposite. Keep it simple.
Your general purpose should be to make things... better. But what that means depends on what your problems are, so your problems are what you need to do work to sort out. That way you can address the problems, and move forward.
So what are the problems? How will you address them? And in order to define these problems, for that matter, what's your scope?
-I
On 10/11/16 20:36, Arthur Richards wrote:
Hi Isarra, thanks for the excellent questions. Here's my attempt to answer them:
The purpose of the statement of purpose is to gain clarity and build trust within the design group and with their principle stakeholders. With the statement itself, we seek to gain clarity and shared understanding about what design at the WMF is here for and trying to achieve (at a big-picture level). Through the process of defining the statement of purpose, we hope to build trust amongst the design group and with their principle stakeholders. So, the primary audience for this document is the design group itself, with the stakeholders of design being a secondary audience.
Moving forward, that is once the statement of purpose is done, design can take a close look at where it is now relative to where it wants to be as defined by the statement of purpose. Design can then use that difference to help make decisions about how we get from here to there (for instance to help in making decisions about staffing, structure, involvement in product teams, how to approach design problems, and so on).
Long story short, the statement of purpose is intended to be an organizing tool - to create clarity through everyone understanding the purpose, and trust by going through a collaborative process of definition amongst design and their stakeholders - so that they can execute better and with decreased friction.
A little more background and history: As the Foundation has evolved over the years, there have been many challenges and pain points around figuring out how design should function and how it should be integrated into the various facets of the organization (from product development to communications). Through all of the attempts to address those challenges and pain points over the years, it's become clear that the role and purpose of design is not well understood - at least not in a shared and consistent way, which makes it nearly impossible to find the right and lasting solutions. A few months ago, the Team Practices Group was asked to help identify and resolve the major pain points - after doing research, we agreed in conjunction with the design group that we should pursue clarifying the purpose of design and validate it with their stakeholders.
Does this answer your questions?
On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 12:24 PM Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
I'm going to ask this here since the talkpage on-wiki is a flow board and I find those very difficult to use, but I'm a bit unclear what the purpose of this is. All the things listed sound good in theory, but the language is ambiguous and very high level, to the point where it's hard to see how it applies in practice. Essentially, who is this for? What are the problems they are trying to address? What are they planning to do, and what will this mean in practice moving forward?
Thanks.
-I
On 10/11/16 18:40, Keegan Peterzell wrote:
Hello all,
Over the past few months the Design team members at the Wikimedia Foundation (user experience [UX] designers, design researchers, user experience engineers, and communications) have been working with Arthur Richards from the Team Practices Group to identify the high-level themes that motivate design at the WMF. These themes have been turned into a
brief
statement of purpose, whose intent is to articulate the vision and
purpose
behind design at the WMF. This statement will influence the future direction of design work.
At this point the stakeholders are ready for a review of the draft statement. The purpose of this review is to gather a common understanding of its purpose, and to identify any key themes that may be missing from
the
high-level discussion. On the wiki page for the statement, you'll find these themes and what they encompass in the "Background" section. If you have an observation, comment, or concern about what is listed there,
please
bring it up on the talk page. If it is relevant to the review and understanding of the statement, it will be looked at for future drafts.
If
there are comments about design and the design process in general, we'll hold on to those until a time when they can be addressed for the broader discussion of design in general.
All that said, here are the links:
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Design/Statement_of_purpose
- https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Design/Statement_of_purpose
We look forward to seeing you on the wiki.
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