For (R)esponsibilities I specified the following:
1) Improve our products & innovate
2) Provide the UI design for new features/functions/products
3) Approve any UI design work done outside of Product Design
4) Validate our UI designs and explore user needs through user testing

Given those responsibilities (and that’s important because your metrics are linked to them) I then came up with the following metrics and met with my team who helped to refine them:

For a given period (e.g. a business quarter):
1) Number of layouts delivered
2) Number of interactive prototypes created
3) Percentage of product design requests completed by commit date
4) Number of users tested
5) Number of product improvements made
6) Number of products insights documented

Discussion:

1) We struggled with what to call this and how to word it specifically.  We started with “Number of designs delivered”, moved to “Number of screens delivered” and settled on “Number of layouts delivered.”  We chose layouts because designs seemed a little too broad and didn’t really give any indication of what we would actually be delivering.
2) We prototype when feasible and want to both push this effort as well as measure it.  Again we struggled with the wording (i.e. “prototypes” vs. “designs”, etc.).  We wanted to make it clear that we are measuring the number of interactive, non-static prototypes.
3) We recently implemented a Product Design Request System where we track the growing volume of design requests and deliverables to development and product management.  We are holding ourselves accountable to deliver on these requests by our committed due date.
4) We test designs on users as much as possible and want to both measure this and push ourselves to do this as much as possible.
5) Here’s where it gets a little interesting.  This one is admittedly qualitative and may need further refinement.  With that said, it is easy for us to remain reactive and work day to day by responding to requests from product management and development without ever taking the initiative to improve our products by combining our research with our unique expertise in usability and design.  This metric is meant to drive us to be proactive and take initiative to improve our products and to track those improvements over time to further illustrate our value.  To make this metric more objective I plan to tie in efficiency measurements and satisfaction scores (SUS).
6) With our considerable user “face time” we are in a unique position to collect “insights” into product shortcomings, needs, and opportunities.  We often take copious notes when doing user studies only to leave the notes sleeping silently in our Moleskines.  We meet regularly with SME’s (subject matter experts), developers, users, and various other stakeholders.  This metric is intended to remind us to document, publish, and take action on the “insights” that we collect.

My reason for publishing these metrics is to get feedback and to learn what metrics other designers work with.  Let me know if you think an important metric is missing or if you disagree with these metrics and why.

The bottom line is a series of arrows pointing to the left door.
(apologies for the poor quality photograph)

What’s Cisco’s most immediate technology need?

I don’t think it’s a Cisco need as much as an industry need. If you think about what’s happening with the industry, you can think of it as either a convergence or a collision. Convergence because we are truly merging content, communications, computing and commerce. It’s a collision because different industries come at it form different angles. Google and Amazon come form the application down into the infrastructure; infrastructure companies are going up. Wireless and wireline are converging as well. So it changes the landscape of who competes with whom in the future and who becomes your friend.

So what I think what Cisco needs more of in terms of technology and talent is moving from infrastructure to more providing the applications associated with the infrastructure. You have to think about how users interface with the technology. So user interface becomes a very important aspect that we have to think about. As the enterprise gets more consumerized, it has to be very simple, it has to be one click. It’s user interface, usability – how simple is it to set up. It’s that kind of focus that we need more of.

Original article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2008/062508-cisco-cto-warrior.html?page=1

Padmasree, you give me hope!

.NET
ComponentArt: http://www.componentart.com
Infragistics: http://www.infragistics.com
Telerik: http://www.telerik.com

Javascript/AJAX
Google Web Toolkit: http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/
Yahoo! User Interface Library: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/
ComponentArt: http://www.componentart.com
Ext JS: http://extjs.com (a bolt on: http://www.codeplex.com/ExtJsExtenderControl, Write ExtJS code in C#: http://code.google.com/p/extsharp/)
jQuery: http://jquery.com (general animation framework, there are bolt on’s too)
dojo: http://dojotoolkit.org (bolt on’s: http://dojotoolkit.org/projects/dijit, and http://dojotoolkit.org/projects/dojox)
script.aculo.us: http://www.script.aculo.us which is built on top of Prototyp http://www.prototypejs.org)

I would be interested to know if anyone has any specific experience with any of these frameworks and what opinions are about them (and of course if there are others to consider). After taking a look at them, I’m personally leaning towards experimenting with GWT and YUI.

For details see:  http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr/

Yesterday a design student that I’m mentoring (thanks Kelsea!) showed me the Maroon 5 website and I was really impressed. I’m not concerned with the implementation, which in this case happens to be Flash. I’m focused on the concept. The designer used a very simple geometrical shape with a strong color to draw attention to navigation that “appears when you need it”. You can quickly find the navigation anchor–an orange triangle in a sea of grey/black–but the choices remain hidden allowing the content to dominate and show through.

When you move your mouse over the image the navigation menu appears:

In another part of the site it is done slightly differently. The orange bar is dropped and the navigation text floats over the background:

Excellent job!

If you know of any other really creative navigation methods, please reply to this post and share with the other readers.

1. Do you find any business processes get in the way of creative ideas?

Not really. Deadlines and pressure are actually good for creativity. To create we must work within bounds — limited possibilities do not strangle creativity, they make it possible.

2. What do you feel is the best method for fostering creative ideas?

I believe you must combine energy, pressure, and cross-disciplinary exploration. Energy in the form of excitement and drive to achieve, pressure to achieve something great within an ambitious time frame, and lastly the search for ingredients outside of our normal scope. We often create by taking a concept or idea from another discipline and twisting or turning it to fit our needs. There is so much that software designers can learn and be inspired by in the fine arts.

3. What is it that led you to a creative position, and how do you stay competitive?

I believe everyone is creative. No question. As for staying competitive, it’s very simple — you must apply yourself in ways that benefit the business. You must always keep your eye on the money. If I’m not wrong, I believe that much of the old masters’ works were created based on what they were commissioned to paint; not whatever they felt like painting. Find the intersection between what you want to do and what will benefit your company or customers.

4. How do you measure the success of ideas?

With regard to the software we design, we actually have objective measures in place such as efficiency and effectiveness that help us to determine if we have improved a design. We also use less objective measures such as satisfaction surveys and word association exercises that provide us with good feedback.

5. How is creativity rewarded within your organization?

Creativity is rewarded at NetQoS by turning the right ideas into products or product features. I say the “right” ideas because not all creative ideas make business sense. I’m also reminded of a quote from Harry Truman: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.” For me, seeing my work in a product that people need to do their daily jobs is the ultimate reward.

6. Would you rather be in charge of a creative failure, or an ordinary success?

I’m not sure what an “ordinary success” is, but I would not be happy being in charge of a creative failure. No success in our business (high-tech software) is easy or ordinary.