Methodology Madness

I attended a panel discussion sponsored by IxDA LA Salon and HUGE in North Hollywood last week. The panel included Jaime Levy Russell of HUGE, Lisa Colvin of Ascentium (was also at the IA Summit), and Jens Jonason of Yahoo.

All three presented slightly different methodologies they used in their work, but I found these repeated throughout:

• Methodologies change depending on the team, project, timeline, budget, technology, etc.
  
• Collaborate and communicate often (to paraphrase Jens, "If you're lucky you'll come up with maybe one good idea, therefore you need these other people to come up with other good ideas.")

The second point is really key, IMHO. Everyone on the team is more or less thinking about the user experience from different perspectives. Instead of trying to guard your territory or think that you've got to come up with all these ideas, borrow from others liberally to make your work better (and probably easier). I think in the past I've tried to own the user experience with an iron fist, but it's just not conducive and makes it much more difficult to build trust with team members.