Design and Solution Architecture

My thoughts turn to China and some of the information I haphazardly came across while checking on the status of my recent purchases on EBAY. It seems that the Chinese consumer accepts if not demands western styling packaging for some consumer goods (regardless if they are made in China or not).

See here:

Here:

And here:

The only reason I mention this is because it reminded me that a Solution Architecture should look beyond just technology and business when developing solutions. A solution architect should make an effort to understand and include the basic principles of universal design into their collection of skills. 

As highlighted in the UPS documents, the Chinese consumer ironically prefers blue over red (red reminds them of American products-think KFC, Taco Bell, etc). It would be suicide for my customer to develop a website that was red (which would be my first instinct). So no matter how perfect I refined their web interactions or how robust I designed their back-end infrastructure, their website would still fail because I didn’t provide them valuable information surrounding human interaction (in this case colour preference).

Now I am not saying you should run out and become a design expert but Solution Architects who can provide a breadth of advice in areas of human interaction and design are in high demand. To prove this fact, just look at the rebirth of Apple. Undoubtedly they have brought profound technology improvements to their laptop products but it is their focus on design, simplicity, and coolness that is a huge factor in converting habitual PC users to the MAC platform.

So in the spirit of this discussion here is my recommended reading list for the Solution Architect who wishes to understand fundamental design principles and include information architecture within their practice
Amazon.Com ListMania!