Robert Hoekman Jr – The essential elements of great web applications A presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008, and Web Direction Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008. Presentation slides Session description Most great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet — can you achieve them consistently in your own projects? In this closing keynote, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders) describes the seven qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve each and every one of them by learning to communicate through design. About Robert Hoekman Robert Hoekman, Jr., is the founder of Miskeeto, a product development and web design consultancy focused on socially-conscious projects that improve the world. Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious, which focuses on seven guiding principles of great web-based software and how to leverage them in any real-world project.
DIY UX: Give Your Users an Upgrade (Without Calling In a Pro) Usability Methods 80/20 rule A principle for setting priorities: users will use 20% of the features of your product 80% of the time. Focus the majority of your design and development effort (80%) on the most important 20% of the product. Read more » affinity diagram a simple technique for organizing concepts: designers write down ideas on a set of cards and then organize the cards by grouping them and by placing closely related concepts close to each other (e.g. by shuffling the cards on a… Read more » alpha testing a stage of software development where the software is first tested for bugs by real users. Read more » analytic memo a brief note used during the coding and construction of data that summarizes a possible interpretation or analysis of the data. Read more » analytic modeling the application of user models and interface models to make quantitative predictions of user performance with an interface. Read more » anecdotal report an example stated in detail to demonstrate a point, often in narrative format.
You’re not a user experience designer if… The UX field is booming. It seems like the number of user experience practitioners has doubled in the last year — from newbies who’ve just entered the workforce, to mid-career changes, to folks who’ve been doing this all along but finally found out what to call themselves. It’s incredibly reassuring to finally see a long overdue interest in user experience practice; after all, that’s what many of us have spent our careers fighting for. There’s just one problem: not everyone calling themselves a user experience designer is actually a user experience designer. But how does a user experience designer demonstrate their user experience designing? Regardless of what they choose to call themselves, how can you identify someone who isn’t actually practicing UX at all, who’s only hitching their wagon to a rising star? You’re not a user experience designer if… You don’t talk to users. I might sound like I’m contradicting myself Related Posts:
Re-Introducing Page Description Diagrams There’s no such thing as a “standard” client or project in a typical agency setting, because every business has its own specific goals—not to mention the goals of its users. Because of this, we’re constantly seeking ways to improve our processes and better meet the needs of our clients, regardless of their unique characteristics. Recently, we discovered the page description diagram (PDD), a method for documenting components without specifying layout. At first, it seemed limited, even simplistic, relative to our needs. As it turns out, these things have been around for quite a while. So why haven’t you heard of them? But to the point, are PDDs useful? Reunion Tour There are a lot of good reasons to bring something like the PDD back. We put goals and priorities in front of the client for their input, but we keep layout, flow, and design behind the curtain. Don’t Throw the Wireframes out with the Bathwater The New Process What We’ve Learned Maintain Clear Priorities Create One Diagram Per Page
Process Makes Perfect: Speech Recognition User Interface Design Applications that recognize speech are more dependent upon good user interface design because there is much more room for ambiguity in spoken language than in other input types. This makes the clarity of context and capturing intent very important. Speech applications also present a very linear experience where users cannot easily backtrack or change their mind after making a choice. While there's art involved in any design, it’s a methodical process that leads to a well-constructed dialog and the kind of grammars—structured lists of the words and phrases that can be recognized at any given time—that achieve the best possible results. Here are nine steps will help ensure a high quality user experience. Step 1: Determine Goals and Requirements for the System Like all good user interface design, speech application design begins with a clear understanding of the app’s goals, requirements, and use cases. Who are the various types of users that will use the application? Step 7: Design Grammars
Why It’s Important to Sketch Before You Wireframe Have you ever had an idea for a website or application? It’s easy to come up with the idea, but the hard part is understanding how that idea will take shape in user interface form. This is where sketching is useful. Sketching happens in many professions that involve creativity and construction. Even Leonardo Da Vinci had to sketch out his inventions before he started to build them. No matter how smart you are, It’s impossible to go from a simple idea in your head to immediately building it out without hashing out the details in between. Every Idea Needs User Interface Translation Designing the user interface is a process. Sketching takes your imaginative mind from the clouds to the user interface screen where you can start thinking about the user experience. A Sketch is Not a Wireframe Many designers mistakenly think a sketch is a wireframe. When you sketch, you are trying to get a basic concept of how the app will work in user interface form. Sketching Always Comes Before Wireframing
Colour: User Experience (UX) And Psychology Colour plays a crucial role in User Experience. It transmits a psychological message to your users and choosing the right colours for your brand, logo or product can be vital as it helps your brand or product get easily recognised and identified with your industry. Coca-Cola is red whilst AT&T is blue and this is not just a coincidence. The correct use of colour is vital to creating a positive image among your users. Blue Blue is the colour of the heavens and oceans and brings to mind peace and serenity. Blue brings to mind the skies and the seas. Red Red actually triggers the pituitary gland and speeds up the heart rate, hence causing the person seeing it to breathe more rapidly. Green Green is a colour which is generally linked to nature, peace, well-being and freshness. Yellow To everyone worldwide, even to kids, the colour yellow is associated with the sun and hence communicates confidence, positivity, light and warmth. Purple Pink Orange Brown Black White
A Case Study In Responsive Web Design - FamousBirthdays.com It is no news to say that the days when users access websites via desktop based devices only are long gone. Even with the advent of the smartphones in the mid 2000′s, a need had already been created to have a mobile version of a website. The technique that was used then was to to check (using JavaScript) whether the user was making use of a mobile phone to access a website – in which case, a different Cascading Stylesheet (CSS) would be loaded. With the advent of a multitude of new devices such as the iPad (which ironically I am using right now to write this article), this problem became a major issue since mobile websites were being developed either too wide, requiring horizontal scrolling or too narrow – in which case they were not making use of the available screen space. Responsive Web Design Enter Responsive Web Design – a technique that overcomes this limitation. These are exciting times in web design. FamousBirthdays.com – A Responsive Web (Re-)Design