The following questions are representative of the two paths in User Experience to determine the direction for a design.
Architecture
1. What are users’ primary goals, and how can they achieve them using the application?
2. How do users get from place to place?
3. What rules exist that users have to work around?
4. How are product features and components branded?
5. What is the optimal scope of the application’s feature set?
6. How does the UI roadmap and product roadmap position the application?
7. What is the application’s search mechanism?
Interaction
1. What layout pattern would work best?
2. Which features and information are of higher importance, and how do I draw users’ attention to them?
3. How should I incorporate the user feedback I am getting from user research, user surveys, and formative and summative usability testing?
4. What behaviors occur on dragging and dropping, on mouse over, etc?
5. How can I communicate the strengths of a feature or application?
6. How can I satisfy users’ primary needs and support the tasks that let them achieve their goals?
7. How can I draw on users’ intuition to get them to the next step?
8. How can I ensure users are aware they’re performing a subtask that’s part of a greater task they’ve started?
9. How can I use the UI components that are available to me—such as grids, tabs, and panels?
10. How can I maintain consistency throughout the application?
Monday, July 13, 2009
On Creating a Conceptual Model
Albert Einstein once said, "Make it simple, as simple as possible but no simpler." This is the goal of user experience. As easy as it sounds, it is not easy. I usually start by looking for visual representations of problems and solutions and draw only the essential items of the system and the relationship they have to other elements. The tasks themselves begin to reveal themselves, that is where the workflows begin and end.
The challenge is to get developers to view the solution from the users perspective, from the task rather than from how the software will function. Once I can do this, the question becomes, how do I present this functionality in a way that is obvious to the user, perhaps through a familiar analogy. This, by the way, is clearly the most difficult job of user interface design, creating the balance between the obvious user tasks and the system functionality. Analogies usually become the basis for the UI conceptual model.
A map is the artifact resulting from the conceptual model and is used for extracting information from the user's task domain as well as the implementation domain. It is useful in so many ways including a tool for tracking unnecessary features, inappropriate assumptions as well as unnecessary functionality. In interaction design, I transpose this model into a visual communication of wireframes as a communication tool. As a designer, I find the structure in information that is useful for an intended audience.
The challenge is to get developers to view the solution from the users perspective, from the task rather than from how the software will function. Once I can do this, the question becomes, how do I present this functionality in a way that is obvious to the user, perhaps through a familiar analogy. This, by the way, is clearly the most difficult job of user interface design, creating the balance between the obvious user tasks and the system functionality. Analogies usually become the basis for the UI conceptual model.
A map is the artifact resulting from the conceptual model and is used for extracting information from the user's task domain as well as the implementation domain. It is useful in so many ways including a tool for tracking unnecessary features, inappropriate assumptions as well as unnecessary functionality. In interaction design, I transpose this model into a visual communication of wireframes as a communication tool. As a designer, I find the structure in information that is useful for an intended audience.
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