By uidesigner on March 30th, 2007 The title pretty much says it all. After working for a while now in an agile development model. I’ve discovered several disturbing things that really cause a loss of sanity. The agile development cycle is quite fast. Depending on your team it has different lengths. Most iterations seem to be 1 week long. During that week developers develop working software. Notice I said working software and not “USABLE.”
The primary prescribers to the agile method believe that the UI should pretty much just be slapped on at the end. I paraphrase but something to the likes of “Leave The UI out until the last possible moment.” I find this to be extremely scary. Especially when the thought process behind the agile development methodology is to think of the end user. So to put this all into perspective. We have one side of this method that says leave out the UI until the end but keep the user in mind when creating the story (feature). I know when I first heard this I was a bit shocked by the contradictory nature. So like any process I attempted to make it my own and mold the process to my own needs.
more to come…
By uidesigner on March 28th, 2007 So as I was laying here sick in bed and thinking about design stuff. That’s the great thing or a curse about having a design based job. Even while you are sick you can’t always turn off your brain. So unless asleep or staring at the tv you are always thinking.
So the concept I was pondering this evening was design patterns and innovating existing user interface design patterns and widgets. I think web designers and user experience designers tend to fall into a pattern. “My ways are the best why change?” I know this has been the case with myself. I find it easy to fall into my design mantra. Constantly justifying the re-usable controls, grids, design parts and pieces as all of a “consistent” design. That is the trap! Limited time to come up with a new design before moving onto a new project just makes that trap even more self-fulfilling. Now that the trap has been identified how can we escape it?
By uidesigner on March 24th, 2007 Imagine with me a minute that you have just identified in your Book Keeper 2.0 web application that too much information and functionality is jammed into the “add new book” page. The business analysts insist that everything needs to be available to the user. They “need” to have the ability to do numerous things on 1 particular web page.
Book Keeper 2.0 – Keeping Books Since 2006
Feature List That Needs To Exist On New Book Add Page:
User Needs:
- to add a new book in rapid succession
- to delete a just added book
- to Edit The New Book Entry
- to create new book categories
- to add reviews to the new book
- to maintain a registry of who has original book copy
- to search for books
- to manage categories
- to manage users
Now it’s quite obvious that some functionality may be used 1% of the time. And thus begins the battle between UI designer and business analyst or the client. The number one problem I have faced personally is unnecessary features in non-logical places. A virtual Swiss army knife. They client or BA may want a Swiss army knife, but what does that really mean. Well, if you have used a Swiss army knife you have to remember where all the tools are, and pull up the right tool in the right sequence, while making sure that other tools don’t get into your way. Basically, you have to find what you need by memory, or worse luck. Think how easy would be if you needed a knife and you had a pocket knife in your pocket and that’s all you had.
The same is true with our development process. Why should we put 20 features into one application process, path, when they may never be used by the common user. Couldn’t that time be spent on other application development cycles. Things like speed improvements, or gasp improving and revising your existing UI.
The hard sell in corporations and even to a client wanting you to build an application is the concept and mentality that “more is better.” Our application can do 50 things! What we fail to illustrate or tell is: it’s confusing as all hell to use, only 1% of our user base are advanced users and they might use more than 10 features in every given application usage sitting.
What can be done to convince these non-designers, non interaction developers, that more is not better? That tossing the usability out the window, or just tacking it on at the end is really not good enough? There are a few ways to do this and one way is to just let it all hang out and see what happens. Let the application go live and then learn from the failure. In a corporate environment you don’t have that luxury unless you hate the people you work with and you may.
Excluding the option above you need to find a way to convince these other groups that usability and the design of the application is more important then adding 50 extra features that 1% of users may use. So how do you do that?
Tune in later as I examine more on this topic.
By uidesigner on March 24th, 2007 One topic that constantly is under debate in the corporate design world is: “Who makes the final decision.” Does the designer, business analyst, information architect, developer etc? Personally, this has been a major area of contention. When it comes to design and the user interface everyone wants to proclaim they are Caesar. Can you blame them? Everyone wants to have a say in what an application looks like?
By uidesigner on March 20th, 2007 As 100% of the web tends to be, this is a work in progress. This site is structured towards the corporate & in-house designer. The current plan is to outline web application projects and provide tips, examples, design patterns, and best practices for the delivery of “CTHINKER Fake APP”. More about this later on as I define the process.
The goal is not to go into details about the programmatic elements and database structuring of a web applications creation (although these things may be included). Instead, myself and our guest writers will be focusing on the process that brings a web application design from the vision to the final core product. Along the way each example may have fake image samples, ideas, story requirements all building up to the culimination of the project.
So why do all this you may be asking yourself. Well to be quite frank nothing like this really exists on the web or in the blogsphere.  I have also found that putting my own thoughts and ideas out there for you the user to dissect, criticize, and generally tear-apart will help me in my own efforts to become the best Analyst, Implementor & User Experience Designer I can be. My hope is that you too will gain and benefit from my mistakes or the mistake of others. Not to mention, I’ve been doing this web design thing for over 10 years now I hope I’ve learned something by now.
Please don’t mind the slowness in posts as I am still really defining how this site will present the material in question. And to those corporate designers & developers out there that happen to come to this site. I feel your pain! We the corporate designers exist in a cosmic vaccum filled with business users, analysts, project managers, writes, re-writes, designs, and redesigns. It’s easy to let your designs and mind stagnate while tied and bound within a rigid corporate development team. Of course, it’s important that corporate designers maintain a consistent brand identity and user experience across all applications.
So if you are corporate designer. I invite you to sign up and let healing the begin. For we are Corporate Thinkers!
By uidesigner on March 17th, 2007 Welcome To Corporate Thinkers. This web site is dedicated to the corporate designer & application developer. The inspiration for this web site was derived from my visit to SXSW. While there I spoke with many corporate designers and developers. I shared many ideas and gained many inspirations from my fellow corporate designers & developers.
This site is structured to both give advice on topics such as: corporate roadblocks, corporate development cycles, consistent application design, and many more topics to come.Â
In addition I hope to provide concrete examples on user interface design as it pertains to web-based applications and consistent design patterns.  Â
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