By uidesigner on March 20th, 2009 This topic has been blowing up all over the design world online. For the full blog post from Bowman Lead Visual Designer at Google visit his blog.
The quick summary is this. He left because of design V.S. engineering issues. The article goes on to talk about the almost obsessive need to validate and back up every design decision with statistical data. While it is true that design does have a logical component a lot of how we precieve design varies from person to person. That is why it is necessary to hire a person with experience and knowledge of fundamental design principles.
By uidesigner on February 12th, 2009 The other day I came across an interesting article “Stop Developing for Internet Explorer 6” . My initial thought was great I finally can stop developing for IE 6. Of course, that was just a pipedream. On many of my applications I still have a large captive IE 6 audience. Unfortunately, I can’t quite yet yank the rug out from them and force upgrades.
IE 6 gives me headaches beyond belief. Instead of developing standardized code. I sometimes have to bastardize the syntax. Even when using my own modified reset.css style sheet inspired by Eric Meyer there are still issues that pop up that cause additional work.
IE 6 is a demon that still won’t go away. Sadly, I still have to make my time sacrifice to the demon. I can only hope that Google Chrome will solve IE 6 issues sooner so we as experience, web application, and web designers don’t have to suffer through the tortue and pain of a relatively new browser on the scene.
By uidesigner on February 10th, 2009 You didn’t think I was going to reveal it so quickly did you? Of course not, I like everyone to learn a little bit before they get the answer. There is nothing wrong with being forced to think a bit.
Let me back up a little and begin there. The other day I was driving home from work and recently started on a new UI project. I was going through my normal routines when presented with a project. I start to ruminate over all the things I can do and how all the various functions of this new application would tie together. As I pondered this in between paying attention to traffic and driving, one core question popped into my head. A light bulb snapped and thus this article was born. I realized just how many designers, and developers, forget to ask one magic question.
Maybe they are strapped for time, burned out, or whatever the reason might be. You need to ask yourself this question!
By uidesigner on July 4th, 2008 If I had a million dollars for every time a client asked me to add more features, or more appropriately stuff and jam more features into an already bulging application, I would have published a book, bought a mansion, and maybe a small island somewhere in the South Pacific.
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?
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