SM 3511 Interface Design

Institutionalizing interface design

Eric Schaffer, 2013. Institutionalization of UX: A Step-by-Step Guide to a User Experience Practice (2nd Edition)

A champion (usually reports directly to the CEO)

Most important first step in institutionalizing usability

Best predictor of whether a company will successfully deploy usable designs

Without a champion, usability issues will also play a minor role after marketing, software bugs, etc.

The right kind of champion

Knowledge of interface design is not so important

Knowledge of organizational politics, business imperatives, and able to converse with different functional groups to promote usability

Able to muster funding to support usability efforts

An agent of change

Product develop process

Waterfall

Product design methods

Waterfall

Once a design stage is signed off (e.g., coding has started), there is no turning back

If the working prototype creates a new usability problem, there is few ways to rectify this issue

This puts a lot of pressure on the interface designer to get it right the first time

An impossible task

Product develop process

Waterfall → Iterative design

Product design methods

Iterative design

Designers and software developers work closely together

Instead of developing 100% of the design at an early stage, interface designers can work on a series of prototypes

Prototypes are progressively more detailed

Major issues are resolved earlier in the design cycle

More attention to details later

Interface designers are better integrated into the corporate processes

But what issues to resolve first

This can be determined through functional decomposition of the abstraction hierarchy of a workplace

An abstraction hierarchy

This hierarchy can be used to analyze most corporate workplace (e.g., factory flow, retail processes, etc)

Why questionsHow questions

An example of an abstraction hierarchy

WhyHow

Anatomy of an abstraction hierarchy

Abstraction hierarchy of an interface

Abstraction hierarchy of an interface

Objectives/functions of the software

Information needs to accomplish the above

Workflow (screen to screen)

Stylistic elements (e.g, buttons, icons, etc)

Codes

Scenario-based design approach

Scenario-based design approach

Objectives/functions of the software

Information needs to accomplish the above

Workflow (screen to screen)

Stylistic elements (e.g, buttons, icons, etc)

Prototyping tools

Wireframes, e.g., Balsamiq

Prototyping tools

Functional, e.g., Visual Studio, HTML / CSS

Prototyping tools

GUI, e.g., Pencil—open source prototyping tool

The ever shortening software lifecyle

From iterative design, some design teams begin to develop even shorter, more frequent design cycles (e.g., “Scrum,” AGILE, etc.)

Software improvement features are divided into chunks

Each chunk represents a series of small and incremental build (improvement)

Each build is achievable within a 2-4 weeks period of intensive work

A design team (e.g., interface designer, user researcher, users, software developers, marketers) is assigned to work on this build

Team members are often co-located

Uninterrupted from daily routines

Since work is face-to-face, few documentation is needed

LEAN startup took this idea further

LEAN startup

Dispense with formal lab-based user testings

Release any features you like to test to a limited set of users

For example, you could release “design 1” to a group of 500 users, and “design 2” to another group of 500 users

After two weeks of release, conduct survey/interviews to gather feedback

Collect quantitative measures (e.g., download rate, user demographics, etc)

Rinse, repeat

This works for startups because the need for communicating is much reduced due to small company size

For large companies, communicating with management and across functions remain important

Commonly used measures with communicating with the management (and other departments)

Communicating with the management (and other departments)

There are many management tools for communicating usability issues

“Severity” ratings

Impact (on the user experience) (1 to 3)

Frequency (of occurrence) (~)

Relevance (to business objectives) (~)

Rate these three criteria against each and every usability issue

Rank each usability issue by their “severity” to indicate priority

Similar to FMEA

Communicating with the design team (those with minimal interface design training)

Contextual Design is one suite of design methods that provide a range of models

A popular form of ethnographically-informed method

Observation Develops affinity diagram

Common deliverables in Contextual Design (from interaction-design.org)

The flow model captures communication and coordination between people to accomplish work

The cultural model captures culture and policy that constrain how work is done

The sequence model shows the detailed steps performed to accomplish each task important to the work

The physical model shows the physical environment

The artifact model shows the artifacts that are created and used

Sequence model

(workflow)

Flow model

Flow model

Cultural model

Artifact model

Artifact model

Physical model

Physical model

Physical model

Communicating your design objectives to a large audience

Persona

Simplified descriptions of “typical” users

Why persona?

It is very hard to get research findings across the company

Employees have very short attention span

Persona makes it easier to comprehend your design purposes, especially when they are not intuitive

To create reliable and realistic representations of your key audience segments for reference

Personas are extremely simplified and easy to create (and thus may also delude your co-workers)

Personas should be based on comprehensive user research

Purposes of a persona

Represent a major user group for your website

Express and focus on the major needs and expectations of the most important user groups

Give a clear picture of the user's expectations and how they're likely to use the site

Aid in uncovering universal features and functionality

Describe real people with backgrounds, goals, and values

A persona as a boundary object (a shared and neutral artifact) –hinted at but does not convey design features

Stakeholders and leaders evaluate new site feature ideas

Information architects develop informed wireframes, interface behaviors, and labeling

Designers create the overall look and feel of the website

System engineers/developers decide which approaches to take based on user behaviors

Copy writers ensure site content is written to the appropriate audiences

Process of developing personas

Know your audience

Where are they likely to see these personas? In what format?

Procedure

Conduct user research –who are your users? What are the key activities? What are their practices? Why do they do things their way?

Identify common/recurring themes

Identify the key activities and user groups that your product will serve. What are the personas that exist within these groups? Narrow down to 3-5 personas

Write down short descriptions of each persona. Refine them until they are concise and realistic. Present them in the most effective way.

http://www.usability.gov/