In the early phase of design, when softwares engineers are defining the roles and the product manager the business requirements, we, the designers, should be doing personas.

What personas are:

• Personas will help you and the product team put a human face on the end-user;
• They will help the team focus on the goals and the tasks users have to perform;
• They will bring stakes holders to see from a different angle, not only theirs.

What personas are not:

• Personas are not necessarily the average user. They are possible users;
• They are not roles. A persona can have multiple roles.

Now how many personas should there be you might be asking. The answer is has few as possible but enough to highlight all tasks.

What a persona actually looks like? Here’s one for you…

Jean-François
UI Designer

He likes reading about architecture and going to theater times to times.

Every once in while he writes a blog post from the things he learned, either in book, on the web or from work.

He is not a WordPress power user but he appreciates the fact that it is easy to use and mostly that it is free.

Taking a walk usually works great…

For those of you who are in the urge of finding an existing UI design to copy (and it is okay to do so…), I would recommend to go back to Google.

But if, nevertheless, you are looking for long term inspiration I would suggest these 2 websites :

1. TED talk
2. The 99 percent – It’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen.

Please feel free to share your “true inspirational feeds” via comments.

Now, here is something that maybe is new to you. Would you know who could be considered the father of UI Design?

If you answered Mitchell Kapor, you would be right. He is one of the brain behind Lotus 1-2-3, a spreadsheet software created in the mid 80′s.

Being a programmer, Kapor noticed that too often the end user was forgotten and he felt a new discipline needed to be created : software design.

To support his thoughts he wrote a manifesto. By reading the manifesto you will learn where UI design comes from, putting the discipline of software design into context.

Therefore, it is a good way to know where we, as a community enhancing the experience of the end user, are heading.

All this is part of our job as UI designers.

Here are some links that will help you do just that.

Flickr guspim’s design collection: amazing stream of design solutions:

The FWA – Favourite Website Awards – great source of inspiration:

The name says it all…

Design Snips: I simply love it:

Definition :

“An emerging discipline and community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.”

From Information Architecture, O’Reilly,Louis Rosenfeld & Peter Morville

IA Matters :

1. Users

The ones who will use the sofware, the end-user.

2. Information itself

Well, nothing more to add here.

3. The business (or organization)

Understandind the business goals and the mission.

“… Technology isn’t just another cool toy that you spend money on just to say that you have it. It’s there to serve the needs of the business, and the minute you forget that, the business suffers.”

Thomas Myer

How ?

In site observation, survey, focus group…

Conclusion

From my point of view, IA is a philosical exercise about how to organize information for the end-users.

For a more detailed definition of IA you can read this IBM paper which is also my source and inspiration (you will find the link below).

Finally, I found a useful IA checklist made by the Australian Government (!). Here is the pdf.

–

Source/inspiration: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ar-infoarch/

Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_architecture

Nice blog: http://informationarchitects.jp/

For IBM Design, ease of use is an attribute they want their products to have, and UCD is the method they use and advocate for getting ease of use into products.

User-Centered Design offers businesses a number of critical advantages :

• It enables them to develop easy-to-use products
• Satisfy customers
• Decrease expenditures on technical support and training
• Advertise ease-of-use successes
• Ultimately increase market share

Organizations that do not practice user-centered design methods usually show the following signs:

• Dissatisfied customers
• Unproductive users
• Exorbitant training and support costs
• Decreasing or stagnant market share
• Overblown development schedules and costs

source/inspiration : https://www-01.ibm.com/software/ucd/ucd.html

more : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

Agile is a rapid software development methodology.

I would summarized it this way :
Determining smalls tasks or goals to be reached in a short amount of time, each goals representing one step toward the final release version.

Then, what about usability in an Agile environment ?

It might sometimes be difficult to work on usability in an everchanging environment.

Here are some tips to keep in mind :

• Do early work: site visits, background research, competitor studies
• Run usability studies on pre-alpha code
• Build a parallel user interface for testing
• Use an effecient technique to communicate usability matters

And the most important one :
Keep the focus on the big picture across multiple releases.

source/inspiration : http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/agile.html

Here are some tips of my own to make sure everything stays on track :

1. Before starting, clearly identify all the goals for a UI;
2. Do not use usability testing to set the goals but only to make sure the initials goals are reached;
3. Only a few people should draw conclusions from test results and find solutions for a problem if there is any;
4. Even if it’s not always easy, test should be conducted with real end users.

Please share your experience whit everyone by commenting.

Can’t wait to hear from you !

source/inspiration : http://www.alistapart.com/articles/the-myth-of-usability-testing/

Here it is roughly summarized : define a small task, write it down and do it in 25 minutes.

Here’s a great Air app called Focus Booster to help you out with the timing.

Go find out about it… In less than 25 minutes ;)

We hear alot of user testing but only few use it to improve their design.

Here are some points to help you getting started and, I wish, will make you include user testing in your next project.

• Develop a test plan
• Choose a testing environment
• Find and select participants
• Prepare test materials
• Conduct the sessions
• Debrief with participants and observers
• Analyze data and observations
• Create findings and recommendations

Inspiration/ Sources : http://www.alistapart.com/articles/usability-testing-demystified/