Excise example: Papers2

One of the ways to avoid excise is to allow information entry where information is displayed. Asking the user to click a button to enter EDITING mode is excise – it makes the user work to fit the computer’s work processes.

Below is an example from citation management software Papers2 (which I love, overall), but I cannot tell you how many times I have clicked in the right bar where I can see the article’s information to try to edit the title, authors, or enter missing information (e.g. journal number, page numbers). To be able to edit that information, I HAVE to click the Edit button on the bottom right – because that’s how the software works, not because that’s how I (the user) think.

Review for final exam

The final exam will cover concepts discussed since the midterm, but also the user-centered design process in its entirety.

Click the Lecture Summary tag or category name on the right to see all of Dr. V’s slides and notes from each class session.

In addition to the blog notes, you are expected to master content from your notes during class discussion and, of course, the readings.

The topics the exam will adress are:

• Usability principles for homepage and navigation design – what are the main questions the homepage and navigation should always answer? How are these implemented?
  
• Menus & controls – what are the major types of menus and controls? For example, is a checkbox a selection, imperative, entry, or display control?
• Writing for the Web – what are some guidelines for writing for the web? What is the inverted pyramid style? Why don’t users read online?
• Nielsen’s 10 heuristics – if I give you an example, and a list of possible heuristics it violates, can you identify the correct one?
• Usability evaluation – usability inspection, focus groups, cognitive walkthroughs, usability testing. What are these, how are they done, what are the steps?
• Cross-platform & mobile – what are some major issues to consider when: designing across platforms; designing for mobile? What is responsive design and how does it work?
• The overall user-centered design process.

Please feel free to collaborate on questions & answers related to the final exam in the comments below.

Telling your portfolio’s story

Here is a very simple example of how you could lay out the steps you took to develop your final project.

The screen shot below is from the same website. This is a more creative way of showing the process, but it does not have enough information. However, if each image on the side were clickable and would provide more info about that step, that would work well.

I am sure you have already found other examples that can serve as inspiration – use your creativity here to communicate the content you need to in a way that works for the medium (Web).

Show & Tell: OK

 

I like to critique interfaces by referring to the usability principles they apply well or violate, but this case is so absurd, I’m SPEECHLESS.

(No, this is not a joke, though I am tempted to tag it “humor.”)

P.S.

Somebody got PAID to do this?!?!

Affordances explained

In this brief video (under 2 min.) Donald Norman, who brought the concept of “affordances” into HCI, explains it:

Please let me know in the comments if this helps your understanding of this concept. Also let me know what other questions you have about it.

Lecture summary: Mobile usability

Today we discussed the debate between Nielsen and Clark briefly summarized as:

Nielsen: mobile should be separate from desktop and offer a customized experience with fewer options than desktop

Clark: mobile should have same functionality as desktop. The experiences should be uniform but optimized for the respective device.

The issue of optimization brings up Responsive Web Design. Please take a look at the full slide deck below (I only showed a few slides in class) and DO check out the resources mentioned at the end.

Take-aways from today’s discussion:

• What are the main points of view and arguments on mobile vs. desktop UX
• What is responsive web design and what are the basics of how it works (media queries and fluid grids, images, and fonts).
• What are the implications of responsive web design for UX and IxD: more work, more knowledge needed about the modes of interaction on different platforms.

Lecture summary: User-centered design process at a glance

We also looked at the entire process and discussed that:

• You do not always do all the steps. The more complex the project, the more of these steps and tools you need.
• It can take 2 weeks or 5 years.

We will come back and answer some more questions about pieces of it in future classes.

Please see also this infographic about the various roles of the UX designer: researcher, organizer, consultant, designer, technologist, negotiator (HT @BLHedrick).

I am learning so much from you on Twitter – I hope you’d be there to learn from each other! But you can also learn from each other here on the blog, by asking and answering each other’s questions related to parts of this model. Please do so in the comments!