Meetings |
Contact Us |
Home > Meetings |
Meetings |
Ambassador of User Experience Stresses Joy September 16, 2006 Increasingly, we are documenting software that runs in a browser—web applications. The context is the whole Web, and the conventions are those of the browser … and apparatus such as database forms, wizards, widgets, chats, and wikis. How can we organize the content, the interface, the graphic look for our site, so that visitors get an exhilarating experience? User Experience design combines many forms of user analysis (summarized in personas), information architecture (what content goes where, with what priorities?), marketing (what's the point of the brand?), usability (does it work?), and emotion. But wait: What was that? Are we letting passion creep in? Yes, say two representatives from ClearWired, a local web firm—Chris Rivard and Kevin Silver. In fact, emotion may be the link we need when we present all this analysis to a graphic designer, and a programmer, to pull together. We need to focus on the emotional experience of the site, from moment to moment, so users feel joy. What? We used to think of tech writing as neutral, objective, unemotional, and definitely without humor. But which sites make people so happy that they tell others, via instant messages, chats, discussion boards, and what not? Apple, Amazon, eBay, Intuit, Google—they are all fun to use. Vastly different in personality, they are united in their close attention to the actual experiences of their users. And in this day of agile development, rapid prototyping, and user-centered design, we often have to revise our site's interface and content every few weeks. No more waterfalls: those old cycles of development, where analysis preceded design, and design preceded implementation, and the whole development process took two years, minimum. Instead, we start each redesign by a return to the customers. Who are the people who use our site? What are their roles? What contexts do they come from? What do they need? Based on this investigation, we come up with personas, fictional representations of major groups of users, who have their own goals, and priorities. These personas act as representatives for users, guiding our decisions about functions, features, content, look and feel. Untying the Wireframe In the old days (a few years ago), information architects tended to create skeletal designs of pages called wireframes—on the analogy with the delicate structures used by 3D designers before they wrap these complex structures with skins. But Rivard and Silver point out that sometimes a customer sees the wireframe, and thinks, "There, that is the design!" The problem: The designer gets locked into a fairly crude model, constrained to a clear, but visually uninteresting design. Ditto, the programmer. To free up the creativity of the other members of the team during rapid prototyping and user-centered design, Rivard and Silver advocate "deconstructed wireframes," which describe the functionality and content for each page, indicating priorities, without sketching the whole page, as in a traditional wireframe. Dan Brown describes the idea in Boxes and Arrows. Chris Rivard and Kevin Silver put the user at the center of analysis and design. Their presentation evoked excitement and enthusiasm from our members—and interest in attending the brown bag lunches that they occasionally present at their offices. Want to find out more about their approach? See http://www.clearwired.com/ —Jonathan Price |
For More Info Check out the Clearwired web site and the presentation of Chris Rivard. |
Home | Meetings | News | Jobs | Join |
Competitions | Students | Resources | New Mexico Kachina Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication |