Creating UIs

1. Creating UIs Planning

2. How to create a UI? Plan Test Design

3. How to create a UI? Step 3 Step 2 Step 1 Design Test Plan

4. How to create a UI? Step 3 Step 2 Step 1 Design Test Plan

5. Planning Outline • Analyze user and task • Consider functionality • Conform to the user’s view

6. Analyze User and Task

7. Analyze User and Task The number one principle in design Focus on the user and their tasks, not the technology.

8. Planning Outline • Analyze user and task • Understand User • Understand Task • Consider functionality • Conform to the user’s view

9. Understand the User Decide  Investigate  Collaborate

10. Understand the User: Decide Who are you developing the software for? • You can’t develop a solution for ‘everyone.’ • Choose a primary target as the intended user base and focus on them. • Sometimes customers are different than users.

11. Understand the User: Investigate Make an effort to learn about potential users • Talk to them • Observe them in their natural environment • Talk to their managers • Read about their business

12. Not just novice vs. experienced • Avoid classifying novice users as people who have never used a computer. • Avoid classifying expert users as professional computer engineers. • A better approach is using independent ‘knowledge dimensions.’

13. Knowledge Dimensions • General computer savvy – how much a users knows about computers in general • Task knowledge – how well does a user perform at the target task • Knowledge of the system – how well does the user know the specific/similar software product.

14. Understanding the User: Collaborate • Don’t treat users as objects to be studied. • Treat users as experts in their domain.

15. Understanding the User: Collaborate Take note of user’s: • experience • management structure • likes • dislikes • motivation

16. Bringing it all together Decide  Investigate  Collaborate The goal of these three steps is to create user profiles that describe the intended users of the software.

17. User Profiles User profiles - A collection of personal data associated to a specific user.

18. User Profiles Possible info found in a user profile: • Job description • Job seniority • Education • Salary • Computer skill level • Task/Product skill level

19. Sample User Profile • Name : John Doe • Age : 40 • Profession : Software Engineer • Job Description : Android UI Development and meetings to plan/track/improve project. • Computer Skill Level : High. Works with computers constantly, uses mobile phones and tablets. • Familiarity with task domain : Medium • Interaction with task domain :

20. User Model User model –the user’s mental understanding of what the program will do for them.

21. User Model • When someone uses a program, they don’t come with a completely blank slate. • Understanding the user’s knowledge dimensions help designers form a picture of the user’s model.

22. User Profiles • Helps designers know what they are aiming at. • Helpful for deciding what a user would and wouldn’t do. • Help ground judgments about design choices. • Basis for usability testing

23. Analyze User and Task In order to focus on the user and their tasks, one must understand the intended user by asking: • For whom is this software being designed? Who are the intended users? Who are the intended customers (not necessarily the users)? • What is the software for? What activity is it intended to support? What problems will it help users solve? What value will it provide? • What problems do the intended users have now? What do they like and dislike about the way they work now?

24. Analyze User and Task Questions continued: • What are the skills and knowledge of the intended users? Are they motivated to learn? How? Are there different classes of users, with different skills, knowledge, and motivation? • How do users conceptualize the data that the software will manage? • What are the intended users’ preferred ways of working? How will the software fit into those ways? How will it change them?

25. Planning Outline • Analyze user and task • Understand User • Understand Task • Consider functionality • Conform to the user’s view

26. Understand the Task Decide  Investigate  Collaborate

27. Understand the Task: Decide • Applications are designed to fill a need • Decide on an application area: • Music • Video • Social Networking

28. Understanding the Task: Decide Your application area and target user help yield a specific product category such as, • A document editing software for technical writers • Banking software for bank tellers.

29. Understand the Task: Investigate • Learn from the user • Perform a task analysis

30. Task Analysis Learn as much as you can about exactly how the intended users do the tasks that the software is supposed to support.

31. How to perform a task analysis • Observe users • Interview users • Understand how people perform their task • Ask users to speculate how they would use your application

32. Observing vs. Interviewing • Observation requires interpretation. Sometimes your interpretation can be wrong. • Interviews provide direct explanations, goals, etc. However, sometimes interviews provide misinformation.

33. Task Analysis The goal of task analysis is to develop a thorough understanding of the activities the software will support.

34. Example Task Analysis Questions • What is your role in (insert task here)? • What software do you use to (insert task here)? • What is involved in (insert task here)?

35. A good task analysis can answer the following • What goals do users want to achieve by using the application? • What set of human tasks is the application intended to support? • Which tasks are common, and which ones are rare? • Which tasks are most important, and which ones are least important? • What are the steps of each task? • What are the result and output of each task? • Where does the information for each task come from?

36. A good task analysis can answer the following • How is the information that results from each task used? • Which people do which tasks? • What tools are used to do each task? • What problems do people have performing each task? • What sorts of mistakes are common? What causes them? How damaging are mistakes? • What terminology do people who do these tasks use? • What communication with other people is required to do the tasks? • How are different tasks related? Taken from Designing with Mind in Mind, Chapter 11 Many Factors Affect Learning, Section Task Analysis

37. A good task analysis can answer the following • The previous 15 questions are great generic questions to help steer task analysis in the right direction. • However, they aren’t enough by themselves. You need to dig in and find tasks that are specific to the application domain.

38. Example Task Analysis for how people prepare a slide show • What is your role in producing slide presentations? • Do you produce slides yourself or do you supervise others who do it? • How much of your total job involves producing slide presentations? • For whom do you produce these slide presentations? • What quality level is required for the slides? • Do you (your department) follow slide formatting standards?

39. Example Task Analysis for how people prepare a slide show • What software do you use to create slide presentations? • Who decides what software you use for this? • Do you use one program or a collection of them? • Do you use general-purpose drawing software or slide-making software? • What do you like and dislike about each of the programs you use? • What other software have you used, tried, or considered for making slides, either here or in previous jobs?

40. Example Task Analysis for how people prepare a slide show • What is involved in making slides? • Describe the complete process of producing a presentation. • Do you reuse old slides in new presentations? • How do you (your department) organize and keep track of slides and presentations?

41. Understanding the Task: Investigate • Think about the application context • Where will it be used? • Where does input come from? • Where does output come from? • Don’t get tunnel vision and think only of the user’s computer screen

42. Understand the Task: Collaborate • Generate two-way feedback with users • Present preliminary analysis and conclusions to your users and solicit reactions. • Encourages better working relations with users and might help gain more reliable data

43. Bringing it all together • Understanding the tasks requires the same activities as understanding the user. • Both investigations can be conducted at the same time

44. Consider Functionality

45. Planning Outline • Analyze user and task • Consider functionality • Find functionality • Develop a conceptual model • Perform an Objects and Actions Analysis • Define Lexicon • Conform to the user’s view

46. User Interface No No • GUI developers often put presentation before functionality. DON’T DO IT! • With that said, don’t put off the UI until the very end.

47. Find Functionality • Designers should fully define the concepts and their relationships before they design how to present concepts to the user.

48. Finding Functionality • Focus on task-related questions • Questions asked during Task Investigation

49. Finding Functionality: Concept Visibility • What concepts are visible to the user? • Are the concepts recognized from the user’s task domain? • Can new concepts be presented as familiar concepts?

50. Finding Functionality: Data • What data will the user create, view, or manipulate? • What information will users extract from the data? • Where will the data come from? • Where will the generated data be used?