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Clean Banners from Istock, originally uploaded by djteknokid.

Nice usage of gradients and rounded corner...

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High Impact UX

I am going to be talking about "Building High Impact User Experience" in couple hours at Interactive Austin 2008.
I am going to use this blog to jot down some of the key concepts I need to talk about.

What is User Experience?

State of user's mind during the interaction with an artifact:

User experience is not the question of how you are doing it. It is a question of how you feel while you are doing it. It is not question of how fast you got there, or how many click did it take to you get there,but it is a question of the way you feel while you are getting there.
Essentials to create high impact user experience:

• Being an user advocate.

• 1. Observe Users
• 2. Ask Users
• ------------------------------
• 3. Be a User
• ------------------------------
• 4. Be a Designer

How has the explosion of social media affected UX practices?

I am going to use traffic signs as a metaphor.
In Web 1.0 era it was a One Way Highway, where users only has one way to go. You just click on links and menu to search for the information provided by one source.
Us designers, only had to worry about building signs like stop, speed limit, road condition...We didnt need many signs to direct this traffic.

Now in Web2.0 era.. I could compare this place with an airport. Comes in and out to everywhere. Not only you receive information from multiple sources in one spot, you have ability to share these information with anyone or any group.
Us designers have to worry about building signs such as departure, arrival, flight information, gate number, restroom.. etc. etc.

What I am trying to get here is that users have to get themselves familiar with new user interface element such as ( RSS feed, social media icons) and new technology terms (twitter, flickr, ajax). Creating enjoyable experience in web 1.0 was hard, and i think it will be even harder to create unified enjoyrabled user experience in web 2.0. UX practice must change by observing and testing more users, and I think now days more company put more effort into the users. Share

Simplicity.. Going Back Back Back

How many times do we get overwhelmed by a new application that has hundreds of options on the dash board? Photoshop, AI, and even MS Offices look pretty hard to use for the first timer.
I feel as a user that my interest in usability and learnability have taken a huge toll because of the functionalities. We all know that notepad is easier than MS Word and MS Pain is easier than the Photoshop. How do we stay simple and have simplicity in our mind while developing architecture or designs? This article from UXmatters highlights some of the key elements we need to focus to apply simplicity in your project.

http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000284.php Share

Power to the People

So I have been creating a custom golf club tool for the project I have been involved in. I have to say this is a pretty complicated web application because there are so many variables to consider.

Granted, customizing one club shouldn't be that hard using a multiple page or using filed set & legend chunking tactics.
But what if the user wants to customize multiple clubs at once? For this B2B site I am involved in, one of the user story was to satisfy a customer who wants to order multiple clubs in one page.

Without further introduction, I will jump to the conclusion first.
Here is the re-design of the custom tool I have mocked up. This design originated from 6 usability tests and couple paper prototyping tests. I have not run a final usability testing with this module, but I am pretty confident that this interface could satisfy the user story.

So the BA group comes back to me and asks

• Why does the Duplicate Button reside outside of the table?


• People read from left to right. We need to move the Duplicate Button to the right so people can complete their task then 'duplicate' the configuration. Doesn't it sound more intuitive?

Not a bad reason to start up a quick discussion.


I believe that Duplicate Button will be more effective residing outside of the table on the left because

1. Duplicate Button is not a part of the club configuration. The button impacts the line item ( layout of the page ) not the content of the club.


2. It is on the left side to give more power to the people. Yes, people read left to right, and probably it is a right assumption that people will configure the club from left to right as well. But I wanted people to know that there is a Duplicate functionality even before they start customizing. This concept will grant the user with more power. Now they can Duplicate the configuration at any time of the process. They don't have to question themselves what they need to do to customize multiple clubs at once. As I am typing this blog on my word processor to copy and paste it onto the blog page, I have noticed that I am using the word processor because I know for the fact there is a Copy & Paste functionality. If I did not know this fact before I started typing on the word processor, I would have never used this method. By telling users what they can do in the beginning of the process, I believe, the user now have more control with this system.

Obviously, this module still needs more work. But I thought it was just interesting to observe that position of one button could change the way people perceive the whole picture.

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