Usability is like cooking: everybody needs the results, anybody can do it reasonably well with a bit of training, and yet it takes a master to produce a gourmet outcome.
I also have the opinion that everybody - if he/she is interested in the topic - can learn the basic skills to find usability problems in advance (by scribbling screens) or afterwards (by reviewing the application). So, read the article ... it's really great.
once again I want to share with you an interesting blog article by David Farkas about the agile and user-centered design process and how these can fit together?
... and the solution is "communication". And I agree 100%.
Farkas talks about the agile and the UCD process as two equivalent processes that influence the whole project. In my opinion the agile process effecting the whole team is the framework and I try to integrate and align the UCD process to it.
Farkas also shows in the blog article his view of the project lifespan and the transition from the UCD process to the agile process. As I already mentioned I think the UCD Phase 1 can be part of the first few sprints of the agile process - I don't know any project that starts in the first sprint with the whole UI and interaciton stuff :-). Of course at the beginning there is a lot of work for the usability engineer.
So that's my opinion, but what is yours - or have you any further interesting links you want to share?
I want let you know that tomorrow is the World Usability Day 2009 and there are a lot of interesting events all over the world. More information about the day in general and events you can find on the general website http://www.worldusabilityday.org/.
In Vienna and Zürich are also some events. In Vienna the german upa - regional group vienna and the Interaction design Stammtisch have organized different workshops and presentations for everyone (in cooperation with Digitalks), an UXcamp for usability professionals and they set up a competition to find the most annoying and frustrating tools - it is called Frustikus. The announcement of the winner will be tomorrow at 8PM in WerzeugH.
today I want to talk a little bit about a very interesting topic - the power of games and how fun can manipulate the behaviour. At the beginning I want show some real impressive videos created by VW for the project "The fun theory".
The idea of the site is that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. In this video they try to increase the number of people recycling glass. (Visit the website and you can find two other nice videos.)
As you can see in this video - if you have fun using a system you will use this more often and have a higher satisfaction using it.
Very extensively the game mechanics are used by social networks - for example on flickr, facebook, twitter, youtube, etc. It's possible to collect things (friends, followers, views), to customize you view/avatar and you can rate things or you can get an rating ("Your profile is 90% complete", etc.) And also for example on ebay as a powerseller you get points and know on which "level" you are.
The following is an interesting presentation from the Google Tech Talks by Amy Jo Kim from January 2009 about "Putting the Fun in Functional: Applying Game Mechanics to Functional Software" (1h).
Also a nice example is the Google Image Labeler. To label images is a boring work, but now Google tried to make it fun by creating a game out of it (example by John Ferrara - "Extending Game Design to Business Applications" (video) ).
So I think applying game mechanics to applications is really hard to do, but if you can experimenting and test you ideas with users at the end you get a better, more fun product.
today I want to share with you some nice tools for testing web applications where you can test the appearance and behavior in different browsers and also on different operating systems.
IE Test
We all know the problems with the different versions of the internet explorer and IE Test is a tool to check the application in the versions from 5.5 to 8.
Microsoft Web SuperView Also Microsoft provides a tool where the application can be tested with different IE-versions and the websites can be compared on one screen. You can download it here.
Browsershots
A very nice tool is browsershots.org. This websites gives you the opportunity to view your website in various different browsers on different operating system. As a result you get screenshots from the specific page in the different environments.
If you know any useful tool it would be nice if you leave a comment.
In general the book is nice and fast to read, the content is very basic and is a good introduction if you want to start in the field of User experience (for me a little bit to low-level). The book focuses a lot on the topics that are relevant for a UX consultant and cover topics like the project ecosystem, proposals for consultants and freelancers, project objectives and approach and Business Requirements.
More interesting chapters for me were about user research, personas, Transition: from defining to designing, Site Maps and Task Flows, Wireframes and Annotations and Prototyping.
Especially the chapter "Prototyping" was interesting because a few weeks ago I discussed with a colleague and he put the need of prototyping into question. Here are some of the key facts from the book...
"... Remember that prototyping is a process and not an artifact. [...] The outcome of the prototyping process is actionable feedback from concepts that can be used to enhance and improve the design."
And Todd Zaki Warfel, president of Messagefirst said the following regarding the goals of Prototyping:
"Prototypes are a way to achieve one or more of the following goals:
Work your way through a design
Create a common communication platform
Sell your design ideas internally (e.g., to your boss, other designers, etc.)
Test technical feasibility
Test design concepts with end users/customers"
So in my point of view there are a lot of good reasons for prototyping, because the best or most useable design can only be created in an evolutionary process with a lot of feedback from users, customers and stakeholders.
Br, Claudia
@ TechTalkers: If you are interested in the book I can borrow it to you.
today I want to share with you some of the links I found in the last weeks - some of them you probably know because I already posted them in twitter.
A program to simulate colorblindness for Windows, Mac and Linux (in the image below you see the TechTalk-Website with a deuteranopia colorblindness) -> Color Oracle
