User Centered Applications

Summary

Lots of guessing takes place during application and Web site development. Guessing leads to conflict when two team members’ opinions differ. Learn the principles behind good application interface design and your office will be a calmer, happier place to work.

  • Find out how our prehistoric brains still determine many design parameters
  • Understand the basis for many design “rules” so that you know when to break them
  • Learn the basic workflow concepts which you will use in all design decisions

Details

Development teams typically want to design great interfaces, they just don’t have the knowledge of how to proceed. Great doesn’t mean flashy, it means suitable for the users and tasks that each application is created to assist.

This class brings all members of the development team together to learn basic user experience principles as a group.

Examples drawn from your own products keep everyone focused on learning and improving. We either browse your site, work with your application, or ask you for example interface screenshots to include in the presentation. If this is impossible we have great examples from everyday life that we can share with you.

Topic highlights include

  • Designing for specific users
    • “My mom” is not your user – how understanding user attributes makes software better
    • Thumbnail persona creation for use in examples through the day
    • Persona/feature decision matrix – the argument ending tool
  • Workflow Concepts
    • Smart Defaults
    • Progressive Disclosure
    • Control versus being led
    • Inductive UI
    • Bringing assistance into the UI
    • Designing for novices and experts in one UI
  • Cognitive Concepts
    • Consistency – users are creatures of habit
    • Forgetfulness – users can’t remember or do sums
    • Distractions – how not to create them
    • Gestalt principles – how a bunch of German psychologists described application design basics over a century ago
    • Story telling – how narrative flow helps users learn new things
    • Reading – how much goes in?
    • New situation, old rules – why standards matter
    • Consistency and feedback – how superstition happens
  • Physical Concepts
    • Real world to computer mappings
    • Fitt’s Law
    • Use of color – emphasis, meaning and colorblindness
    • Layout considerations for user comprehension
  • Designing for Delight
    • Understanding emotions on three levels
    • Cutting things out from the UI
    • Designing with delight in mind

This day is taught classroom style but benefits from good group participation. If you have specific design issues that you are struggling with right now, we can use them as examples during the day with the intention of getting closer to design resolution by the end of the session.

Deliverables

Customized session handouts are provided in advance in PDF format for you to print and distribute to attendees on the training day.

We give the organizer a “next steps” document with tips to ensure that momentum generated during the class is harnessed and used for maximum benefit.

Licensing terms are available if you would like to use this content for subsequent in-house training sessions.

Price: US$ 9,000  – see our Pricing page for more information
Duration: 1 day
Prerequisites: None. Audience is everyone on the development team.

Next steps

To find out more and to discuss how this class can benefit your group, talk to us by e-mail: info@ [this site’s domain]