[IxDA Discuss] Interactive Excel prototyping
I created a paper prototype that was fun testing on local users but when it got to testing remote users I thought perhaps I'd try to create an online prototype. I started with PowerPoint but found the macros deficient and a couple of things I wanted to do I couldn't. I then ordered Effective Prototyping with Excel by Bergen et al, expecting that their prototypes would involve some basic coding but found they didn't. A programming colleague showed me a couple of very basic code statements in Excel and I realised that with the Control Toolbox widgets, .Visible = True and .Visible = False statements, a couple of If statements, a little googling and a little recording of macros to figure out some code, I could create a pretty workable prototype, albeit only able to handle very specific use cases. I would appreciate responses on: * the value of this type of prototype * whether it is possible to have more control over formatting of the Control Toolbox widgets, or, alternatively substitute the Forms toolbar widgets which are more formattable * other "bits of code" that non-coders can add to the repertoire * ways of making the prototype more like a real prototype, that is, not totally use case dependent, without going into real coding territory * any other suggestions http://excelprototyping.weebly.com Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Knowledge and Skill Requirements of the Industry
I conduct research viability analyses on potential program ideas for a College. I would like to take this opportunity to engage the IXDA members in a dicussion regarding the types of knowledge and skill requirements that you feel a post secondary education program should have if it were to produce graduates that could fill interaction design jobs. I understand this question is rather broad in its scope but based on the evidence I have seen to date, it would seem that the program should be a degree credential for people wanting to work as the liaison between the graphic designers and the programmers. This is based on my rather limited understanding of the field to date. Can someone perhaps identify some of the key trends in the field and how they are affecting the knowledge and skill requirements of the profession? I appreciate your thoughts on this! Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Soliciting opinions on voice recognition software for general computer interfaces
If this is helpful, Vista comprises voice recognition which seems to be not as good as Dragon but it's free. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/08/dragon-naturallyspeaking-9-vs-windows.html . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=36596 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Fonts and paper prototyping
Hi Janna, Just to say that I created and tested (very informally) my very first paper prototype on Friday - for rostering and callout software. I only tested a simple operation just to see how it would go. I had read about the "sketchy" look but completely forgot about it when I created my prototype and I have to say that not a single person made any comment whatsoever about look and feel. I simply went around the office asking anyone who was willing to test it - as I started quite late in the afternoon this amounted to only five people. I was stunned by all that I learnt just from five people and one operation and at how much fun I had (and the testers seemed to really enjoy it too - there's just something fun about pressing your finger down on paper and having another piece "magically" appear as opposed to boring old mouse-clicking). The first thing I learnt was simply by myself where I went to stick something down after the tester had "clicked" a button and realised that it wasn't logical. Other things I learnt were from testers asking what if scenarios, saying that things confused them and just generally questioning. I'm not sure why the testers seemed uninterested in look and feel but I posit two possibilities: one is that they were completely absorbed by the testing task and the other is that the look and feel was, if not graphic design quality, perfectly acceptable and easy on the eye and therefore not something they particularly noticed. I'm not sure if the "sketchy" look is recommended for paper prototypes but rather for mockups. I think there's a very big difference from looking at mockups passively, say, in a presentation and interacting with a paper prototype. In the latter you're focused on an activity and probably much less inclined to have silly opinions on look and feel. My recommendation is that whatever font you choose should blend with the rest of the look and feel so that it's unobtrusive. I'm not sure if it was Jakob Nielsen but someone talks about how the "hallway usability test" (that is, grabbing someone walking past in the hallway) can be very useful and I certainly felt this was verified on Friday. Three of the people who tested the prototype knew absolutely nothing about what it was supposed to do and I got much more useful feedback from two of them than the two people who will be users - not that I think that will always be the case - it just so happened on this occasion. >From this experience I also think that it might not be a bad idea to test one operation at a time or at least start with one operation because I think you can learn so much just from the first operation you test. I'm not sure if this is helpful to you but I realised that it was useful to have a Tester's Page for sticking on all the bits they use, a Facilitator's Page for all the bits they use and a blank sheet for blocking things out. Initially, I went off a bit half-cocked without all my bits. I used the sticky part of Post It notes for sticking paper because sticky tape is too sticky (I used sticky tape to stick the Post It notes to the pieces of paper - hope this makes sense). Perhaps Blutac would work too. But perhaps you have your own wonderful method in any case. Whatever font you use I'm sure you'll have a lot of fun! Regards, Petra Liverani -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Janna Sent: Sunday, 7 September 2008 9:33 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Fonts and paper prototyping A colleague and I had an interesting discussion yesterday and I was wondering if anyone on this list has relevant experience to share or has seen publications on this topic. We are creating paper prototypes for a change in software. We want to keep them "sketchy" looking for obvious reasons. My colleague felt we should use a font such as chalkboard or comic sans to keep the loose and sketchy feeling and won't look like a finished interface. My response is to use something like Arial or Myriad since it no longer has any particular connotations and people won't have any reaction to it positively or negatively. Any experience with this or thoughts on the subject? Thanks! -- Janna C. Kimel, JK Consulting Career: Design Research/User Experience Volunteer: Co Vice-Chair OR-IDSA Blogging: http://seenheardnoticed.blogspot.com/ Motto: Be the change you want to see in the world. -Gandhi Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Jan
[IxDA Discuss] How do people use applications differently from expected?
I seem to remember that in an earlier post Robert mentioned that users will not always utililse an application as expected, for example, using a wiki as a project management tool. When our company got a Confluence wiki I initially considered creating a space for a group of users but decided against it because there was no navigation menu. I later discovered there was a left navigation menu plug-in and saw other sites using the left nav with a Search above it. The position of the Search seemed so much friendlier than the remote default top right position so I had the space created with the left nav and "friendlier" Search. Shortly afterwards I discovered that the faster operators were using the Search to navigate the space and not bothering with the left nav. Indeed, I used the Search myself the same way - in their space though I generally used the left nav in my own space. Ironically, although it was the lack of a left nav that stopped me creating the space in the first place, I seriously thought of the possibility of removing it as perhaps a way to stop users wasting time drilling down looking for things when they could find it much more quickly with the Search. However, I feel sure users wouldn't have used the remote Search for navigation if the more friendly-placed Search wasn't there - partly because of its position and partly because its default is to search the whole wiki rather than the wiki space which makes it more cumbersome. What other ways have you experienced people using applications differently from expected? Regards, Petra Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Is UCD Really Broken?
Almost everything I've read in UI design until very recently was about user-centered design. It seemed to make a lot of sense but then when I read that there was a book "Designing the Obvious", by Robert Hoekman, and his rather disparaging posts about user-centered design that also seemed to make sense. One thing I feel very strongly is that the user is not "other", that I am such rearing-to-go user myself and I identify with other users. I mean, we are all users and yet some of us are not able to put ourselves in the shoes of other people using their systems when really in a lot of cases it can be pretty straightforward to do so. I guess it's like we all have emotions and yet some of us (well, not me) are much better at empathising with other people's emotions. As we all do, I "use" a lot and I find so much of bad user design seems to be just mind-boggling thoughtlessness. To give a couple of examples: Where I work, a scrollable text box that was known to often contain a lot of text and was constantly scrolled by the users was reduced to three lines "because of space constraints" - in fact it would've been very easy to rearrange things on the interface to maintain the original size of the text box. That text box deeply offended me and I often thought about it. I just scratched my head and thought "How could you possibly do that? It's a total pain." People say that users aren't considered - sometimes I wonder if some people just like to torture them. I have just spent two weeks at the Sydney Film Festival. On the website they said that in response to feedback they had made it possible this year for attenders to redeem tickets for voucher packages online. In past years, you could buy single tickets online but for voucher packages you had to submit each voucher at the venue in exchange for a ticket. Well, d'uh. They surely didn't need feedback to know that a significant customer body will, of course, want to be able to redeem vouchers online rather than wait in long queues and panic about missing the beginning of their film. I bought a 50 voucher package and was delighted with this news - until I went to redeem my first voucher. You seriously would not believe how many buttons I had to press to get a single ticket (at least 15) and repeat exactly the same process for the following 49. I even had to put in my name, address and phone number for every single ticket. They said something on the website about the process not being as "seamless" as they'd hoped. It was RSI-inducing but I plowed on because once I'd started on the online path it was actually a much slower process to redeem vouchers at the venue. I did thoroughly enjoy the festival but I would've enjoyed that little bit more without all the button pressing. Regards, Petra Liverani Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] What do you do best?
Yes, I think I point out the obvious, too. Sometimes something seems so staggeringly obvious you can't understand why no one else has thought of it. (And I kvetch.) An example of the obvious: a couple of days ago I was shown a form for traffic operators to enter messages such as "INCIDENT AHEAD" for the electronic signs on the side of the road. The form contained a single frame with a radio button to choose "Alternate" for a two-frame message and a forward button to click for the second frame. The form easily allowed side-by-side display of two frames so I suggested that it do that. This eliminated the need for "Alternate" and forward buttons (even with frames displayed on two screens only one button should be required) and also allowed operators to view the complete message. Apart from other things that might trigger this idea of side-by-side display, the lines of the frame far exceeded the length required to display the number of characters allowed. There had been about four people working on the form and no one had thought of it, even someone who was very exposed to side-by-side frame display in another system. It was shown to me two days before development was to start and the others were very surprised that I had something to contribute because they felt satisfied it was such a big improvement on the previous version and thought they'd covered all possible angles whereas to me a two-frame display was a no-brainer. Regards, Petra Liverani -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Robert Hoekman Jr Sent: Wednesday, 28 May 2008 7:04 AM To: Bryan J Busch Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] What do you do best? > > Ask the questions that nobody else is asking (granted, sometimes > that's because the answer is "obvious", but it doesn't hurt to > ask). > Funny-another thing I do best is ... point out the obvious. I feel like it's half my job. (Of course, many things are not "obvious" unless you're a designer thinking like a user, so you have to keep pointing them out.) -r- Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
