Ted Pollari at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) was (and is) working on a software that allows for easier analysis of qualitative data. The software, called “nineteen” analyzes .xlsx files and then visually displays patterns. What struck me was the comparison that he drew between qualitative analysis and prototyping (in the sense of paper prototyping) and it seems to me that the same principles that he attributed to making paper prototyping a good basis for this qualitative analysis software were also foundational concepts behind online prototyping software.

Prototyping and data analysis software

In the presentation on Videmeo.com, Pollari listed attributes for prototyping, which included, “externaliz[ing] cognition”, “thinking with your hands”, “produc[ing] alot of ideas”, “fast –iteration is the goal.” He also mentioned that “it doesn’t matter if one iteration yields little – it’s the process that matters.” Pollari then goes on to discuss how these prototyping attributes parallel the “nineteen” data analysis tool.

Prototyping software as a medium

From my experience with prototyping software and prototyping tools, online prototyping software is the same as paper prototyping except for the difference in medium. Online prototyping software helps a person “externalize cognition”, “think with [the] hands” (as well as the eyes), “produces a lot of ideas”, and also allows the iteration of ideas to be even faster than traditional pen and paper prototypes. So according to the benefits that Pollari listed for paper prototyping, online prototyping software is an excellent resource for prototyping – which is one reason why I use it.

Prototyping software in brief

If you already know that a prototype (within a computer context) is a representation of a computer program/application/website, then you will know that prototyping software is a computer program that aids you in creating drafts of programs, applications, or websites.  The prototypes that you make using prototyping software will help you visualize what the user interface of your app will look like and revision is easily done. These prototypes , of course, are not the actual final product and thus they will not possess the same functionality of the actual application, but some prototyping software will allow the prototype to be simulated with clickable wireframes to “test” it out.

Conclusion

It seems that the more I use prototyping software, the more I see its relevance, even in its theory, to other things, just as Pollari did when he drew the comparison between analyzing qualitative data and prototyping software. It seems that there is a lot to be said about prototyping and the prototyping process and it seems university students are delving into that. I will be interested to see what other theories about prototyping and the use of prototyping software arise in the future.

In this blog post I would like to address an interesting feature that some user interface design tools have, namely, the flowchart view. Flowchart is a diagram that shows a certain process or flow of information. Flowcharts are often used to structure data, create algorithms and map design processes. Why not create a flowchart of a website using interface design tools? How can you benefit from a user interface design tool that has a flowchart view?

Firstly, the flowchart view in user interface design tools allows designers to create a sequence of pages. For instance, when designing a purchase process for an e-commerce website a web designer might use the flowchart view to link one page to another in the necessary order. Certainly, linking pages to each other can be done in many user interface design tools, whether they have a flowchart view or not. The flowchart view, however, makes it possible to see all of the pages necessary for the process at the same time and link them to each other more easily while keeping a good overview.

Another benefit of the flowchart view in user interface design tools is that they show a process visually. It is easy to make mistakes or miss pages when linking is done manually. When all of the content is present on one page together with all the links and dependencies it is easy to spot when something is out of place. Another good point is that when the process changes (or if the connect or sequence should change for whatever reason) then user interface design tools with a flowchart view will allow you to make quick edits. You will not have to go through all of the pages in the process manually and correct the links.

These are the reasons why I feel the flowchart view is important to have in your user interface design tool. Do you use this feature and if so do you find it useful? If not, why not try out a new interface design tool to see?

According to BBC News, nearly 50% of people using the internet are using it on mobile devices. These statistics are from 2011 and this number has been increasing ever since. Many e-commerce, entertainment, and other websites are adapting their user interface designs to meet the needs of mobile users. With nearly half the population browsing the internet on mobile devices, the importance of mobile-friendly user interface designs cannot be overestimated.

One of the noticeable changes in the user interface design of familiar websites is the disappearance of the vertical scroll-bar. Whether or not this change has happened for the benefit of user experience is yet to be seen. Since the majority of mobile devices with access to the internet are touch-screen, the user can scroll text by moving a finger across the screen. Touch-screen user interfaces allow users to scroll the text itself without a scroll bar. Another possibility that mobile user interface design offers is the resizing of a window by touching the screen with two fingers at the same time.

I personally find the touch-screen user interface very handy for quick email checks, but whenever I have a chance to sit down at a computer with a mouse, I much prefer the traditional and familiar user interface design, which I cannot imagine without scroll-bars. In my view, user-friendly and intuitive user interface design often makes applications seem familiar and easy to use. The scroll-bar has been part of website interfaces for many years now and there are hardly any users who do not know how to use one. In fact, the scroll-bar has a number of benefits for the user interface design of applications. The main one is that it helps users adjust the content to fit the size of different windows and screens. Using a scroll-bar can be much more convenient than the scroll-button on a mouse. For one, I find scroll-bars convenient and user-friendly and I hope that they will not disappear from user interface design in the future.

I was going to do a Google search when I saw a little link below the search bar stating, “New from Google Cultural Institute”. It piqued my interested and I followed the link to find a project Google was working on concerning Nelson Mandela, a former president of South Africa who stood for social justice. The UI design was quite interesting.

Nelson Mandela Digital Archive project: UI design
When you follow the link from the Google Cultural Institute page to the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive Project, you are confronted with a UI design that is full of pictures and with few buttons. I could enter the site by clicking on the picture (or on the corresponding button at the bottom left hand corner of the picture). This takes me to another level of the website where I can intuitively advance by clicking the arrows on my keyboard. The UI design must have involved a lot of usability testing, because I didn’t have to even think twice about using the keyboard arrows and it wasn’t until after I had scrolled through and viewed the photo album of his life, that I recognized that I had seamlessly switched from using my mouse to my keyboard.

UI design pros
According to “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug (2006), this kind if design for the UI is the best, because the goal is to NOT make the user think. The website was also user friendly, and still brought me to the gallery whether I clicked on the picture or the corresponding button.

The work is apparently not finished yet for the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive Project and is, “a work in progress”, as their website says. Progressive is one characteristic of Nelson Mandela as he stands for social justice in South Africa. This innovation will continue long after his lifetime through the Nelson Mandela Digital Archive Project.

E-learning is a new model of education. It is now possible to learn languages, programming and even get complete degrees online.  Not unlike many users worldwide, I have done some Internet learning, and I feel that the complexity of learning interfaces is constantly increasing. Interface design tools play an important role in the development of online education.

One of the platforms I got familiar with included VoIP, screen-sharing, and many other interactive features.  For instance, it allowed students to highlight the words they were not familiar with. These words would then pop up on the teacher’s screen so he would know to explain them. At the end of the lesson every student would get a script and a video of the class. I found every bit of this model extremely efficient and enjoyable.

Interactivity and the ease of learning are probably the number-one requirements for e-learning applications. To design perfectly usable software takes a great deal of work. E-learning applications, more than any other applications, require intuitive user interfaces and therefore detailed planning and collaboration. Interface design tools help developers and teachers to unite efforts and come up with the most effective and creative teaching solutions. E-learning applications also need thorough user testing at different stages of user interface design. Some interface design tools offer user testing features and can help designers enhance the usability of learning platforms without extra expenditures for tools or specialized testing environments.

One could probably draw a parallel between the development of e-learning software and the development of interface design tools. Both are gradually becoming more complex and more efficient. Interface design tools help create learning interfaces which improve learning experiences in ways not available in traditional teaching. The times when teaching online involved calling on Skype and going through the same textbook are long over. Long live e-learning and the interface design tools that make e-learning applications more successful!

Wireframe software has gone a long way towards becoming the applications that web-developers and web-designers are using today. I recently encountered an article written by Julie Stanford in the beginning of 2003 on Boxes and Arrows on the benefits of using HTML for wireframing, and I wondered how the evolution of wireframe software happened.

Naturally, the first known wireframe tool was pen and paper. This one existed since the beginning of web-development. By the way, the first website to ever be published is said to have been developed at a CERN facility in Switzerland in 1991. Pen and paper were surely used then, and it still is a handy wireframing tool because it is quick and available to anyone. Have some ideas and no computer at hand? Just pick up a pen and jot them down. But paper prototyping, of course, also has its limitations as a wireframing tool that are partly solved by more modern wireframe software.

The beginning of 2000 knew two main types of wireframe software, which Julie Stanford describes in her article. Those were HTML-based and graphical tools. HTML wireframe software allowed web-developers to put together a few lines of code, and get a very simplified version of the website, which, nevertheless, would allow users to see its functionality because it produced web-pages with working links between them. Apart from links, these pages would not have very much in common with the future website.

Graphical wireframe software would have a closer visual resemblance with the future website’s layout, but those wireframing tools had no capacity to show how the website would interact with the user. Interactive elements like, for instance, a drop-down menu, could only be represented by a still image. In many cases, Photoshop or similar image-processing applications were used.

Today, thankfully, there is a lot more diversity than this. One of the first specialized wireframe software applications was released in 2003 and a variety of other tools followed, becoming more and more progressive every year. The latest wireframe software, first desktop and later web-based, is meant specifically for creating website wireframes with the least effort and time involved and allows web-developers not only to design great user interfaces but also to test those user interface prototypes through usability tests.

Purpose of Corporate Blogs

Corporate blogs are a great tool for companies to keep their customers (as well as the greater public) in the loop and increase customer loyalty.
Corporate blogs are blogs with very specific purposes that can be divided into the following categories:

•    Communication: Corporate blogs should be used to communicate with customers and the public; this is the most significant reason for companies to have corporate blogs.  Corporate blogs provide customers and/or the public with direct lines of communication to the company’s employees or even executives, thus empowering customers, leaving them feeling like valued stakeholders.  Conversely, executives and employees also value interaction with customers so corporate blogs are an effective and valuable tool for both sides.

•    Marketing Products and Services: Corporate blogs are also an excellent way to advertise new products and services.  Companies can also obtain valuable customer/user feedback about new products which can help them improve their offers for the future.

•    Maintaining Reputation: Corporate blogs can also help companies maintain or improve their reputation within the public sphere because they can be marketed as the only reliable source for accurate information about a company or venture.  This is especially important with so many other unverified sources floating around on the internet.

Corporate blogs are not the same as traditional blogs.  Traditional blogs are usually maintained by individuals or groups as a way of sharing their thoughts, ideas, advice, and experience.  Corporate blogs are a part of business and as such their purpose is different.  Maintaining a corporate blog is an excellent way to make a business not only more visible, but also more successful.

This blog post is the second in a series of two about Contextual Design as a usability method.

The Contextual Design sequence

In the first post on Contextual Design we clarified what Contextual Design is and why it is important for creating usable UIs.  Now it is vital that we discuss how the Contextual Design process occurs. Contextual Design is a process that happens sequentially in the following hierarchical steps: Contextual Inquiry, Interpretation, Data Consolidation, Visioning/Storyboarding, User Environment Design, and Prototyping. Each of these steps is equally important in contributing to the synergy of the Contextual Design process and buttresses the resultant user interface design in a positive user experience.

•    Contextual Inquiry:  Contextual Inquiry is the crux of Contextual Design. It is used to reveal what people actually do and why they do it that way. Contextual Inquiry happens at the very beginning of the design process and calls for one-on-one field interviews observing subjects in their natural working or living environment doing what they would normally be doing.
•    Interpretation: The interpretation phase is when the data from all the interviews is analyzed and detailed work models are created in order to ascertain context of use and aspects of work that matter for the user interface design team. What matters here is looking at the interviews from a macro birds-eye-view level for key insights across the board.
•    Data Consolidation: Data consolidation is the level at which individual interviews are analyzed. An example of a good method of processing observations from a bottom-up design approach (piecing together systems to give rise to grander systems) for data consolidation purposes is by making affinity diagrams.
•    Visioning/Storyboarding: Visioning is akin to brainstorming, but distinctly it is the gathering of a cross-functional team in order to create stories or visions of how new product concepts, services, and technology can better support a user in accomplishing her tasks. After determining key issues and opportunities from the consolidated data, the visioning team sets out to generate new concepts by way of scenarios of use. These visions are then fleshed out further through the use of Storyboarding.
•    User Environment Design: User Environment Design is the stage of Contextual Design whereby the stories created begin to become more refined in terms of product and system requirements. What are the different parts of the system? What functions are available in each part? How do all these components support and enhance a user’s work?  Where in the user interface design scheme should they be integrated? User Environment Design seeks to answer these questions.
•    Prototyping: Prototyping is an efficient way of creating preliminary partially functional UIs that can be used to test the structure of a User Environment Design for usability issues. But prototyping is also great as a communication tool for stakeholders of a project to flesh out user interface design ideas. Prototyping can be done through the use of paper prototypes (hand drawn or printed out) or, better yet, through interactive wireframe prototypes.

Performing these steps is an art of itself but can be immensely helpful in creating superior UI designs.