Easily design "user experience centric" applicationsLuca Foppianolfoppiano@byte-code.com

Pre assessment

What interface do you prefer?

What?

and if I tell you...

...this is 10 times faster!!!!

Disclaimer

If you choose the left one....

...I suggest you to keep your seat and listen this presentation carefully...

Contents

IT crowd

User experience

Design graphical user interface

Conclusion

People: Hard and soft skills

Technicians has 10 skills type: soft skills and hard skills

Hard skills: computer skills, programming skills, framework knowledge, $put_your_name skills, experience,

Soft skills: social skills, new opportunities vision, commercial mind, relations, user tolerance (!) ...

Technicians (IT Crowd)

So...

GOOD technicians have strong hard skills (good experience and knowledge for example)

but...

REALLY GOOD technicians have good soft skills!!!!

...unfortunately...

80% technicians don't care enough about soft skills:

I did what to do. That's all!

New features vs new details

Who are the users?

After 1 week my form is 2 times faster

100% customer see only the interface, the errors, and your face!!!

Can we change? Can we improve ourselves?

!!!!!Focus on User Experience!!!!!!

User experience

“User experience (abbreviated: UX) is the quality of experience a person has when interacting with a specific design. This can range from a specific artifact such as a cup, toy or website, up to larger, integrated experiences such as a museum or an airport”

Graphical User Interfaces

In our work, user experience comes for 90% from the GUI.

GUI MUST be designed FOR users (in particular for stupid monkey users)

Learn by observe:

Apple

Google

Few rules...

1) Less features – more details

Don't try to add non requested features

“The details are not the details. They make the design.” Charles Eames

MAKE IT WORKS!

2) Keep it simple!

Use simple interfaces!

Don't make complex what is simple...

...and everything can be though in a simple way

Reuse your interfaces as much as you can

3) Know your users

Usually users don't know what they want...

...but they know what they hate.

Speak with your user and understand what they want...

Use paper to draw a lot of stories...

4) Design the interface first

Spend a lot of time to make choose in the interface (colors, page structure, ...) ...

...and don't change it anymore...

...unless you have good reasons (budget += 100K €)

Back-end MUST adapt itself to GUI workflows (unless exist valid reason)

Development is more naturally business driven (first the workflow, then low priority features)...

...and is directly from top to bottom.

In conclusion

Your soft skills are more important than your hard skills.

User is not smart like you!

New icon is more simple to remember than new chapter in documentation

What user doesn't need, doesn't exist for him (or will be easily forgotten)

Keep it simple and make it work!

If you have doubts or need a way

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>>> i mpor t t hi s

The Zen of Pyt hon, by Ti m Pet er s

Beaut i f ul i s bet t er t han ugl y .Expl i c i t i s bet t er t han i mpl i c i t .Si mpl e i s bet t er t han compl ex .Compl ex i s bet t er t han compl i ca t ed.Fl a t i s bet t er t han nes t ed.Spar s e i s bet t er t han dens e.Readabi l i t y count s .Speci a l ca s es ar en' t s pec i a l enough t o br eak t he r ul es .Al t hough pr act i ca l i t y beat s pur i t y .Er r or s s houl d never pas s s i l ent l y .Unl es s expl i c i t l y s i l enced.I n t he f ace of ambi gui t y , r ef us e t he t empt at i on t o gues s .Ther e s houl d be one- - and pr ef er abl y onl y one - - obvi ous way t o do i t .Al t hough t ha t way may not be obvi ous a t f r s t unl es s you' r e Dut ch.Now i s bet t er t han never .Al t hough never i s of t en bet t er t han * r i ght * now.I f t he i mpl ement at i on i s har d t o expl a i n, i t ' s a bad i dea .I f t he i mpl ement at i on i s eas y t o expl a i n, i t may be a good i dea .Names paces a r e one honki ng gr eat i dea - - l et ' s do mor e of t hos e!

Question / Answers

Thank you