Written by David Charney
Posted: October 4, 2008 (1 year, 11 months ago) | 0 comments
Hey hey! CD2 just got an email from Steve Krug, the brilliance behind the book Don’t Make Me Think. Steve and Lou Rosenfeld have an upcoming usability workshop here in Chicago (October 17) and Washington, DC (November 12).
CD2 members can get a $150 dollar discount by registering at Steve’s site (sensible.com) using the discount code “cd2″.
From Steve’s site Advanced Common Sense:
In this day-long session, I’ll teach you how to do your own low-cost/no-cost testing that’s simple enough to make it a routine part of your design process.
The day will include
- A complete explanation of how I recommend doing testing (Hint: very simple, very fast, and very cheap)
- Two live usability tests on attendees’ sites, so you can see the whole process in detail
- A chance to practice conducting a test on your own site
- Advice on how to interpret your findings and decide what changes to make
- Plenty of time to answer your questions about testing or any other aspect of usability
Who should attend?
The short answer is “anyone involved in publishing a Web site.” Graphic designers, programmers, writers, editors, project managers, sole proprietors, and VPs can all benefit from this session.
Whether you already do testing and want to know more, or have never done testing and want to start, or even if you don’t ever intend to do your own testing but are responsible for hiring, managing, or paying other people to do it, this session will prove valuable.
Some of the topics covered
- What I mean by “discount” user testing, and why it always works
- How to get buy-in: Ways to deal with bosses, stakeholders, and check-signers
- What kind of people–and how many–to test (My motto: Recruit loosely, and grade on a curve)
- What to test, and when to test it
- How to record tests and use the recordings to your advantage
- The art of specifying test tasks
- How to facilitate–when to listen and when to probe
- Why I don’t use exit and entrance questions
- How to decide what to fix
- No more big honkin’ reports: Why you should avoid writing test reports, and what to do instead
- Remote testing methods and tools
- …and much more.
Written by David Charney
Posted: June 2, 2008 (2 years, 3 months ago) | 0 comments
Well the first RIApalooza event has come and gone and I must say I enjoyed it. This two day event had good speakers, good topics, a nice mix of theory and demonstrations, good networking, and a healthy turnout of supporters. It was great to see Microsoft and Adobe (both sponsors) working together for the good of the cause. It was also nice to see all programs and platforms recognized.
Dave Meeker from Roundarch did a great job kicking off the event by discussing the core of all this RIAmadness. What, Why, Who, When - it was all covered.
Tim Heuer & Corrina Barber from Microsoft showed the ease designers and developers can look forward to using Blend. Good demonstration. I saw Blend on a lot of laptops by the end of the day.
Josh Holmes from Microsoft & Michael Labriola from Digital Primates had a great presentation on RIA. From practices to theory they covered a broad spectrum of the key components of RIA and answered that big question, “What’s the big deal?”.
Geoff Cubitt, President & CTO of Roundarch (and a Purdue man) discussed RIA while relating it to the fine work of Roundarch. He discussed different technologies (Flash, Flex, Dojo, AJAX, Silverlight) and touched a bit on selling RIA to the client.
Anthony Handley from Magenic did a great job showing designer & developer collaboration while bringing life to an application using Silverlight and XAML. He made it look so easy.
The one and only Corey Miller from Magenic (the guy who put Purdue on the map) recreated a Flash image gallery inside Silverlight and showed how to populate it with Flickr images. He did a nice job showing the many Flash designers and developers in the room that they don’t have to take that many steps back to start exploring Silverlight.
Ka Wai Cheung from We Are Mammoth discussed time saving RIA models and the power behind smart design.
So that’s a wrap. I hope this is the first of many.
Written by David Charney
Posted: May 26, 2008 (2 years, 3 months ago) | 0 comments
Hey all. I am happy to announce cd2, the new Chicago Designers & Developers User Group.
cd2 is dedicated to bridging the gap between design & development to improve the user experience and user-centered design. Function meets design in this group as we focus on creativity as it relates to design and development processes and the collaboration between the two.
If you are interested, we ask that you visit our site at www.cd2ug.org and let us know what you would like to see in the group. We will be posting more information soon detailing the group and our first meeting.
Written by David Charney
Posted: May 2, 2008 (2 years, 4 months ago) | 1 comment
We all have our own processes when we design (Whether they are for a UI, print, animation, or whatever). This process tends to evolve through our careers as we define our skills and experience. I will be posting a series detailing my process and other processes when it comes to design and some development in the coming months. For now here is a quick sneak peek, or teaser, showing the process step of sketching your designs before entering Photoshop (or Microsoft Paint - if you are on a budget).
The reason to grab the ol’ pen and paper is because it gives you the opportunity to try out different ideas and layouts quickly. Good design, visually speaking, is a collaboration between brand, color, layout (placement), shapes, and creative ideas as it relates to usability and solving goals. The umbrella that forms from this collaboration is the user experience. But what is the first step? How do you use your time wisely? I know many designers who have found themselves with a lot of time in a design that isn’t working. They spend countless hours moving, tweaking, adjusting, crying. I have been there many times. This is where pen and paper come in handy.
There are actually several steps prior to this one and I will hit them all in time. But for now… Go find a pen, pencil, marker (Prisma anyone?), a sketchpad, sheets of paper, or a big white wall. I tend to start with shapes (squares, circles, etc.) so I can develop basic placement and understand the balance in a scene. I try to work up four or five very unique design sketches. I tend to lean towards a couple and then start detailing more and more. Keep taking steps back to think about how the user will use the design and don’t be afraid to be creative. Don’t focus on just one page either. Let’s say you are designing a website and the main object in the scene is a background shape. Rather than just filling the shape with more content on each internal page, try creating a sketch that shows how on internal pages the UI zooms into different part of that shape. This can motivate the user as they will wonder where they are headed next. It also creates a canvas for unique internal layouts. Sketch quickly. Don’t think to much at first. Start high level and then define more and more. Once you are happy with what you have, it is time to move to the next step. Depending on the project you may want to move right into your design program. You may want to draw up a few cleaner mock-ups for the client to review. After approval (or dreaded feedback), it is on to the next step - drinking a mountain dew as quickly as possible. Seriously that is the next step - look it up. Here are three original drawings and the final designs.
Check back for the continuation of this article… for now I have to run!
Written by David Charney
Posted: April 26, 2008 (2 years, 4 months ago) | 0 comments
A design I am playing around with…
