Tuesday, February 5, 2008

SWA 1849

Using a simulation tool to document and present heuristic evaluations

Draft

1. Why bother?
Because this is expenssive to us, especially for consultants: very time consuming, detailed, and with RIA's increacingly complex to tell a good compellng story.

Heuristics are changing. (Which is a nother story all together).

Ability to seperate the tree from the forest, prioratize and consider recommandations.

I used Filemaker as a database to store screen level comments, and there was some ability to create simple interaction flows and document navigation and workflow issues

But with RIA's it does not scale.

Using Word or other word processing tools is also a possibility, but, Word does not handle such ducuments gracefully and you. can loose valuable time on fixing formmating issues.

A presentation tool such as Power point may be another option but is does not handle tabular data very well, nor extended details

So, in looking to increace the value of the excerise - why are we conducting this, what are the expectations, how can we provide most value and finally - reduce the pain and yes, increace profitability of the chore - one option for those who are using a simulation too
Create sets of annotations and fields (show screen)

What heuristics to capture? Glossary I sometimes find a need to respond to the particularities of the application and modify the heuristics I'm covering because they a more relevant to the work.

Making such changes can be fairly simple

2 Creating the file
Take screen captures useing Snagit or similar. naming convention - effort to maintain the flow - example here

Importing to axure

Liinking. - when this is done, we end up with a simulation of the the screens -- as they were at the time of evaluation
(In some fast paced organization the ui may change while you are still laboring on the report.)

Friday, February 1, 2008

Timeout

So, what to do when an operation times out? Your past experience warened you that this will happen, but we keep starring at the hourglass, hioping. Hope will fuel the next few attempts to try again, until reality kick-in.
Sometimes, however, there is a light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a train....got to go now...tbc

About Me

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When my kids were younger I often wished I had a traditional job: a firefighter, doctor or a bus driver, because it is difficult to explain to a toddler what a user experience architect is. But as it turns out, all I really do is making software easy and sometimes even fun for people to use. My boys are cool with that. I’ve been involved with users and user interfaces well before usability became a profession and the UI recognized as a critical component of software and devices. With over 15 years of experience in making complex UI frameworks easy to deploy, extend and use, my clients are medium to very large multi-national companies, and my good fortune is the opportunities that my work lends me to meet people all over the world. I have a special interest in solving complexities in workflow and localization of global applications, data visualization challenges around manipulation of vast actionable data, personalization and customization. I am also learning all the time – about people, methodologies, technologies and tools that enable the development of rich user experience in an increasingly more semantically aware WWW.