TechEd Session Resources
Thanks to all who came to my session this morning on “Putting the User back into Architecture” – I really enjoyed the session. Looking at the feedback, many of you asked for a recap of the URLs and other references that I had in the deck. Here they are:
URLs:
User Interface Hall of Shame
http://homepage.mac.com/bradster/iarchitect/visual.htm
Personas on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personas
DotNetBar for Windows Forms
ProtoXAML
Ten Ways for a Good Installation
http://simonguest.com/blogs/smguest/archive/2006/11/21/Ten-Ways-for-Good-Installation-Karma.aspx
RITE Methodology Paper
Japanese Greeting Rating Scale
http://www.hanselman.com/blog/MeasuringSatisfactionWeAreANielsenFamily.aspx
Books:
The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Cooper [Apr 1999]
Why Software Sucks, Platt [2006]
Persona Lifecycle, Pruitt and Adlin [2006]
You can also download the slides for the session here:
Nice presentation – I really liked your points on prototyping. It’s true our diagrams are so far from showing the reality that we so often don’t communicate what we think they want and they often don’t see it. I’ve recently been involved in a building project. We had the flat diagrams for months with no queries from the people who we were building for. As soon as we showed them a 3D model there were loads of questions – they could now see it. It has to be the same with software.
Love what you’re doing and the resources you provide. Curious if you’ve ever been to http://www.websitesthatsuck.com/. It’s not pure application UI design, but has been around for quite a while and has some good insights. Check out the Worst Website awards sections.
Great session – enjoyed it a lot. I think there are some obvious challenges in overcoming the obsession with “features” and refocusing on “usefulness”. People can measure features in neat little tick lists, whereas usefulness is far harder to measure.