Making Things Real
Let's apply some of what we've talked about to a real project. Think about your favorite software development project. Assume that you are the team lead for its development. User interface and usability are on the short list of critical success factors for the project.
The Project Lead comes into your office in the usual agitated state. Senior Management has asked for some information.
The Project Lead announces that as part of current cost-cutting measures, Senior Management is considering the use of a software vendor to develop all or part of your project. As part of its presentations, the leading vendor showed an impressive user interface and usability design and development checklist. The vendor demonstrated an impressive knowledge of cross-platform design and development issues and had many nice examples to show to Senior Management.
Senior Management wants your list of the top 20 design factors that influence your work on UI, usability, and user-centered design and development. The Project Lead said, "If the list is longer than 20 items, that's OK. It just better be good!"
Contrast the UI techniques available on each system platform supported by the software product(that is, a GUI, the top two Web browsers, and the most popular non-windowing PDA). Senior Managers are familiar with GUI interaction techniques such as Access Keys and Toolbars, and want to know which are applicable across the various platforms.
Be sure to continue your research on the Web.
As usual, Senior Management wants results tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m., and the Project Lead agreed with the request. You have around two hours to work on the request.
Any questions?