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| One my best from South Texas - Light brown Sable antelope |
Sunday, May 26, 2019
Monday, November 12, 2018
Importance of IA in design industry
Original Article Click here
Being human, it’s hard to imagine about unstructured data. People are habituated to structured and easy to use when it comes to content and functionality of the digital products. Then the next question will be, who will do the structuring for digital products? Designers take a responsibility of constructing content and navigation system in the appropriate way for users. The science that assists experts in the content structuring is called information architecture. Inside the design industry, there is always a debate on whether IA (Information Architecture) is needed or not for the design projects. Let’s look into this subject in detail.
What is IA and why we need to do it?
Information architecture is the foundation for efficient design. Even the most powerful UI design can easily fail without appropriate IA.
When I was new to design industry, my mentor introduced me to IA in comparison with real life. According to him ‘Similar to building architecture using a blueprint to construct every part of a house, IA (Information Architecture) describes the hierarchy, navigation, features and interactions of an application’. Now, I can confidently define IA as — visual representation of the digital product’s features, navigation and hierarchy. There is no hard and fast rule for size and shape of IA. It should be understandable to anyone who reads it. It should represent the structure of the product the designer is working on.
Time plays an important role in our life, including career. Many times in a designer life the requirements on the products he is working on, changes so fast and frequently. If we think of this his more than 60% of product design goes waste due to requirement changes. Also, changing the designs are completely different than improving a design. Then how do we efficiently use designer’s time? there comes the solution Information Architecture. As I said previously, it’s a blue print. It gives the big picture to stakeholders, designers or anyone who involves in the product design. IA approval from stakeholder guarantees the designer that major design changes won’t happen in future, but they may add improvements/small changes sprint by sprint.
Creating IA also helps to come up with high-quality product, since it reduces the possibility of the usability and navigation problems. From the definition and samples IA may look less impacter, but in realtime projects it’s a big time and money saver for the company.
Some of the best examples for good IA are below:
The Role of an Information Architect
The next question which arises in our mind is ‘what Information Architect will do’? Information architects work to create usable and findable content structures out of complex sets of data and information; mainly, structuring content so it’s easy for users to find what they are looking for. For any new project, the information architect identifies the changes that need to be made and creates a plan to make them happen. The more content a site/app has, the more critical its organization becomes, and the more significant the role of IA in the UX design process. Common activities an Information Architect get involves in a UX project include research, hierarchy and navigation creation, labelling, wire framing and taxonomies.
What’s the difference between IA and UX?
After going through above information the next question that arises in us is ‘then, what is the difference between IA and UX’?
Well they both are closely connected but still they are different. Before understanding the difference, let us know what UX design is. User Experience is the way a person feels about using a product, system, or service and this includes a person’s perceptions of practical aspects such as utility, ease of use, and efficiency of the system. Now, it’s very much clear UX design means much more than structuring content. In parallel, good Information Architecture is a foundation of high-quality user experience. User Experience takes Information Architecture as its foundation and brings it to the higher level. That is the reason, why every good UX Designer is also a competent information architect.
Conclusion:
Content is the heart of product design, but how it is structured makes biggest impact for end user. Also, when do we structure and organize during project cycle helps to save money and time. Information Architecture is key to save time, money and to deliver high quality product to end user.
Friday, November 9, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Heuristic Analysis for UX - A walkthrough
Link to original article click here
In this article let us look at what exactly UX designer’s mean by the term “heuristic evaluation”, what are those Heuristics, how to conduct a heuristic evaluation for yourself, How to handle un availability of Usability experts and the real difference between a heuristic evaluation and user testing.
There is a common argument in the design industry, which always happen - “If you’re such an expert and have the experience you claim, how come you can’t just give us the answers for the right design?” Well, if the person have sufficient experience and expertise in usability, he will also be well aware that users are unpredictable. It’s common to experience ‘aha!’ moments in usability tests that show something we never expected, even when the design seems to conform to key heuristics perfectly.
I'll be going in detail with the following topics:
1. What is a heuristic evaluation?
2. What are Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design?
3. What is the process to conduct heuristic evaluation?
4. What are the challenges behind heuristic evaluation?
5. How heuristic evaluation is different from user testing?
1. What is a heuristic evaluation? Why and When to do it?
Heuristic evaluation is an examine conducted by small set of evaluators about the interface and judge it's compliance with recognized usability principles called ‘heuristics’.
A specific set of heuristics contains empirical rules of thumb, best practices, standards, rules, and conventions that have been tested or observed over long periods of time. Following this simply outputs the better user experience. A heuristic evaluation expert, or the evaluator is ideally a usability testing expert who has deep understanding of the chosen set of heuristics. They would typically come from the disciplines of human factors, interaction design (IXD), HCI (human-computer interaction) and/or UX design, with complementary backgrounds in disciplines such as psychology, computer science, information sciences, and commerce/business. During this process, examiners /evaluators assign a “severity level” to each of the usability issues identified. As a rule, UX designers concentrate on the most critical issues on the backlog first to the least critical.
Below are the two major reasons to perform a heuristic analysis
1. To improve the usability of a digital product
2. Efficiency (the speed with which a product can be used as a direct consequence of better usability)
Delivering above two components with high quality will greatly improve the user experience of a product.
To perform heuristic analysis, there are no hard and fast rules. It can be performed at any advanced stage of the design process.
2. What are Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design?
Following are the 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design
1. Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
2. Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users' language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
3. User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked "emergency exit" to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
4. Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
5. Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
6. Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user's memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
10. Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user's task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
3. What is the process to conduct heuristic evaluation?
Following is the process to conduct heuristics evaluation:
1. Define the scope.
2. Understand the business requirements and demographic of the end-users.
3. Evaluate the experience and identify usability issues.
4. Decide about reporting tools and heuristics to use.
5. Analyze, aggregate, and present the results.
4. What are the challenges behind heuristic evaluation?
Below are few of the common challenges in heuristic evaluation
1. Experienced usability experts are difficult to find and sometimes expensive too
2. Some times, a heuristic analysis may set off false alarms: Issues that would not necessarily have a negative effect on the overall UX if left alone are sometimes flagged to be fixed
3. If the evaluators are not part of the design or dev team, they may be unaware of any technical limitations on the design
5. How heuristic evaluation is different from user testing?
Heuristic evaluation and usability testing are two different methods for finding
usability problems and they are conducted at different times of product design life cycle.
With heuristic evaluation, experts looks at the user interface
and identifies the problems. With usability testing, potential users try out the user
interface with real tasks. The problems found with usability testing are true problems
in the sense that at least one user encountered each problem. The problems found
with heuristic evaluation are potential problems – the evaluator suspects that
something may be a problem to users. Early in development, heuristic evaluation has
a hit-rate of around 50% and reports around 50% false problems.
Final thoughts
Many times, applications suffer from poor usability. In such situations it might be helpful from a dose of heuristic analysis performed by experts and may see a dramatic improvement in their UX without breaking the budget. A single experienced UX expert can uncover a substantial number of usability issues during a heuristic analysis. However, if time and money allows, group of experts can uncover most usability issues and offers a significant ROI. This ROI would be based on the increase in user productivity as well as estimated on the expected increase in product sales due to higher customer satisfaction, better ratings, and an uptick in positive reviews.
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower
ನೀ ಬರುವ ದಾರಿಯಲಿ.
ಹಗಲು ತಂಪಾಗಿ...
ಬೇಲಿಗಳ ಸಾಲಿನಲಿ.
ಹಸುರು ಕೆಂಪಾಗಿ...
ಪಯಣ ಮುಗಿಯುವ ತನಕ
ಎಳೆ ಬಿಸಿಲ ಮಣಿ ಕನಕ.
ಸಾಲು ಮರಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ. ಸೊಬಗ
ಸುರಿದಿರಲಿ...
Thursday, September 6, 2018
Asana - Onboarding Journey (Good User Experience Article)
Experience:
Life has become more easier due to the tracking apps we use daily. This includes meditation tracker, food tracker, fitness trackers, remainders, to do lists what not.
Digital era has not only made our personnel life easier but also professional life. Usually large companies use paid apps to track their work progress.
There are many small teams which use easily available apps to manage their projects. One such available app is "Asana". I'm an android user and the experience i have written here is about As android app. I got to know about this app from a friend and thought to see how it works. So I installed the app.
Following are my experiences during on-boarding journey:
When the app opened, it had four screens together - before sign up/login. All the four were designed with completely different colors, including logo. This quite surprised me. Only common was the typography. All four screens had message about what I can do with the app such as "Track your work. Get results."
Being a new user, I tapped on 'Sign Up' button. It took me to the page where they have two options namely "Sign up with google" or "sign up using your email address". I signed up using my email address and there was a message saying verify your email. I went back to my Inbox and verified the account by clicking on the link provided in the email. The verification link took me to the app again to fill up two fields. One was 'Name' and then 'Password'. I filled both of them and it took me to 'Add some teammates' page.
Add teammates had two options, one was "invite by email" and "invite contacts". Next screen was "Welcome" page. The welcome page had a message saying "The first place you'll want to visit is my tasks". The button "Show me tasks" took me to my tasks page and the task list.
User can create tasks by adding pictures, attachments to it. The profile picture on the top left corner pops up with your name and invite button.The app has also provision for chat, organize tasks, search my company and pending tasks check. Chat and Organize tasks initially pops up with messages of the respective functionality. But again, the screen design color is no way related to the previous design. User can filter the tasks depending on pending tasks, completed etc.
Learning:
Easy navigation and simple functionalities are more important in application design.
Suggestions:
Life has become more easier due to the tracking apps we use daily. This includes meditation tracker, food tracker, fitness trackers, remainders, to do lists what not.
Digital era has not only made our personnel life easier but also professional life. Usually large companies use paid apps to track their work progress.
There are many small teams which use easily available apps to manage their projects. One such available app is "Asana". I'm an android user and the experience i have written here is about As android app. I got to know about this app from a friend and thought to see how it works. So I installed the app.
Following are my experiences during on-boarding journey:
When the app opened, it had four screens together - before sign up/login. All the four were designed with completely different colors, including logo. This quite surprised me. Only common was the typography. All four screens had message about what I can do with the app such as "Track your work. Get results."
Being a new user, I tapped on 'Sign Up' button. It took me to the page where they have two options namely "Sign up with google" or "sign up using your email address". I signed up using my email address and there was a message saying verify your email. I went back to my Inbox and verified the account by clicking on the link provided in the email. The verification link took me to the app again to fill up two fields. One was 'Name' and then 'Password'. I filled both of them and it took me to 'Add some teammates' page.
Add teammates had two options, one was "invite by email" and "invite contacts". Next screen was "Welcome" page. The welcome page had a message saying "The first place you'll want to visit is my tasks". The button "Show me tasks" took me to my tasks page and the task list.
User can create tasks by adding pictures, attachments to it. The profile picture on the top left corner pops up with your name and invite button.The app has also provision for chat, organize tasks, search my company and pending tasks check. Chat and Organize tasks initially pops up with messages of the respective functionality. But again, the screen design color is no way related to the previous design. User can filter the tasks depending on pending tasks, completed etc.
Learning:
Easy navigation and simple functionalities are more important in application design.
Suggestions:
- The designer has done a great job by designing a easy to use app. Still there are some rooms for improvement.
- Color consistency is very important in design. Usage of colors no way related to each other disturbs the user during experience.
- Typography usage - Some buttons designed with all caps and many are not. Consistency is more needed here.
- Remainder icon takes you to the upcoming tasks, which is not really needed since you have tasks page and filter in it.
- Search button takes you to search my company - This questioned me "whether all user can access other companies projects as well"? if so, it leads to questions about the user/company data security.
Original article link click here
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Meetup - Onboarding Journey (Good User Experience - Write up)
Experience:
Today the technology has grown up so much that we can check all the ongoing and upcoming events on our hand.There are lot of apps developed to help the users to explore their interested events nearby. One such application is "Meet up".The app help the users to find out the events interested to them.
This app helps everyone because it has big list of categories including recreation activities, hobbies, professional events, learning events etc.
Being a new user what was unique in this app is when you select signup, you will select the your location first. And then the topics and what kind of events you are looking for. Then comes registration part. So, if you feel like something which you are looking is not available on the app, you need not to register.
While registering, you can directly use Facebook account or gmail or you can register through your other email id. Without profile picture, account will not get created. Once after registration the app shows the events you are interested with, along with date and all other info.
Meetup also has 'going', 'saved' and 'past' tabs to check what's on your list. It also has notifications and messages in it. User can also share the events on social media.
Learning:
Being a new user my journey with Meetup was easy.
Suggestions:
No suggestions as such
Original Article Link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/meetup-onboarding-journey
Today the technology has grown up so much that we can check all the ongoing and upcoming events on our hand.There are lot of apps developed to help the users to explore their interested events nearby. One such application is "Meet up".The app help the users to find out the events interested to them.
This app helps everyone because it has big list of categories including recreation activities, hobbies, professional events, learning events etc.
Being a new user what was unique in this app is when you select signup, you will select the your location first. And then the topics and what kind of events you are looking for. Then comes registration part. So, if you feel like something which you are looking is not available on the app, you need not to register.
While registering, you can directly use Facebook account or gmail or you can register through your other email id. Without profile picture, account will not get created. Once after registration the app shows the events you are interested with, along with date and all other info.
Meetup also has 'going', 'saved' and 'past' tabs to check what's on your list. It also has notifications and messages in it. User can also share the events on social media.
Learning:
Being a new user my journey with Meetup was easy.
Suggestions:
No suggestions as such
Original Article Link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/meetup-onboarding-journey
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Sunday, August 19, 2018
WAZE - GPS Application with realtime traffic information (Good User Experience - Write up)
Experience:
Technology has advanced in a such a way that, even if we don't know the commuting way for a destination, we reach on time without missing the road. Yes, GPS has become our day to day life, like any other mobile devices.
WAZE is one such application which is helping day to day every commuter. Waze works on both wifi and mobile data. It tracks it's user location through satellite.
Most attractive part of this application is the UI and it's pretty icons. Whenever I use this app I strongly feel like the designer has a very strong 'iconography' skill. Apart from icons, another impressing feature of this app is "real time data". This application is one, which completely runs on user driven real time data. For example, a Wazer will reports the traffic status, road construction, police alert, road accidents etc.
If the next Wazer, when he cross the same road and don't find any traffic - he updates the same. Also from application side the map has all the data like shops next to your commute, latest road information etc.
The biggest strength of this application is it's UI and users. It has a vast number of users, who updates it's data every next minute.
Learning:
Icons have a big impact on the user.
Suggestion:
Nothing as such
Original article link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/waze-gps-application-with-realtime-traffic-information
Technology has advanced in a such a way that, even if we don't know the commuting way for a destination, we reach on time without missing the road. Yes, GPS has become our day to day life, like any other mobile devices.
WAZE is one such application which is helping day to day every commuter. Waze works on both wifi and mobile data. It tracks it's user location through satellite.
Most attractive part of this application is the UI and it's pretty icons. Whenever I use this app I strongly feel like the designer has a very strong 'iconography' skill. Apart from icons, another impressing feature of this app is "real time data". This application is one, which completely runs on user driven real time data. For example, a Wazer will reports the traffic status, road construction, police alert, road accidents etc.
If the next Wazer, when he cross the same road and don't find any traffic - he updates the same. Also from application side the map has all the data like shops next to your commute, latest road information etc.
The biggest strength of this application is it's UI and users. It has a vast number of users, who updates it's data every next minute.
Learning:
Icons have a big impact on the user.
Suggestion:
Nothing as such
Original article link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/waze-gps-application-with-realtime-traffic-information
Thursday, July 26, 2018
Google My Maps - Road Trip Planner (Good UX - Write up)
Experience:
Me and my husband are habitual travellers. We have made many road trips since last 8 years. Whenever we plan for a road trip, I have a habit of writing the plan on paper including the map.
This time, I thought to use software's to create my map. I did a small research and finalized to create my map with 'Google my maps'.When I created a new my maps document in google drive (Drive>New>My maps), I felt easier with the navigation. You need to search your starting point it will add it to your layer. You have an import option as well which helps you to get pre-planned map. Then you can add the destination and keep on adding the destinations until you complete your plan.
Adding to this they have icons to make the map more lively, like sports and recreation, weather, animals etc. The plan generated was very simple and easy to use. It made my job much easier.
Learnings:
Road trip maps are extremely helpful and offline maps are helpful during no data/no wi-fi places. So purpose behind this project is helpful to the user.
Suggestions:
'Share' button is represented as "Draw a line" and it gives you option saying add driving route, add biking route etc. The icon is no way serving the intention behind it. Also, direction icon next to it, is serving it's purpose which is adding the direction. Please re design the share icon for it's purpose.
Original Article Link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/google-my-maps-road-trip-planner
Me and my husband are habitual travellers. We have made many road trips since last 8 years. Whenever we plan for a road trip, I have a habit of writing the plan on paper including the map.
This time, I thought to use software's to create my map. I did a small research and finalized to create my map with 'Google my maps'.When I created a new my maps document in google drive (Drive>New>My maps), I felt easier with the navigation. You need to search your starting point it will add it to your layer. You have an import option as well which helps you to get pre-planned map. Then you can add the destination and keep on adding the destinations until you complete your plan.
Adding to this they have icons to make the map more lively, like sports and recreation, weather, animals etc. The plan generated was very simple and easy to use. It made my job much easier.
Learnings:
Road trip maps are extremely helpful and offline maps are helpful during no data/no wi-fi places. So purpose behind this project is helpful to the user.
Suggestions:
'Share' button is represented as "Draw a line" and it gives you option saying add driving route, add biking route etc. The icon is no way serving the intention behind it. Also, direction icon next to it, is serving it's purpose which is adding the direction. Please re design the share icon for it's purpose.
Original Article Link: https://www.designpractice.io/blog/google-my-maps-road-trip-planner
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